House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told me that he was not going to lose any GOP votes during impeachment.
“I think we are going to gain Dems,” McCarthy said.
He also rejected Fiona Hill’s testimony and said he thinks Ukraine meddled in 2016 elections.
“I think they did.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 21, 2019
Kevin McCarthy and his buddies took over 100 grand from Giuliani’s indicted bros.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I still have a hard time believing these people are living in the same world we live in. What the fuck is wrong with these people?
hells littlest angel
You gotta dance with the one that
brungbribed you.Uncle Jeffy
Remember the good old days when it took 50 grand or more to buy a Rethuglikkkan Congress critter? Guess there must be a surplus of crooked these days….
germy
I think there are two people Putin pays….
Kay
This is what the criminal defense lawyers say after an indictment. Always. “They are looking forward to a trial so my client can prove his innocence!” You’ve all heard it.
So why does the NYTimes report it as some valuable insight into Trump and cloak the people who planted it by allowing them not to use their names? Why not make them hold a press conference and say this to our faces?
Tony Jay
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
“Kevin McCarthy and his buddies took over 100 grand from Giuliani’s indicted bros.”
I’m not saying these things are connected in any way.
I’m saying they’re connected in every fucking way possible.
Baud
Once again, we don’t need their permission or approval.
Kay
Trump couldn’t get GOP Senators to agree to shut down the trial because that’s politically problematic for them so now he has to go to trial.
That’s the story, beginning to end, and it’s no different than any other defendant would do- they try to shut it down and if they can’t they go to trial. I don’t object to Trump doing it. God knows he’s an experienced criminal- this isn’t his first rodeo and he’s always beaten the rap. I object to it being portrayed as more complicated than that. If he could have gotten it shut down he would have. He failed. Now he goes to trial.
Where he’s looking forward to proving his innocence :)
Like every other defendant in thousands of places all over the country today.
Roger Moore
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
They aren’t living in the same world we are. They’re living in a fantasy world.
tokyokie
@Uncle Jeffy:
The GOP has been remaindered.
PPCLI
@germy: It’s worth revisiting the context of that quote, too. The extended conversation it came from was Ryan, McCarthy et. al. sympathetically discussing the plight of Ukraine under attack.
germy
I agree.
germy
@PPCLI:
And it feels like a million years ago.
Amir Khalid
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
Pardon my stating the obvious, but they aren’t. In their world, where Trump can do no wrong, everything that in our world looks like another addition to the mountain of incriminating evidence is really just more proof of Trump’s innocence.
I don’t think they’re all unaware that they’re not living in reality; some among them must be the stage hands working the machinery.
germy
@Amir Khalid:
They create their own reality.
Kay
@germy:
That was never where they had the problem, though. They already lost a bunch of non-far Right House seats so the Party is still more purely far Right on the House side. It’s pre-culled for dissenters from Dear Leader. They still have a couple of supposedly ethical senators and they don’t get gerrymandered races.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kay: Maggie and the Times have been even more craven than usual lately.
But they also publish some good work. We have to keep calling out the garbage.
waysel
I would like to see receipts for all the ‘donations to charity’ McCarthy and the others claim they are going to make with these tainted contributions they’ve received. I doubt they will follow through on these claims once the spotlight has shifted. If they do the donations, I’d like a thorough look at said charities. I remember Trumps donation to some fake ‘Help our Marines’ charity, I think during the 2016 campaign.
Betty Cracker
Trump called in to Fox News this morning to babble about a “very wealthy Ukrainian” having physical possession of the non-existent DNC server. He’s all in on Giuliani’s crackpottery, and IMO, that’s a good thing. Not that it will change the outcome — the House will impeach, and the Senate will acquit. But maybe making every elected Republican publicly own this thoroughly debunked crazy-uncle-email-forward will damage the party on the margins, who knows?
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: Because Maggie Haberhack works for the <em>Vichy Times</em>
James E Powell
I think we need another shoe to drop; another impeachable offense that is unrelated to this Ukraine Affair.
Have to believe there is something in the tax and financial records, but I don’t expect Trump will ever produce them. Even if the supreme court affirms or allows the lower court orders to stand, he will simply refuse to obey them. The 41.5% (fka the 27%) believe Trump is entitled to obstruct justice if the investigators are Democrats, so that won’t do it. We need corruption of the old school kind.
Yarrow
News this morning made it sound like these public hearings were all we’re getting. Now it’s off to the Judiciary committee for them to consider and possibly draft Articles of Impeachment and that a vote is expected in mid-December because “both sides want this over before the first primaries happen.”
I find all of that surprising. There is so much more there. These five days of hearings are all we’re getting?
waysel
@PPCLI: Do you know where I might find the full quote of the Ryan/McCarthy conversation?
Kay
I’m fatalistic about impeachment. They had to do it or impeachment as a process is dead letter. Someone had to draw a line or we as a country are screwed and it just gets worse and worse until it’s completely lawless.
The other guard rails collapsed. They could not let this one go or we don’t have a President, we have a ruler. Not to mention that letting this one go would mean Congress as a constitutional separate branch is gone and elections as a mechanism are also at risk.
This was do or die. They compromised on this and we have nothing to check to these people. Polling is nice but this a grave threat and probably can’t be fixed if it’s allowed to collapse.
Villago Delenda Est
@Yarrow: Pelosi has decided, for better or for worse, to focus on Ukranium and Donald’s extortion attempt. I think this is wise, this one is easy to understand and straightforward. Might toss in some witness tampering, too, seeing as Donald did it live during the hearings, which only shows what a habitual criminal he is.
mardam422
OK. So Donnie gets impeached in the House and doesn’t get convicted in the Senate. Get every R lawmaker on record voting against impeachment/removal. They’ll get hammered next November.
Kay
To me it really doesn’t matter if the GOP base and their House members deny it. They can deny it because they’re delusional or because they’re corrupt or because they spend all their time on Facebook and Fox news so don’t see the risk. I don’t care. Giving up and just handing it to them is not an option. There was and is no choice involved here. It has to be done.
waysel
@Yarrow: I’m hoping they drag the investigation out as well. I feel like Pelosi and Schiff have, for strategic reasons, been hinting at brevity that they’re not truly wedded to. I have no inkling what those strategic reasons might be.
Yarrow
@James E Powell:
I agree. Supposedly the judge will make a decision in the McGahn case by Monday. Maybe that would do something.
ThresherK
OT: Thanksgiving is late this year, as late as it can get.
I am playing holiday music now, and that fact makes me feel weird.
Villago Delenda Est
@mardam422: Prezactly. The irony here is what protects them in the primaries (voting to acquit) kills them in the general. Too much short term thinking going on.
Betty Cracker
What do y’all make of this?
Gin & Tonic
This conspiracy is so bizarre to anyone who knows anything about infosec. To do the forensic analysis they were hired for, Crowdstrike (or any other company) would not want or take the physical server, even assuming there was an actual physical server (as opposed to an AWS or Azure instance.) They wouldtake a forensic image. No actual hardware would be involved.
And Rudy supposedly runs an infosec company.
Redshift
After listening to some excerpts from the testimony last night, it suddenly dawned on me why Republicans were hammering Sondland in the fact that he knew directly that the White House meeting was a condition for the aid, but he surmised that there investigations were: because of the McDonnell case, where arranging a meeting was deemed not to be “an official act” for purposes of bribery. That’s what their response to bribery is going to be.
PPCLI
From this morning’s Fox and Friends rant, rambling and bizarre even by Trump standards, Trump smears Yovanovich as “no angel” and again talks about all these unspecified bad “things that she did” that he will talk about some day. But the best Trump can come up with was to assert a couple of times that she “wouldn’t hang a picture of me at the embassy”. [Reality check: Apparently this was a problem for a lot of offices, abroad and in the US. It is standard to hang a new picture of a new president on the day of the inauguration. But the incompetent Trumpsters didn’t have the pictures chosen, copied and ready to distribute for a ridiculous length of time.]
Worth watching is the Trumpite blonde in the middle. The look on her face throughout the 45 second clip is indistinguishable from the quietly contemptuous look of a woman patiently waiting for a moment to escape from an aggressive blustering drunk at a cocktail party.
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1197878059938013184
Elizabelle
@Kay:
Thank you, Kay. Laughing, sadly.
I hope that other whistleblowers are giving some thought to whistling. They have seen how Trump and Mulvaney and all the goons are desecrating the federal government. More people know of more malfeasance. And it was hard, but the heroes of this week’s hearings (in addition to Adam Schiff and his committee Democrats, who will never get credit) were the courageous career public servants. They came off very well. (Except for Morrison, I guess.)
The hearings, the witnesses, Adam Schiff, the howler monkeys — if you watched, you realized that our very government and what we think America is are at stake.
Redshift
@Kay: This action also demanded impeachment because Trump was trying to rig the next election, making any argument for “letting the voters decide” ludicrously false
Aziz, light!
@Roger Moore: For most of them it’s not a fantasy world; it’s a world in which shitting on democracy makes you rich.
Elizabelle
@waysel:
Yes. Just like Nancy Pelosi was never going to proceed with impeachment. Suckers!
Calouste
@Betty Cracker: Well, he was hired by the shitgibbon, so by that high standard he probably locked himself out of his account and it took him two months to work out how to unlock it.
ThresherK
@PPCLI: “Putting up with a drunk’s bluster” face is not what Fox hired her to do.
I hardly ever click on any Fox-related videos, but this was worth my time!
Gin & Tonic
FTFNYT link ahead, but here’s a piece from today from the founders of Fusion GPS. More debunking, that R’s will never read.
Served
@Betty Cracker: Drama queen who wants to sell a book and not actually testify under oath. I’ve really had it with these people.
Matt McIrvin
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s rational on their part, though. Immoral but rational, because they’re in a trap. The chance that abandoning Trump hurts them in the primary is larger than the chance it helps them later. They’re stuck.
StringOnAStick
@waysel: If makes sense to be saying “yep, almost done” while other committees are ramping up behind the scenes . It might be played out as “whoa, whoa, whoa, New evidence has come to our attention; looks like we need some more hearings. “. I’m just guessing though
Fleeting Expletive
The thought that woke me up this morning–this Sondland reminds me of someone, oh, like Brody, the RNC money guy who paid to cover up an abortion for someone. I wonder if Sondland, Brody, and others also partook of the Epstein hookah. These guys all fancy themselves as players in the Republican casino. What if there are underlying connections and interests we haven’t even thought about yet. I still think there’s a nexus of money laundering, trafficking in people and drugs and whatever, bribery and blackmail that we haven’t found.
Yarrow
@waysel: There’s a partial transcriptt in this WaPo article.
Yarrow
@waysel: That’s also my impression. I heard somewhere that Pelosi hinted that impeachment could go into next year.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker: What I make of that is he has a book he wants to sell so he’s hyping his story. The Party of Me First.
O. Felix Culpa
QFT
rikyrah
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
If you stop trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, and accept that they are either:
corrupt or compromised by the Russians..
them betraying their oath to the Constitution makes sense.
And, we must respond to them being traitors….
Jay C
@Betty Cracker:
Insane crackpottery as the “Stolen DNC server” is, it makes sense that Trump and his creatures would want to push it, as it makes for a much simpler “story” for them to push onto their credulous fanbase.
It’s probably a much easier stretch for the Fox News “base” – a large percentage of whom are likely to be un-tech-savvy Olds – to imagine an actual object (probably, as I picture it, something like an 90s-era PC tower) being “stolen” and “hidden” away to “hide” its data than to wrap their heads around what actually constitutes data storage/transmission practices in the late 2010s.
waysel
@Yarrow: Thanks.
Yarrow
@waysel: WaPo did have a full transcript. There’s a link to it in that story I linked. It’s no longer working, it seems. You might be able to search the WaPo site for it. I’ve linked it here before. It’s probably available somewhere.
rikyrah
@StringOnAStick:
We haven’t heard from the money people. The budget people. Someone knew that it was illegal to withhold the monies to Ukraine. We need someone to testify about that side of things.
waysel
@Yarrow: Yes, surely the NYT front paged if for a week or more, right???
Yarrow
@rikyrah: Mark Sandy from OMB testified last Saturday in closed door session. I think it was Schiff’s committee but not sure. I’d think at least he might be called to open session.
@waysel: LOL. Of course. Days and days of coverage from the NYT.
Gin & Tonic
@rikyrah: There was a fairly long NBC News story on-line recently, that I’m not going to hunt for now, about two staffers from House Appropriations who went to Kyiv this summer to check on the funds and found that nothing was moving. They were stumped as to why. I’m not sure why this story isn’t getting more play.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
Donald Trump will get a much better process than Donald Trump would give to anyone else. This is the person who wanted teenagers summarily executed. We’re incredibly fucking generous to the Trump people.
Dumbasses don’t realize the process protections they sneer at are the only thing between them and prison. If it were up to any of them we wouldn’t have them. Coddled, entitled, pampered assholes who have never been checked or challenged their entire lives.
smintheus
Fiona Hill yesterday morning: Repeating conspiracy theories about Ukraine is advancing Russia’s agenda.
Donald Trump to Fox this morning: Hold my beer.
ETA: I see that Betty already mentioned his bizarre call in to Fox.
chris
@Gin & Tonic: Good article, thanks. Over to you, Rudy!
Kay
It’s just funny when you step back and watch the frantic protection of this President from GOP members of congress. They’re doing it so they can get re-elected but re-elected to what? They’re making Congress worthless. They have no quality standards. They devalue the thing they’re protecting. They’ll win the big prize and it’s a pile of ashes. A legislative body for a shithole country. Corrupt, no ethical standards, reduced in value. They’re holding tight to it so hard and so past the point of reason that they’re destroying what they’re supposedly protecting. They won’t “come back” from this. They may hang onto power but rock bottom is their new standard and that won’t change. That will be reflected in the quality of people who run and get the job. It’s guaranteed.
Yarrow
Ah, Nooners…
Yarrow
@Kay: They’re protecting themselves and their families. There’s dirt on them and if it gets out their lives as they know them end. Or at least that’s what they’re afraid of. Lindsey Graham is the only one who admitted his emails were hacked but I’m sure he’s not the only one. What do the hackers–most likely Russia but possibly also China–have on these Republicans? Must be pretty bad.
Kay
@Yarrow:
It isn’t endlessly resilient, this country. If they continue to shit on it, it will be shit. This idea they all seem to have that they wait out Trump and then announce they’re back to being actual legislators is nonsense. They are doing damage.
It reminds me of people who get divorced and battle so hard over their kids they leave a smoking crater where those kids were. The battle destroys the prize for winning.
J R in WV
@James E Powell:
That’s not how it works. Trump doesn’t have to provide the tax returns, the IRS will have to provide them as filed with the IRS, once (IF) the court stops the delay. But I feel sure the “Honorable” Supreme Court will support our “Glorious Leader, President” Trump the Terrible.
In my book that would be grounds enough to impeach every Justice that voted to protect Trump the Terrible, but IANAL, nor a member of congress. Thank doG.
Jager
@Jay C:
No, they imagine a room-sized server, that would barely fit in a shipping container
@Jay C:
J R in WV
We just listened to that Trump the Terrible phoner with Faux and Friends TV comedy show.
Trump sounded like a very ill elderly resident in a home, having great difficulties speaking clearly and making accusations about last night’s dinner, which was terrible, and his portion was way too small, and it was deliberate on the part of management, who want him to move out right away. Plus his nurse hurts him deliberately when taking the regularly scheduled blood draw keeping him alive.
“Are you listening to me?!?! They’re are not treating me properly!! ” [sic]
japa21
Yes, they are living in an alternate reality world. But I sometimes worry we are also living in a different world. By we, I mean BJ and similar blog people.
Are we fooling ourselves into believing any of this matters, that the hearings matter, that impeachment matters?
After all, we live in a world where enough people in enough areas decided that the best candidate for president in years was some horrible, corporatist harridan that would drag the US into the depths of Hell, that they voted for an arrogant, narcissistic criminal who is dragging the US into Hell.
Are we really being honest and being real in thinking those same people won’t do the same thing next year? True, it isn’t Clinton next year, but the same things will be working against whoever the candidate is.
Perhaps I am just in too much of a pessimistic mood. Probably brought on by other things happening in my life right now, but I wonder if our bubble is really any different than the RW bubble.
catbirdman
@germy: The statement was updated:
“I think there might be two people in the GOP Putin doesn’t pay.”
nyrobbin
@Kay:
You are on fire today, Kay!
First comment under new system!
Alien Radio
@Fleeting Expletive: This is what I figured. This is networked Mafia, Each node will have multiple side scams linking other nodes together. while the surface story is following the straight up chain of documentation of government links. Behind the scenes this is about a gigantic Money Laundering Scheme, and yes Human Trafficking, since we know Trump world models is a front for human Trafficking, There was that bust In Florida near Mar A Largo, Elaine Chao’s family Probably is smuggling not just to North Korea, but internationally and at a guess all three of the big earners, Drugs, Guns and People. We recently had a trailer full of dead Vietnamese turn up in Dover. Dollars to donuts that truck was inspected because of a tip off from intelligence, because I suspect that was part of a people trafficking operation that linked Irish organised crime to Triad gangs. We have lots of nail bars here, I’m pretty certain there aren’t enough people needing their nails done to support them, and that they are just money laundering fronts (like all the betting shops they sit alongside), and If I were a betting man I’d guess that trafficked people are an easy source of labour for such an enterprise.
My assumption has been that we are talking rampant criminal behaviour by everyone involved. and because of how deeply enmeshed with each other they are there are no firewalls, because everyone is compromised in multiple dimensions by multiple entities, some of which they may not even know about. They’re treating the Criminal code like a Pokedex.
Bill Arnold
@Gin & Tonic:
Yeah. Even assuming they owned the physical servers, (not clear how much was on cloud systems), seizing the servers of a cooperative victim and thereby shutting down the political campaign of the opposition party seems to be what the Rs are advocating for. If they still want the original machines (of the opposition party) (which might be virtual and in any event probably no longer exist), forensics information on a server in use degrades over time. old logs get deleted, storage empty space gets overwritten multiple times, etc.
From 2018:
Trump’s ‘Missing DNC Server’ Is Neither Missing Nor a Server – The president can spout conspiracy theories all he wants. But the DNC turned over all its key data to the FBI after it got hacked. And that info wasn’t stored on a single server. (Kevin Poulsen, Jul. 17, 2018)
Betty
@James E Powell: Like the Mueller Report? Obstruction of justice?
Betty
@rikyrah: This.
Alan Barney
@Kay: Republicans have embraced the Oligarchy. When you have an Imperial President the other branches of Democratic Government have no purpose.
brantl
@Gin & Tonic: What made you think Rudy knows shit from shinola?
Warblewarble
To blusterfuck like a Jordan,to dumbfuck like a Nunes,to creep like a Ratcliffe, to upfuck like a Castor, to Stefanik on a rake. The beat goes on,and then clash of cymbals enter Kevin McCarthy.
James E Powell
@Roger Moore:
Unfortunately, a solid 41.5% of Americans are also living in that fantasy world. And they are determined to win the election by hook or by crook. They’d rather destroy this democracy rather than let the majority govern it.
PJ
@J R in WV:
@James E Powell:
Congress and the Manhattan DA have subpoenaed the records from Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA. If the subpoena is upheld by the Supreme Court, or they decline to hear the matter, those records will be produced – no accountant is going to go to jail from Trump.
StringOnAStick
@Gin & Tonic:
Rudy doesn’t run an infosec company, he runs a money laundry under the cover of being an infosec company. Makes more sense, doesn’t it?
misterpuff
@japa21: Corporatist Harridan??? Really?