Donald Trump put his famous “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” theory to the test on Thursday when he told the world, on national television, that he’s considering asking Chinese president Xi Jinping to investigation Joe and Hunter Biden.
That Trump would say that, out loud, to people with working ears, in the middle of an impeachment inquiry centered around his efforts to compel Ukraine to launch similar investigations, is a testament to his unwavering faith in the loyalty of the MAGA base.
Hours after the president openly solicited a foreign government with which he is currently negotiating a trade deal, reports emerged that Trump spoke to Xi in June about Biden and Elizabeth Warren. During the same call (which is now sequestered away on a secure server), Trump allegedly sold out Hong Kong’s pro-democracy demonstrators, telling Xi he would remain quiet on the issue.
Warren is now demanding the transcript of that call, and you can be absolutely sure that other Democrats will too, probably to the point of including it in subpoenas.
Trump, undeterred, tripled down on Friday morning. “As President I have an obligation to end CORRUPTION, even if that means requesting the help of a foreign country or countries”, he told 52 million people on Twitter, adding that “It is done all the time”.
No, it is not. It is most assuredly not standard operating procedure for the President of the United States to engage in covert operations using a team of private attorneys operating what amounts to a shadow state department to pressure foreign governments into investigating political rivals ahead of a US election.
Trump went on to insist that “This has NOTHING to do with politics or a political campaign against the Bidens”.
Again, what Trump is asking voters to believe is so wildly implausible that one struggles to wrap one’s head around it. Trump has spent his entire presidency deriding Biden who, up until recently, was the clear Democratic frontrunner.
On the phone call with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump did not mention any other specific instances of “corruption” that he wants examined. It was all about Biden and rumors that Ukrainian officials might have helped Hillary Clinton in an election that happened three years ago, which Trump of course won.
Further, there is no evidence whatsoever in the whistle-blower complaint or in any of the information that has so far been made public, to suggest that Trump or his envoys ever cared about any corruption beyond unfounded allegations of wrongdoing by the Bidens. The text messages turned over to Congress by former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker on Thursday clearly indicated that Biden and any information on the 2016 election were the sole focus of Trump’s purportedly catch-all corruption sweep in Ukraine.
Read more: Trump Envoys Volker, Sondland Drafted Statement Committing Ukraine To Biden Probe
In other words, even if you’re inexplicably inclined to accept the wholly laughable proposition that Trump – a man whose “university” was shut down for being, well, not a university, and whose charity was similarly shuttered for being, well, not a charity – cares about corruption, there is zero evidence to support his contention that his pressure campaign on Ukraine isn’t specifically about Joe Biden. In fact, all the evidence (every, single bit of it, including the transcript of the phone call released by Trump himself) shows that the White House is engaged in a borderline psychotic effort to rope in foreign governments to influence the 2020 election.
And so, the impeachment inquiry will proceed, ironically with Trump’s help.
“What did President Trump promise China in exchange for interfering in our election?”, Nancy Pelosi asked the public in a tweet on Friday. “An easier deal on trade? Ignoring [a] crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement? Condoning repression of religious freedom?”
The answer, Madam Speaker, is probably “all of the above”, and there’s no telling what was said on Trump’s calls with Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, at least two of which are stored on the same code-word protected computer server that houses the call with Xi, the call with Australia’s Scott Morrison and, until recently, the call with Zelensky.
“Congress must not back down from our duty to defend the Constitution as Trump
ignores the Founders’ warnings about foreign interference at every turn”, Pelosi said.
Meanwhile, the White House is set to try and stymie the impeachment inquiry by demanding a vote – because “transparency” and “perfect phone call!” and “nothing to hide!”.
“borderline psychotic”, finally an apt characterization of Trump.
Pelosi and Dems have to go from Warp l to Warp 5 and go into hyper-mode to offset the trump/GOP counter measures. The faster the Dems attack and keep pressure on, the better chances that this story will not just become a Mueller debacle that drags out to a stupid conclusion. Putting on massive pressure ASAP helps force the trump retarded tweets and ramps up instability and more and more brazen push-back, all of which plays into the press focusing attention on how inept and corrupt the GOP is. With Nixon, the impeachment effort, was divisive and polarizing and solidified supporters in each camp and so, in this era, you have trump zealots who don’t care about their guy killing anyone, if anything they support any criminal activity and want their boy to be a bad ass gangster super star — but meanwhile, in the real world, the vast majority of voters will be watching this circus and wondering why a president is so involved in mass corruption. Thus, trump popularity will be put to a great test by at least 75% of Americans and thy will have to decide if they will support the GOP and trump, or if there is a compromise to not vote trump and just support random congressional candidates. If the Dems push hard and make a super strong case, GOP candidates will be forced to either support the gangster mafia or back away and look far more neutral. Of course the trump super computers know this, and the stable super genius playing 3-D blitz chess knows this, so with all the pressure on, the trick will be to find a way to not allow any fragmentation within the GOP party, which probably will require bribes, promises and corruption on a scale that will result in a civil war, pitting the criminally insane versus the rest of America.
Also see: Trump defines the Republican Party brand as president, so if Trump is unpopular, the Republican Party is unpopular, which would likely spell steep electoral losses for the party.
The only way this dynamic changes is if the entire Republican Party apparatus (not just politicians, but also media commentators and surrogates) turns on Trump en masse. But for this to happen, somebody still has to speak up first, and others have to follow.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/if-republicans-ever-turn-on-trump-itll-happen-all-at-once/