Congress & the media should monitor the prices of ventilators and all PPE to see who is profiting from the Trump administration's private sector distribution system. It's time for another Senator Harry S Truman to lead the charge of investigating war profiteering.
@TrumanLibrary
I suspect that Trump doesn’t want there to be any independent high-level intel officials left in government to inform Congress and the American people about his mishandling of classified pandemic warnings.
Bob Woodward knows that the Achilles Heel of a criminal President are his private words in the White House. The first criminal President of his career had a taping system. The second didn't; so Woodward brought his own taping system into the White House. With permission!
According to the Schiff Report: The White House, the Office of the VP, OMB, State, DOD and DOE have not turned over A SINGLE document despite 71 requests from the House Impeachment Inquiry. If so, this is the biggest Anti-Constitutional stonewall ever.
Amb. Haley says “America is not a racist country” and then immediately points out how her Indian immigrant parents “faced discrimination and hardship” in America?
The current national Covid-19 surge leaves me heartbroken and angry. This didn't have to happen. Why were so many allies of President Trump willing to perpetuate his fantasies about this threat to our country? Why are so many of the GOP still enabling immoral neglect?
Each and every member of Congress should condemn what we witnessed from the President in DC tonight. This is a litmus test of loyalty to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
The Federal Government is there to provide a surge capacity to a beleaguered municipality, county or state(s). It is not supposed to lecture the afflicted in a crisis for not having the power or resources of the Federal Government. That’s just stupid and irresponsible.
It is irresponsible to contemplate a national “reopening “ of any significant kind without a national program of testing. We desperately need a Roosevelt in this emergency: a president with a national vision, who is capable of learning on the job.
I couldn’t agree more with
@davidfrum
‘s take on this shameful business. It is a Presidential abuse of power to use Constitutional authority in US foreign affairs to collude with a foreign power to restrict the travel of individual members of Congress. It is also disgraceful.
The Tlaib / Omar story is only incidentally about Israel. It's about a flagrant abuse of presidential power to control travel by elected members of Congress. It's a made-in-America scandal, by Americans, for Americans.
“The Vice President welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on January 6th.” 2/2
McConnell had real options to avert the January 6 Circus, if he wanted to try hard: threatening committee assignments; have GOP lobbyists slow contributions; threaten to block certain new Senators' pet bills from ever coming to the floor (as he routinely does with Dem bills).
My piece in the
@TheAtlantic
on newly released segments from the Nixon tapes that provide searing examples of presidential [Nixon] and pre-presidential [Reagan] racism from 1971. Sadly, we have yet to outgrow this problem as a Nation.
Since Donald J. Trump has taken so much from Nixon's playbook, I hope that State AGs will be on the lookout for the possibility of agent provocateurs as the protests continue.
The anger is the language of dictatorship, of Trumpism and of the worst of our past and our current reality. Meanwhile the resolutely calm protesters, chanting “Peaceful, Peaceful,” represent a better America, now and tomorrow.
The DC Insurrection was Trump’s Saturday Night Massacre. Nixon’s presidency didn’t collapse immediately but it was in real peril: Impeachment proceedings started with bipartisan support; there were Cabinet-level resignations;and Republican leaders started hoping he would resign.
The lesson Congress took from the 1876 election was not to have Election Commissions settle presidential elections; it was the 1887 Electoral Count Act,
@tedcruz
. But you know that. You clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who later wrote a history of the 1876 crisis.
Fox News judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano: "When the president asked Corey Lewandowski ... to get Mueller fired, that's obstruction of justice. When the president asked his then-White House counsel to get Mueller fired & then lie about it, that's obstruction of justice."
With Trump the “tell” is always the response. Was there an NSC meeting to discuss the alleged intel on Putin’s bounties? And, if so, why no USG response or follow up? Instead we get “Nobody...told me” not “I will get to the bottom of this!” He never publicly doubts Vlad.
Nobody briefed or told me,
@VP
Pence, or Chief of Staff
@MarkMeadows
about the so-called attacks on our troops in Afghanistan by Russians, as reported through an “anonymous source” by the Fake News
@nytimes
. Everybody is denying it & there have not been many attacks on us.....
It is now well established. There was no “spy” lodged in Trump’s campaign. Everyone knows this, even the president. Yet he keeps repeating the falsehood. Many object but many numbly shrug. Said over and over it begins to gain acceptance. This is dangerous behavior in a democracy.
Nixon, at least, left the security of the White House during a nation-wide protest to speak to demonstrators. This president clears them away for a Photo-Op
The Speaker's race is demonstrating the limits of Trump's influence - he is powerful enough to sink a candidacy, but not powerful enough to actually elect a Speaker
Trump’s tweet that Pence “lacked courage,” coming right after hearing the rioters wanted to hang him, appears in retrospect to be a death sentence.
#CassidyHutchinson
testimony
We are watching Republicans and Democrats cooperating to avoid a costly default. Our creaky, stressed system is working. This is what Biden promised he could do.
Dizzying day at DoD. Out: Policy chief James Anderson, UnderSec for Intel Joseph Kernan, Esper's Chief of Staff Jen Stewart
IN: Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Acting UnderSec Intel, also Kash Patel as CoS. Patel and Watnick both central to Devin Nunes efforts
The Trump presidency has reached a new level of ugliness. No modern President before Trump would have issued the racist public statement he did today. They understood the seriousness of their responsibilities to every American and that they were merely custodians of the Office.
President Trump's firing of House impeachment witnesses raises questions over US-Ukraine policy and the precedent a move like this could set. cc:
@sam_vinograd
&
@TimNaftali
This is the first time in US history a President is on trial in a Senate ruled by his own Party. (Although Lincoln’s VP, Johnson was a Dem). This fact places an even greater burden of responsibility on Sen. McConnell to demonstrate he is acting in a Constitutional fashion.
Tonight Team Biden should be researching how Team Reagan handled his disastrous first debate with Walter Mondale. No one remembers that debate now. What is remembered is Reagan’s riposte about his age in the second debate. Meanwhile the Bidens may be having a heart-to-heart.
“After learning one of his valets was infected, Trump became ‘lava level mad’ at his staff and said he doesn’t feel they are doing all they can to protect him from the virus.”
Another "tell:" Instead of denouncing the racist Trump supporter--"we don't welcome supporters like that man!"-- the White House praises the community where the racist lives and says that Trump didn't hear the 'white power' statement.
#BlackLivesMatter
Meanwhile we can hope some House Republicans will see Impeachment as a necessary step to separate themselves from the man whose words and actions not only set in motion a deadly, terrorizing attack on the Capitol and our Republic but obstructed the restoration of law and order.
Expect a ratcheting up of covert Russian efforts in the next few days to inflame politics in the United States and weaken our resolve to deter aggression in Europe. These are especially nasty times. JFK didn't have to worry about anything like social media in the Berlin Crisis.
Let's make this clear, Donald Trump just crossed a line in US history. Dear Members of Congress of both parties, is it okay that future presidents can shelter their aides from criminal activity done on their behalf? Is that what the Founders intended?
A reminder: this struggle isn’t just about collapsing over the finish line w/ 270 electoral votes. It’s also about winning in a convincing manner to limit the possibility of widespread unrest and to deny Trumpists control over Congress. This’ll require massive voter engagement.
With the courageous exception of
@MittRomney
, the current generation of Congressional Republicans showed us all in the Impeachment Crisis that when given the choice, they would choose Party over Country. Today's political events should shock no one.
President Biden expressed his deep conviction that the Presidency didn’t belong to him. Our best presidents all understood that they were guarantors of a long tradition that they would ultimately pass on.
This is arguably the most foolish letter ever sent by a US President to an adversary or ally and it was clearly received with contempt. And now Trump isn’t smart enough to disown it.
Someone in the Nixon White House, I believe, leaked information very damaging to Nixon on the issue of abuse of power during the House impeachment process in July 1974. History rhymes.
As a Republican, I’d like to heap blame for the shutdown on Trump alone. But Ryan refused to bring the Senate-passed CR to the House floor in December, and McConnell and Senate Republicans enabled Trump for a month. Defeating Trump will have to be part of a broader GOP renewal.
Trump’s Turkey policy is provoking anger and cries of “shame, shame!” from that part of the US military community that may speak publicly. Imagine the anger within the US military now.
NEW: White House says that because discussions "have moved more quickly than expected,"
@POTUS
will leave Singapore tomorrow night (24 hours from now) - after talking with Kim Jong Un.
The National Archives should not be editing, in an historically significant way, images on public display. This only feeds public skepticism or, worse, cynicism about access to information.
With one loud exception Republicans benefitted as much by increasing turnout (more Democracy) as the Dems in this election. They now need even more of their voters to turn out in Georgia to win both runoffs. And yet they cast doubt on the system.
So, one thing that remains to be seen is what happens to Republican turnout if Republicans are *actually* convinced that elections are rigged. It's long been predicted that this could hurt GOP turnout and that's never really panned out.
Treasury Department lifts sanctions on Deripaska's three companies, saying that they have "reduced Oleg Deripaska’s direct and indirect shareholding stake in these companies and severed his control."
The Omnibus Bill is a bipartisan act of leadership by a battered Congress in a poisonous political era. It also reflects the brilliant and steady tone set by President Biden. Those looking for perfection will always find reason to be disappointed by elected officials.
Jan 22
JOE KERNEN: --are there worries about a pandemic at this point?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: No. Not at all. And-- we're-- we have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's—going to be just fine.
A troubling question in this traumatic era, “how has Putin managed to get so many prominent mouthpieces in the US?” Putin started this unnecessary war by unnecessarily invading a sovereign neighbor, Ukraine. Period.
Just as they did during the Iraq War, America’s jingoistic press outlets bear a major responsibility for this unnecessary war that has ravaged Ukraine and killed some 315,000 Ukrainians. Rather than seeking to contextualize events properly for their readers, the U.S. media
Pat Cipollone has testified that Trump should have conceded in December 2020 and that Mark Meadows told him Trump would be conceding.
#January6thCommitteeHearings
Trump’s lawyers seem to have confused a former president’s rights under the Presidential Records Act to prevent public disclosure, for a period of time, of certain presidential materials with a nonexistent right to withhold US gov. materials from the US gov.
"Left wing twitter?": Five Republican Senators voted for witnesses. You are only further dividing the country, Senator
@marcorubio
, by repeating Trump talking points.
Last night left wing Twitter starting beating up the managers for not calling witnesses & this morning they caved
By a majority vote the Democrats can now force a trial where the House Managers get their witnesses & former President Trump gets none.
A complete farce
Pure speculation: why would Sen. Alexander announce, ahead of a vote regarding witnesses, that he would vote no? Why not just vote no tomorrow. Is he giving his friend McConnell time to prepare a new gameplan and provide cover to other colleagues to vote yes?
The GOP senators in question owe the Sicknick family, at the very least, an explanation as to why they oppose getting the fullest possible account of what happened Jan. 6th. The Capitol Police has said Brian Sicknick "died in the line of duty, courageously defending Congress...."
NEW: The mother of fallen US Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick is asking to meet with GOP senators Thursday, ahead of an expected vote on the January 6th Commission. -
@jamiegangel
reports
As the Mueller report's revelations start to sink in,
@TimNaftali
asks: "What kind of standard of character do you want in someone who represents the flag and the country?"
The Whistleblower complaint is from a patriot who understands and fears Abuse of Power. If even 50 % of his fears are accurate, we are in a variation of Nixonland again.
As we all wait for Alexander's decision, I keep coming back to this: All 15 previous Senate impeachment trials have had witnesses.
Is Trump really going to be the one guy in American history to get acquitted without even having to have witnesses testify in his Senate trial?
Another sign that the US Military is turning its back on a reckless Commander-in-Chief; and that Esper and Milley's actions as enablers on Monday caught flak from the broader US military.
24 hours after Gen. Mark Milley was seen in battle fatigues on the streets of Washington and walking with the President, the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issues this memo.