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Wednesday Breaking News Thread: Wheels Comin’ off the Bus! Pigeons Comin’ home to Roost! Edition

Posted: October 2, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Live Blog |23 Comments

Good Afternoons Sky Dancers!

The Force Awakens!

Thought we’d throw up an open thread here because there’s so much coming out that it’s hard to keep up with!

Image result for Cartoons trump borisSome of this stuff is so outlandishly illegal and outrageous that if it were any one but Trump I’d think we’d popped into the Twilight Zone.

Catherine Philp / The Times & The Sunday Times:

Donald Trump impeachment: President called Boris Johnson for help to discredit Mueller inquiry

President Trump personally contacted Boris Johnson to ask for help as he tried to discredit the Mueller investigation into possible connections between Russia and his 2016 election campaign, The Times understands.

Mr Trump also contacted the leaders of countries including Australia and Ukraine to ask them to help William Barr, his attorney-general, to gather evidence to undermine the investigation into his campaign’s links to Russia.

Robert Mueller, the special counsel, refused to exonerate Mr Trump of wrongdoing when he released his findings in April, prompting the president to set up his own investigation in an effort to prove that the inquiry was politically motivated.

Erin Banco / The Daily Beast:

Pompeo Pushed Out His Own Ukraine Rep to Squash a Growing Scandal
Giuliani waved his phone on air, flashing text messages between himself and State Department representatives and saying it was the department that connected him to a close adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Giuliani’s on-air appearances threw the department into a tizzy, forcing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to try to put a lid on the crisis of confidence bubbling up under him, according to three senior U.S. officials. For Pompeo, solving the problem meant finding someone to blame—and there was only one individual who fit the mold, according to those same sources: Kurt Volker, former U.S. representative for Ukraine negotiations.
Volker resigned Friday. Despite his resignation, the State Department has scrambled to correct course, according to these same officials, especially after news that Pompeo was on the now-infamous call between President Trump and Zelensky in July. Pompeo had previously denied knowing about it on national television. On top of that, three congressional committees subpoenaed Pompeo for documents related to Trump and Giuliani’s work in Ukraine and demanded that five current and former department officials appear for depositions.
In response, Pompeo tried a time-tested Trump White House strategy: stonewalling Congress. The secretary said Tuesday that Congress was “bullying” career officials and suggested they would not appear for questioning. (The State Department’s inspector general is currently investigating members of Pompeo’s department for pushing career officials out of their posts for perceived political bias.)

Under the heading, “it’s the economy, stupid!”

 

Keep adding to the thread down there because there’s a cray cray presser from Trump and more Impeachment news from Nancy and Adam to stir the pot.  Here’s Nancy!!!

 

What’s going on ?  

23 Comments on “Wednesday Breaking News Thread: Wheels Comin’ off the Bus! Pigeons Comin’ home to Roost! Edition”

  1. bostonboomer says:
    October 2, 2019 at 1:48 pm

    There has been so much news breaking in the last half hour or so. It’s amazing.

  2. bostonboomer says:
    October 2, 2019 at 1:49 pm

  3. bostonboomer says:
    October 2, 2019 at 1:50 pm

    The whistleblower actually contacted Schiff before reporting.

  4. dakinikat says:
    October 2, 2019 at 1:50 pm

    Hopefully, JJ will post some cartoons later … meanwhile ….

    • bostonboomer says:
      October 2, 2019 at 1:51 pm

  5. bostonboomer says:
    October 2, 2019 at 1:51 pm

  6. bostonboomer says:
    October 2, 2019 at 1:55 pm

    Financial Times: Chances of Republicans deserting Trump are underrated

    Upon dismissing his chief of staff in 1973, Richard Nixon said that he loved him “like my brother”. The line seems too easy until you remember that the US president had seen two of his own die young. Nixon’s bond with H R Haldeman and other colleagues fortified him well into the Watergate crisis that brought him down.

    Excluding his in-laws and blood relations, is there anyone in Washington of whom Donald Trump would make the same comment? Is there anyone who would say it of him? The point is not about the president’s likeability or otherwise. It is about his level of support as his own impeachment ordeal nears.

    Since the Ukraine scandal emerged, it has been natural to assume total Republican commitment to Mr Trump. Such is the tribalism of a riven nation.

    There is another scenario, though, and it does not stop at one or two Republicans peeling away. Instead, to save itself, the GOP establishment might desert Mr Trump as swiftly and unexpectedly as it bent the knee to him in 2016. Whether this manifests as the Senate supermajority needed for his ousting is still hugely doubtful. But there are other kinds of defiance: a staff exodus from the White House, senatorial refusals to defend him, the turning of implicated parties on one another.

    • quixote says:
      October 2, 2019 at 5:21 pm

      Comparing this whole garbage pile to Watergate is a false analogy.

      Watergate: guy with the intelligence and background to be Prez, who actually cared about the US, the Constitution, and the law (in his own way), so convinced of his own brilliance that he thought he’d be justified stealing data from his Democratic opponents. You know, like Bernie Sanders stealing data from Hillary’s campaign, except that once we had networked computers you no longer needed to send in gumshoes wearing rubber gloves to do the deed. Nixon had some actual competent people around him who shared his Republican ideas. There was some actual loyalty.

      Dumpsterfire: failed mob boss and money launderer vulnerable to blackmail commits treason to steal an election and then starts the same process for 2020. Nobody who works for him is in it because they believe in his transnational crime syndicate. They’re hitching a ride in case some money falls on them.

      So just quit it, whoever the author is, with his “it is natural to assume total loyalty” blahblahblah.

      No it’s not. It’s bullshit. It can only happen when you completely misread the situation as consisting of normal politicians.

      These aren’t. They’re failed mobsters who are too stupid to make it among the real ones, but figured us law-abiding schmucks would be easy pickings.

      And they’ve been right for 30, 40 years.

      But if and when it falls apart, they’ll eat each other alive on the way down.

  7. bostonboomer says:
    October 2, 2019 at 1:58 pm

    Politico: Putin jokes that Moscow plans to meddle in the 2020 election.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday appeared to revel in the ongoing political maelstrom in the U.S., jokingly admitting to plans for future election meddling.

    When asked whether Russia would interfere in the 2020 election cycle, Putin leaned into the microphone onstage and mimicked a whisper: “I’m going to tell you a secret. Yes, sure. We’re going to do that. Don’t tell anybody.”

    Not a joke though.

  8. bostonboomer says:
    October 2, 2019 at 2:03 pm
  9. bostonboomer says:
    October 2, 2019 at 2:17 pm

  10. bostonboomer says:
    October 2, 2019 at 2:33 pm

    Trump’s press conference with the Finnish president was beyond insane. My stomach is in knots after watching the clips.

  11. Pat Johnson says:
    October 2, 2019 at 2:48 pm

    The POTUS has gathered around him men who are more than willing to carry out his “orders”.

    They are on a mission to undermine our intelligence agencies who collectively found Russian interference in the 2016 election. Just to cleanse Trump of the suggestion that he colluded with the Russian government and absolve Putin of blame.

    Think about it: an attempt to discredit our intelligence agencies in favor of a foreign adversary looking to have sanctions lifted against them and open the Arctic to future drilling that would make those involved wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. Incredible!

    This alone would be unthinkable even for a John LeCarre novel but these are true facts being played out in real time. The POTUS and his cronies are willing to sell out the democracy of their home nation for money. Because there is no “lifting” without the promise of money in Trump’s evil little world.

    Treason? Treachery? Evil? Yes to all three. Flynn was planning this from inauguration day right there on the podium. Manafort was about to “make whole” when this went through. Gates had a stake in this as well while Jared stood to pay off his mountain of debts with a pocketful of ill gotten gains. And Trump was about to “shovel ready” that Trump Tower he was so eager to build.

    Hopefully this time the dam has been broken and the lying walls scaled and this whole fiasco finally sees the light of day.

    The corruption has seeped into every crevice of our vaunted institutions. The lies are about to be exposed.

    Trump could do the world a favor and resign. It won’t happen but one can hope. And that action should include every one of his henchmen enablers who have worked so diligently to hide and protect his crimes.

  12. dakinikat says:
    October 2, 2019 at 2:50 pm

    SENATOR KING SUGGESTS AT LEAST 20 MINUTES ARE MISSING FROM TRUMP UKRAINE CALL TRANSCRIPT
    BY DAVID BRENNAN ON 10/2/19 AT 12:11 PM EDT

    https://www.newsweek.com/senator-king-suggests-least-20-minutes-are-missing-trump-ukraine-call-transcript-1462622?fbclid=IwAR01GzMMk0is5qJjM9DqIyYt7PACXVetO7CzGceaGC3-3utsOwGG4ffDnwM

    Independent Senator Angus King has claimed that some 20 minutes of the phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are missing from the White House memo detailing the conversation.

    King told CNN host Anderson Cooper Tuesday that he and his staff had reconstructed the call using the memo, determining that more than two thirds of the call time was unaccounted for.

    The full transcript of the now-infamous call between the two leaders has not been released. Though the document makes clear that the read out has been edited, it is not clear exactly how much has been cut, and what those sections may contain.

    King told Cooper he has a “hunch” about the edited transcript, the release of which pushed the Democratic Party to open an impeachment investigation into the president.

    • bostonboomer says:
      October 2, 2019 at 3:39 pm

      Wow. And Trump said this morning there is a word for word transcript. Where is it?

  13. bostonboomer says:
    October 2, 2019 at 3:40 pm

  14. suddenthoughtsandsecondthoughts says:
    October 3, 2019 at 9:03 am

    Thank goodness for Melania’s anti-bullying sham of a program. I’m guessing 45 hasn’t signed up for the monthly newsletters or email blasts. I’m sure he would be a better person if he did…

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