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You are here: Home / Politics / Impeachment / Impeach the Motherfucker! / Noon Open Thread

Noon Open Thread

by | 28 Comments

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I thought this Post explainer was a good round up of the whole Ukraine mess for non-addicts, including Sondland’s role. It might shock you to know that a guy who gave a million bucks to Trump’s inaguration is an asshole:

In Brussels, Sondland garnered a reputation for his truculent manner and fondness for the trappings of privilege. He peppered closed-door negotiations with four-letter words. He carried a wireless buzzer into meetings at the U.S. Mission that enabled him to silently summon support staff to refill his teacup.

Sondland seemed to chafe at the constraints of his assignment. He traveled for meetings in Israel, Romania and other countries with little or no coordination with other officials. He acquired a reputation for being indiscreet, and was chastised for using his personal phone for state business, officials said.

Clearly, the pressures of being male, upper-class, white and rich were tough for Sondland. Even so, he’s not fucking crazy: he’s testifying on Tuesday. The bottom line is none of these more minor players are going to jail for Trump, and that’s bad news.

This also looks like a pretty good resource for those who don’t want to ingest every single morsel of impleachment news: impeachment.fyi.

Reader Interactions

28Comments

  1. 1.

    japa21

    Even so, he’s not fucking crazy: he’s testifying on Tuesday. The bottom line is none of these more minor players are going to jail for Trump, and that’s bad news.

    Let’s wait and see what he says before we make any judgements about his mental status. One thing we don’t have from Volker deposition are his words, what he actually said. That may be more important than the actual text messages.

  4. 4.

    Aleta

    He carried a wireless buzzer into meetings at the U.S. Mission that enabled him to silently summon support staff to refill his teacup.

    Culturally obtuse. Afraid to ring a little silver bell, too Euro-male fem, not a tox-masculine look.

  5. 5.

    Martin

    This is a pretty pivotal moment I think. There’s always that moment when there’s a collective realization that the ship can’t be saved, and everyone heads for the exits, not just to save themselves, but also to prove that they weren’t the ones that caused the ship to sink, they were the heroes that tried to save it. Happens in every campaign, and in a lot of startups.

    Once you see others heading for the exits, that becomes your only recourse yourself. Together you had a chance, but now it becomes a race for salvation.

  6. 6.

    MJS

    @japa21: I agree that Sondland’s testimony may not be helpful, because I don’t put it past any of these characters to lie under oath (see North, Oliver), but it doesn’t matter what Volker said in his testimony. The texts are irrefutable. He could have been praising Trump to the rafters in his testimony. All that would have done is make him look like the ass he appears to be.

  7. 7.

    Jinchi

    He is also the founder and chairman of Provenance Hotels

    Trump was drawing from a really shallow pool, here.

  9. 9.

    Keith P.

    @Aleta: Sounds like he picked up that little habit from his boss, which seems to be a common occurrence. Makes me think off all the other little things the acolytes do, from Stephen Miller wearing Jared suits to Rudy doing cuff links (Trump looks fucking ridiculous wearing French cuffs with an oversized, rumpled JC Penney suit) to taking private planes everywhere (too many cabinet secretaries to count)

  11. 11.

    Marvel Vigil

    “…The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s of any kind. The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign….”

    imgur.com/a/k3eo2DJ

  12. 12.

    Bill Arnold

    An engaging book-tour piece by Christopher Wylie, he of the orange hair:
    How I Helped Hack Democracy (Christopher Wylie, 2019/10/04)

    But I couldn’t ignore what was right in front of my eyes. Weird PACs started showing up. The super-PAC of future national-security adviser John Bolton paid Cambridge Analytica more than $1 million to explore how to increase militarism in American youth. Bolton was worried that millennials were a “morally weak” generation that would not want to go to war with Iran or other “evil” countries.
    …
    Like so many people in technology, I stupidly fell for the hubristic allure of Facebook’s call to “move fast and break things.” I’ve never regretted something so much. I moved fast, I built things of immense power, and I never fully appreciated what I was breaking until it was too late.

    (private browsing window can be helpful with NYMag)

  13. 13.

    Cheryl Rofer

    It’s entirely possible that Sondland’s testimony will be a ringing defense of Trump, as we see in the texts. “Nobody said the words ‘quid pro quo.'” The President wants Ukraine to clean up its corruption. et sequitur

    Fortunately, we have testimony from Kurt Volker, and Maria Yovanovich will testify next Friday.

  16. 16.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Marvel Vigil: I’ve puzzled about what his words “perfect phone call” meant in this context. I’ve concluded he meant “I conveyed the extortion demands clearly and strongly but didn’t actually say any words the coppers can bust me on.”

    I will trust the judgement of the professionals, including his own staff, who are going “Holy shit!” on every other sentence.

  17. 17.

    NotMax

    @Cheryl Rofer

    Cheryl, as you keep up to date on this stuff better than us laymen, any further revelations or developments regarding the ‘isotopic incident’ in Russia beyond what we know/knew some weeks back?

  23. 23.

    Marvel

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: I agree. His characterization of his “perfect” phone call was the shallow boasting of an oh! so clever little boy who thought he was putting one over on the adults.

    We live in breathtaking times.

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