Lindsey Graham says Trump’s Ukraine policy was incoherent. It wasn’t. He knew what he wanted. But the strategy to defend the president in this impeachment proceeding is certainly incoherent at this point. He will probably survive a trial in the Senate, but none of his defenders are going to come out looking any better than he does. The central fact they can’t accept is that his behavior was indefensible.
The anonymous author of a widely anticipated book on the Trump White House has described the US president as spiraling from crisis to crisis “like a 12-year-old in an air traffic control tower”, according to scathing extracts published by the Washington Post on Thursday.
The unnamed author, identified only as “a senior official in the Trump administration”, also says that colleagues considered resigning en masse in order to raise alarm about the president’s conduct, but ultimately decided against it, according to the Post.
Trump still contends that the summary of the July call released by the White House clears him of any wrongdoing, a claim that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has distanced himself from and that acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has effectively contradicted.
Top Democrats reacted with anger to Donald Trump’s decision to go ahead with the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi raid without giving them advance notice, on grounds that they were not to be trusted with such highly sensitive information.
In a break with precedent, Trump excluded senior Democrats on the so-called Gang of Eight – the group of congressional leaders who by law are to be informed of covert actions ordered by the US president – from all operational intelligence.
Those cut out of the loop included Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, and Adam Schiff, who chairs the House intelligence committee.
Donald Trump is so weak and pathetic he actually may have staged a photo from Saturday to make it appear as though he was monitoring the raid on the Baghdadi compound when his official schedule shows that he was actually on the golf course.
It’s truly sad when the Reality Show President* is more concerned about appearances than doing the real work that every single other President did before him. Here is a great compilation of real and unstaged photos taken by Pete Souza from the Situation Room, taken during the raid on Osama bin Laden. The most iconic is this one:
Trump, meanwhile, said it was a foregone conclusion that the Democratic-led US House of Representatives will vote to impeach him over his request that Ukraine investigate a political rival as he exhorted his fellow Republicans to rally to his defense.
Donald Trump Jr. attempted to put pressure on Republicans who haven’t signed onto an effort to censure Schiff.
The president’s eldest son retweeted a list of 23 House Republicans who are not backing the resolution as co-sponsors. The Twitter thread urged Trump supporters to “Check if your Representative is on this list and call them NOW!”
So now they are after the legendary “crime buster” and greatest Mayor in the history of NYC, Rudy Giuliani. He may seem a little rough around the edges sometimes, but he is also a great guy and wonderful lawyer. Such a one sided Witch Hunt going on in USA. Deep State. Shameful!
US President Donald Trump has defended his lawyer Rudy Giuliani as a “legendary crime buster” and “wonderful lawyer” after a media report that prosecutors are investigating whether the former New York mayor broke lobbying laws in his dealings in Ukraine.
“So now they are after the legendary ‘crime buster’ and greatest Mayor in the history of NYC, Rudy Giuliani,” Trump said in a statement on Twitter.
Trump declares all American Institutions corrupt and therefore has the right of executive privilige. The right od a Dictator (ODT)
By contrast, the new report paints a picture of widespread opposition to the president’s actions within his own White House.
Four, and possibly more, national security officials in the White House were concerned about Trump’s actions, according to the report, both before and after the president’s now-infamous July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In the call, Trump strongly indicated that U.S. assistance to Ukraine could be contingent on Zelensky giving him what he wanted, specifically: investigations into the 2016 election and former Vice President Joe Biden.
What’s not so obvious is that this conspiracy extends to the rule of law. According to this skewed version of reality, corruption has penetrated the bedrock institutions of American society: the political sphere, the intelligence agencies, the mainstream media. Corruption has transformed the very fabric of politics, culture, and law.
To root out corruption, then, it’s necessary to step outside the rule of law. Donald Trump hasn’t declared a state of emergency. But he is acting as if he has (which, in case you’re wondering, is illegal). His decision not to cooperate with congressional inquiries, including the most recent impeachment inquiry, is also part of this unstated state of emergency.
The waning of American Democracy and power in less than 3 years. The moral bankruptcy of a Nation in full relief (ODT)
The Trump administration has blocked a planned deposition from Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union and a central figure in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, according to a statement by his lawyer.
The second whistleblower poses a threat to the president’s attempts to downplay the scandal because the second person supposedly has first-hand knowledge of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
![Trump holds a campaign rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota [Leah Millis/Reuters]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2019/10/11/8160c50c536b4ac88dff7f37781dad3a_18.jpg "Trump impeachment inquiry: 10 developments you may have missed")
olddogthoughts 
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