The official Republican defense of Trump — from Tucker, from Bobo, from Ken Starr — is that sure Trump may have done something wrong but it doesn’t merit impeachment. I don’t think this is a great defense because frankly, what makes the Ukraine call vastly different from Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewisnky and even somewhat different from the vast evidence amassed by Robert Mueller that Trump obstructed justice is that at some gut level, most Americans are appalled by the idea of a president getting other countries’ criminal justice systems to go after the president’s rival. David Brooks has taught me that this kind of thing goes on all the time in Flyover country, but even at the Applebee’s salad bar, I doubt there’s much support for this kind of corruption.
We raised about 3K yesterday for the legislative races in Virginia. Thanks everybody! Today, let’s raise some more money for the House Dems who might feel the heat when impeachment goes down. The fund below is split equally among the 17 most vulnerable Democratic incumbents. (You can also parcel it out however you like to avoid getting on too many mailing lists.)
HinTN
Up ten minutes and nobody here. Happy Sunday
ETA: The rain last night made this day lovely. The topper will be Lyle Lovett acoustic tonight at a fine old theater.
DougJ
@HinTN:
Sounds like a lot of fun.
germy
Trump to the GOP: “Let me take you down…”
Frankensteinbeck
I think the real difference is that Trump confessed with his stupid ‘transcript’. Claiming it’s not impeachable is too technical. The Mueller stuff was too technical. Here you have a simple, obvious crime that everyone already knew was a crime, and he said he did it. Hell, he says he’ll keep doing it. This is a narrative so clear that it can even fit into Chuck Todd’s brain.
James Powell
Re-posted from long thread below.
I saw a re-elect Trump TV ad yesterday during the Michigan State @ Ohio State game. It was a paranoid rant about how the swamp was out to get the greatest president ever.
Did anyone else here see it? I wondered if they were running the ad because his polling shows this Ukraine thing is hurting him.
debbie
@James Powell:
I would bet a distressingly large percentage of that viewing audience support him. I think the ad was a rallying the troops kind of thing.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Is that how this works?
smintheus
The Republican response reminds me of the inept officials in Firemans’ Ball, who get angry only when somebody gets caught trying to stop the endemic theft. “I would never have done that” one of the firemen shouts, “because I have too much respect for the reputation of this institution!” What was originally a metaphor for Communist corruption serves now as a snapshot of our own government.
James Powell
@HinTN:
Many years ago, I saw Lyle Lovett, John Hiatt, Joe Ely, and Guy Clark. It was a top ten of my lifetime show.
BroD
Thanks for the contribution recommendations! I often respond.
jonas
I would also really love the country to pay more attention to the fact that the fucking AG of the US is now spending taxpayer dollars on overseas trips designed to jawbone European and other allies into wasting *their* citizens’ resources on investigations that he hopes will confirm the crackpot conspiracy theories about how the whole Russia investigation was a massive Deep State entrapment of poor, innocent Trump campaign officials in order to cover up the DNC’s assassination of Seth Rich, or something.
It’s beyond gobsmacking. It’s infuriating and humiliating as an American citizen to have to watch this goddamn spectacle of what a once-great nation has become. Honest-to-Dog banana republics are looking down their nose at us.
Jay C
Apparently, Our Preznit seems to have been kept off the links today by the weather (?) so he seems to have been spending the afternoon
composingbrainfarting out his latest “defense” of his actions: i.e. a vicious personal attack on Joe and Hunter Biden, replete with direct accusations of taking “payoffs”.I realize public figures have little defense, under US law, for even the most libelous crap “published” about them, but SRSLY? Gibbering away about Hunter’s “$1 billion from China”?? Pathetic.
jonas
@smintheus:
Every paranoid fantasy the Right once had about the American Left being co-opted by the Soviets and used as a fifth column to destroy the country has come true. Except it in the end, it was they who were the useful idiots.
smintheus
@jonas: True that.
zhena gogolia
Somebody on WaPo was rationalizing it as “globalized democracy.” I wish I could tell you who, but I threw my laptop out the window into a dumpster when I saw it.
sdhays
@Jay C: So, what he’s saying is that he’s getting/expecting a billion dollar payoff from China.
Ryan
“most Americans are appalled by the idea of a president getting other countries’ criminal justice systems to go after the president’s rival”
I salute your optimism, I expect many to sic their intelligence apparatus against his rivals.
Walker
Sheriffs do this all the time in racist counties. Hence why there is a group of people that think this is normal.
rikyrah
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Because, of course ??
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Frankensteinbeck: I think two things changed, Trump was getting the benefit of the doubt because he is a political newb but now he has been at the job two years, second he is acting guilty about it which means even he knows he stepped over the line with this stuff.
John Revolta
They wanted to impeach Obama over transgender students using the “wrong” bathrooms.
Philbert
SInce it’s OK I hope the free countries interfere with us as much as the dictatorships. World election, sort of.
Uncle Jeffy
@James Powell: I’m in Maryland (BWI) waiting for a flight home and have seen the ad twice. Won’t convince anyone who’s not already committed to the traitor-in-chief
Keith P.
What’s going to be sad is when/if one of these morons floats a compromise of censure instead of impeachment, and Trump absolutely savages him (viciously and strongly!) even for the censure idea.
J R in WV
@Uncle Jeffy:
I’ve seen that ad, today on NFL on FOX… amazing number of lies in a short production.
low-tech cyclist
I hate to say it, but even that’s totally soft-pedaling what Trump was up to.
Trump was threatening to let an ally of ours be conquered by a hostile country unless it dug up dirt on one of Trump’s domestic political opponents.
TS (the original)
@Jay C:
It would be pathetic if everyone who heard it thought like you – but they don’t. Everything they attached Hillary with was “pathetic” but it won trump an election. With the Biden attacks they are trying to do the same. Their biggest aim is to reduce the non-white turnout – and getting rid of Biden is one way to do that.