Which Are The Republicans Most Likely To Lose Their Seats Because Of Their Lockstep Support Of Trump?

This week, Reuters released a new Ipsos poll showing that 72% of registered voters want to see witnesses-- such as John Bolton and Mike Pompeo-- testify in Trump's impeachment trial-- and that includes 69% of Republican voters. Even more Republican voters-- 73% of them-- also said senators should "act as impartial jurors" during the trial. Last week Washington Post reporter Griff Witte brought up Cory Gardner and, yes, he's absolutely one of the senators whose head has been buried up Trump's ass to the detriment of his own reelection efforts. Others are Susan Collins (ME), Martha McSally (AZ), Thom Tillis (NC), Joni Ernst (IA), David Perdue (GA), Kelly Loeffler (GA) and Dan Sullivan (AK). And if the 2020 wave is big enough, Steve Daines (MT), Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS), John Cornyn (TX) and Moscow Mitch (KY) himself could find themselves in trouble with voters as well.

Colorado is a state that has been steadily swinging blue since Gardner was first elected. Obama beat McCain in 2008 53.66% to 44.71% and then beat Romney 51.49% to 46.13%. Even as bad a candidate as Hillary Clinton managed to beat Trump by about 5 points-- 48.16% to 43.25%. The governor, a progressive Democratic gay man won his race in 2018 by 11 points-- and both houses of the state legislature are controlled by the Democrats (41-24 seats in the lower house and 19-16 in the state Senate).

Witte, though, doesn't know much about Cory Gardner. He claims Gardner was a moderate. Gardner was a hard core right-winger in the state legislator and the only times he votes with the Democrats is when he feels voting with the GOP will harm his reelection prospects. Does he have a problem now! He's a dead duck no matter what he does! "Gardner," wrote Witte "is perhaps the most vulnerable Republican of all this year, seeking a second term in a state Trump lost by nearly five points in 2016. Colorado has only shifted further left in the time since as younger, more liberal voters have flooded in and Democrats have tipped a registration deficit in their favor. But rather than run away from Trump as the evidence mounts that he used his office to seek personal political gain, Gardner has drawn nearer."

What little he has said about impeachment-- advisers acknowledge he is being conspicuously quiet on the issue-- has been critical, describing the process as “a total circus.” Having already endorsed Trump’s reelection, the 45-year-old has shown no inclination to bow to Democratic demands for what they describe as the basic ingredients of a fair trial.

The choice reflects the hyperpartisan backdrop as impeachment moves to the Senate for only the third time in American history: Even in a state where voters are famously independent and where demographics favor the Democrats, Republicans believe they have little to gain politically by swimming against the Trump tide.

“Gardner has made a calculus: The Republican base is more necessary to his reelection than being that profile in courage who would try to persuade the persuadable middle,” said Kyle Saunders, a political science professor at Colorado State.

Strategically, Saunders said, that make sense: Colorado has more unaffiliated voters than it has either Democrats or Republicans. But he estimated that only up to 10 percent of the electorate is truly up for grabs, with opinions about Trump deeply entrenched on either side.

While a significant majority of Coloradans disapprove of Trump’s performance, Gardner will need Republicans, who are nearly unanimous in their support of the president, if he has any hope of keeping his seat.

“If he takes on Trump now,” Saunders said, “he demobilizes the base and has absolutely no chance.”

Sticking with the president offers its own peril, allies acknowledge.

“Cory’s got a tough race. The odds are 50-50-- at best,” said Dick Wadhams, a veteran Republican strategist in Colorado and a friend of Gardner’s. “There’s no doubt about it: Trump is a liability.”

“Cory Gardner has chosen a path, and he’s very likely to stick with it: blind allegiance to Donald Trump,” said Craig Hughes, a Democratic strategist who managed Michael F. Bennet’s winning 2010 Senate campaign. “There are places where such a path might make more sense. Here, it’s going to cause real problems.”

The object of Gardner’s strategy, Hughes surmised, has been to avoid a primary challenge on his right flank. That appears to have been successful, with no serious competition in sight.

But Gardner-- whose office declined an interview request for this story, as it has with nearly all impeachment-related media queries in recent months-- still faces a mortal threat to his Senate career.

In November, he is likely to be pitted against either a conservative Democrat John Hickenlooper or against the former speaker of the Colorado House, the progressive in the primary. Romanoff is already hammering Gardner or his ties to Trump, a president who is deep underwater with Colorado voters. Frackenlooper is likely to follow Romanoff's stance.

Fox legal expert Andrew Napolitano penned an OpEd for FoxNews.com yesterday, basically saying Trump is guilty and needs to be removed from office. By all means read the whole thing; but here's how he ends: "What is required for removal of the president? A demonstration of presidential commission of high crimes and misdemeanors, of which in Trump's case the evidence is ample and uncontradicted." Trump doesn't like this kind of talk seeping into his fan base's bubble. Yesterday he went out of his mind when he realized that Fox & Friends viewers saw this ad that Michael Bloomberg made and ran.

Bolton: Personal Gain Is At The Heart Of Trump Family Decision-Making On U.S. Foreign Policy

Yesterday, South Carolina Republican Mark Sanford ended his half-assed primary challenge to Trump. He went out with a whimper. "The party," he said, "is populated by some really great people, but it’s underserved or misled by too many in leadership positions-- and I think President Trump and his approach has exacerbated this." And that was it. The other two Republicans sill trying to mount primary challenges against Trump, Bill Weld and Joe Walsh, are being blocked by the completely Trumpified Republican Party establishment and aren't making any headway either.

Meanwhile, Fox News has eliminated all but one of the few voices that have ever spoken up against Trump's excesses. The last remaining Fox personality who ever challenges Trump is the network's legal analyst Andrew Napolitano. On Monday, AP's David Bauder reported that "More than two decades into his career as a commentator at Fox News Channel, Andrew Napolitano reached a milestone of sorts when he was called a 'fool' on his own network. Not to his face, of course. But Tucker Carlson guest Joseph diGenova’s dismissal of Napolitano for saying that soliciting campaign aid from a foreign government is against the law illustrates the awkward place that the former New Jersey Superior Court judge finds himself in at Fox during the Trump era."

Napolitano has defended an impeachment inquiry that many Trump supporters call unfair, noting it follows rules written by Republicans. He said the White House counsel’s arguments against the process were “profoundly misguided,” and described Trump’s since-withdrawn proposal to host a summit of world leaders at his Miami resort as a constitutional violation “about as direct and profound ... as one could create.” He has questioned how seriously Trump takes his oath of office, and said he governs like a mafia don.

The commentator’s assertion that Robert Mueller had found 10 instances of obstruction of justice that could have resulted in a criminal indictment if Trump hadn’t been president earned him an angry tweet from the White House. “He’s beginning to sound like Judge Shepard Smith,” said Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the conservative Media Research Center.

It was Smith, the since-departed Fox News anchor who occasionally fact-checked claims by Fox opinion hosts, who came to Napolitano’s defense after diGenova’s remark on Sept. 24. Smith called the attack repugnant.

“It just sort of rolls off my back,” Napolitano said in an interview. “I realize that when you’re in this business-- and I’m on the opinion side, not the news side-- that it’s going to ruffle some feathers. I never take it personally.”

He suspects his opinions have cost him airtime on Fox, although he says it can be cyclical. While he appears regularly on the “Fox & Friends” morning show, he’s invisible on the prime-time opinion shows hosted by Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham. Many of his commentaries appear online, taped on the plaza outside of Fox’s Manhattan headquarters.

Does he think some of his colleagues resent his opinions? “I don’t think so,” Napolitano said. “I think they’re mature enough to respect intellectual honesty.”

...When asked whether Trump should be impeached, Napolitano said that is a political judgment.

“If I could modify your question to ask if there’s a legal basis to argue high crimes and misdemeanors, then the answer is yes,” he said. “That’s really beyond dispute ... If I were a Democrat in the House, which I am not and never will be, I would vote to impeach.”

And if he were a Republican in the Senate?

“I think they’re going to find some of his behavior difficult to defend,” he said.

And then-- more interestingly and, for Trump, more dangerously-- is Bolton. Yesterday NBC News reporters Stephanie Ruhle and Carol E. Lee penned a piece about what an existential threat Bolton has been turning into for Trump. Last week, at Morgan Stanley’s global investment event in Miami, Bolton, as part of a private speech, derided Trump's whole approach to foreign policy and was particularly acidic towards the laughable roles played by Ivanka and Kushner-in-law. Bolton "painted a dark image of a president and his family whose potential personal gain is at the heart of decision-making." Ruhle and Lee wrote that "According to six people who were there, Bolton also questioned the merits of Trump applying his business acumen to foreign policy, saying such issues can’t be approached like the win-or-lose edict that drives real estate deals: When one doesn’t work, you move on to the next. The description was part of a broader portrait Bolton outlined of a president who lacks understanding of the interconnected nature of relationships in foreign policy and the need for consistency, these people said... Bolton is a potential linchpin witness in the inquiry into Trump’s efforts to elicit help from the Ukrainian government to investigate the family of former Vice President Joe Biden, given his central role in the White House during that time."

Bolton told the gathering of Morgan Stanley’s largest hedge fund clients that he was most frustrated with Trump over his handling of Turkey, people who were present said. Noting the broad bipartisan support in Congress to sanction Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan purchased a Russian missile defense system, Bolton said Trump’s resistance to the move was unreasonable, four people present for his speech said.

Bolton said he believes there is a personal or business relationship dictating Trump’s position on Turkey because none of his advisers are aligned with him on the issue, the people present said.

The Trump Organization has a property in Istanbul, and the president's daughter Ivanka Trump attended the opening with Erdogan in 2012. Though it’s a leasing agreement for use of the Trump name, Trump himself said in a 2015 interview that the arrangement presented “a little conflict of interest” should he be elected.

During an Oct. 6 phone call with Erdogan, Trump agreed to pull back U.S. troops from northeast Syria so Turkish forces could launch an attack against America’s Kurdish allies in the area. The presence of U.S. forces had deterred Erdogan from invading Syria, which he had threatened to do for years. Trump’s decision, followed by an order for all U.S. troops to exit Syria, was widely criticized even among the president’s Republican allies and was seen by many as a gift to the Turkish leader.

Erdogan is set to visit the White House on Wednesday.

Like other former Trump advisers, Bolton said regardless of how much evidence is provided to Trump that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, the president refuses to take any action because he views any move against Moscow as giving credence to the notion that his election is invalid, the people present for Bolton's remarks said.

At one point in his closed-door remarks, Bolton was asked what he thinks will happens in January 2021 if Trump is re-elected, people present for his remarks said. Bolton responded by taking a swipe at Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump-- both of whom are senior White House advisers-- and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, three people familiar with his remarks said.

Bolton said Trump could go full isolationist-- with the faction of the Republican Party that aligns with Paul’s foreign policy views taking over the GOP-- and could withdraw the U.S. from NATO and other international alliances, three people present for his remarks said.

...Bolton has been writing a book, having reached a deal with Simon & Schuster, and people present for his remarks in Miami said he suggested to the audience several times that if they read it, there would be much more material along the lines of what was in his speech.

Reality Starts Penetrating The Trump Information Bubble

The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll has no cheery spots for Señor Trumpanzee. Nationally, his approval remains steady at a dreadful 38%, but it also shows "a career low in approval among Republicans, 74%, down steeply from a career-high 87% in July." (18% of Republicans want to see him impeached.) Only 30% of Americans consider his behavior "fitting and proper." 50% agree that he's using the presidency for personal profit.

The red wall around him is beginning to crack as his popularity continues to sag. Republican thought leaders have been abandoning him as well-- and some are treating him like a piñata. David Brooks noted in his column that "The evidence against Trump is overwhelming. This Ukraine quid pro quo wasn’t just a single reckless phone call. It was a multiprong several-month campaign to use the levers of American power to destroy a political rival. Republican legislators are being bludgeoned with this truth in testimony after testimony. They know in their hearts that Trump is guilty of impeachable offenses. It’s evident in the way they stare glumly at their desks during hearings; the way they flee reporters seeking comment; the way they slag the White House off the record. It’ll be hard for them to vote to acquit if they can’t even come up with a non-ludicrous rationale."

Soon

The blows that Trump fears most though, aren't on the editorial pages of the New York Times. His base voters (38%) don't read the New York Times or believe anything the establishment media says. What he fears is when this kind of talk seeps onto Fox News. That's what really makes him take an extra hit or two of adderall. Yesterday, Fox Judge Andrew Napolitano gave Trump a dish of exactly what he doesn't want: Proof of Trump’s impeachable offenses plain to see. "The White House continued to argue that the impeachment investigation is illegitimate and unconstitutional," he wrote for FoxNews.com, "because it has not been authorized by the full House. The president called Republicans who support impeachment 'human scum.' On Sunday evening, the president invited the ringleader of the disruption of the House committee interviews to his box at the fifth game of the World Series." What he laid out for Fox.com readers is something normal Americans already know-- as evidenced in the high calls for approval-- but which rarely penetrates the Trumpist information bubble:

Early this week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) giving Republicans what they asked for, announced that the full House will vote on initiating an impeachment investigation of the president by the end of this week.

What's going on here?

Congressional Republicans should be careful what they ask for. Their defense of the president has addressed process, not proof. The proof is largely undisputed, except by the president himself. It consists of admissions, testimony and documents, which show that Trump sought to induce the government of Ukraine to become involved in the 2020 presidential election.

Specifically, Trump held up $391 million in American military hardware and financial aid to Ukraine-- which is at war with Russia after the Russian seizure and continual occupation of what was until 2014 a Ukrainian province-- until Ukrainian prosecutors commenced a criminal investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

That is a mouthful of facts to swallow in one bite, but the legal implications are straightforward and profound. Whether one agrees with federal law or not, it is a crime to solicit assistance for a federal campaign from a foreign government. As well, the crime of bribery consists of a government official refraining from performing a legal duty until a thing of value is delivered to him.

Trump admits he held up the $391 million. He admits he asked for a favor from the Ukrainian president. And he admits that the favor was to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and his son. He even gilded the lily by publicly asking the Chinese government to investigate Biden.

Enter Attorney General William Barr. After knowledge of the presidential holdup of the $391 million in aid to Ukraine became public, the president asked Barr for a formal legal opinion that dirt on a political opponent is not a thing of value.

Barr had his researchers and writers in the Office of Legal Counsel oblige. That legal opinion, which Trump has touted as a form of exoneration, has been so widely mocked in legal and political circles-- because dirt on an opponent is the most valuable commodity for a political campaign, and candidates pay dearly for it-- that congressional Republicans have stopped referring to it. They know better.

The president was just investigated by Robert Mueller and his crew upon the allegation that he and his campaign unlawfully collaborated with the government of Russia to help him win the 2016 election. That investigation found some evidence of collaboration but not enough to indict. And now, incredibly, Trump has admitted seeking to involve the government of Ukraine in the 2020 presidential election.

One can see that the reason Republicans have been attacking the process of impeachment is largely because there is no credible defense to the proof of impeachment. That proof has been hiding in plain sight-- in the president's public words and the context to be provided by witnesses-- and will soon be revealed.

Why and how will all this be revealed? Enter Nancy Pelosi. The "why" will be answered this week by the House vote to commence an impeachment investigation formally; it’s legally unnecessary but politically devastating to the Republicans' process arguments. The "how" will be answered when all this-- the testimony of now interviewed and debriefed witnesses-- goes public.

With the process soon to be as Republicans have demanded, and with the proof of impeachable offenses plain to see, to what will the president's allies resort as a defense? They will claim that that the federal crimes of soliciting campaign assistance from foreign governments and bribery aren't impeachable offenses and that Trump was misunderstood because he exaggerates all the time and often doesn't mean what he says.

And then the American public will decide if all this is skim milk or cream.

Will Matt Bevin Be The First Victim Of Ukraine-Gate? Just How Toxic Is Señor Trumpanzee?

One of Trump's closest allies, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin faces the voters in 6 weeks. He's in a fight for his political life and being attached to Trump at the hip might not save him. The most recent poll shows Democrat Andy Beshear beating him by 9 points-- 48-39% in one of the reddest states in the country. He just revamped his campaign staff, a desperate move this late in the cycle.

Trump is hardly in position to save anyone else and will likely be spending the rest of his term fighting impeachment. It probably didn't help his day when both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees announced they would be interviewing the mysterious whistleblower, likely within a week.

This will make it hard to do what Trump probably expected to do-- doctor the transcripts he now says he will authorize releasing. No one would ever do such a thing? Well, even if no one else would, how could you ever doubt Trump would? Besides, as the NY Times reported June 20, 1974, "House Judiciary Committee transcripts of some of President Nixon’s Watergate tape recordings differ extensively, and in many cases significantly, from the edited transcripts made public by the White House." Last night, Reuters reported that the transcript "isn’t likely to come from a recording or be verbatim, former White House and national security officials say. Instead, because of 'standard White House protocol' for handling phone calls between the president and other world leaders, a transcript is likely to be put together from written notes by U.S. officials who listen in." Well... what do you know!

Pig Man doesn't want to be impeached, and last night, Roll Call reported that Trump has threatened to shut down all governmental work. Needless to say, the White House, in a typically twisted Trumpian gaslight attack on the American people, announced that "House Democrats have destroyed any chances of legislative progress for the people of this country by continuing to focus all their energy on partisan political attacks. Their attacks on the President and his agenda are not only partisan and pathetic, they are in dereliction of their Constitutional duty."

He's voiced several bogus excuses for having withheld $400 million in desperately needed and congressionally approved military aid for Ukraine. One day he says he was afraid Ukraine's new government was too corrupt and the next day he was whining that the U.S. was giving too much aid compared to the NATO countries. He really is an asshole. "My complaint has always been, and I’d withhold again and I’ll continue to withhold until such time as Europe and other nations contribute to Ukraine because they’re not doing it."

Fox News legal analyst, Judge Andrew Napolitano: "I think this is the most serious charge against the president, far more serious than what Bob Mueller dug or dragged up against him. If you are the President of the United States and you are making a conversation that you know your intelligence community is listening to, of course you’re not going to articulate a quid pro quo. You’ll just make the quid pro quo happen." Later, on Fox News, he added that "It is a crime for the president to solicit aid for his campaign from a foreign government." It must be people in the right-wing bubble to hear that kind of talk!

Writing for Vanity Fair yesterday, David Drucker noted that "After a long, hot summer of self-immolation, Trump’s 2020 prospects look bleak. But the president seems to enjoy sowing the wind. 'The question is whether the vortex, when it relents, let us back out where we started,' says a veteran GOP consultant. 'Or each time, does the party sink just a little bit lower?'...

It is as though the president has learned nothing. The Republican Party was pummeled in the midterm elections, losing control of the House of Representatives as voters in GOP-leaning districts showed up in droves to rebuke Trump. Yes, the Republicans expanded their majority in the U.S. Senate. But they lost two critical seats out west-- one in ethnically diverse Nevada and another in suburban-heavy Arizona. The Democrats had not won a Senate seat in the Grand Canyon State in 30 years.

“Do I think Trump a horrible person? Yes; but that’s so beyond the point. As a Republican, I hate him because he’s making us lose when we should be crushing it. It’s his stupid personality. If you were slightly less terrible, we’d be winning,” a veteran Republican strategist said. “The Democrats are nuts. They’re going to fundamentally [ruin] this country, all because some guy can’t control his two-year-old tantrums. This is what I hate about the guy.”

...Even for the Republicans not jumping ship, there’s a quiet sense of dread about the long-term damage they suspect this cycle of boom and bust is inflicting. Their jitters about hanging on in emerging swing states like Arizona-- and, possibly, someday soon, Georgia and Texas, tell the tale.

“The question is whether the vortex, when it relents, lets us back out where we started. Or each time, does the party sink just a little bit lower?” a veteran GOP campaign consultant said. “That is what everyone fears and probably knows in their gut, but wants and needs to deny in their brains because there is no alternative.”

Writing for the Washington Post this morning, Aaron Blake identified 7 takeaways from the "rough transcript" of the Ukraine-Gate call. Not surprisingly, Blake writes it in a way to put Trump in the best possible light despite the shocking revelations.

1- It mentions no explicit quid pro quo

The idea that Trump would proactively release a document that showed him engaging in an explicit quid pro quo with a foreign government was always far-fetched, but it’s worth noting that it’s not there.

2- Trump does suggestively mention the U.S. being ‘very, very good to Ukraine’

Reports had suggested Trump talked with Zelensky about investigating the Bidens but that there was no explicit quid pro quo-- and that Trump didn’t mention that he had been withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine.

But the document indicates Trump made a point, very early in the call, of telling Zelensky how good the United States is to his country.

“I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine,” Trump says. “We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time.”

Then Trump twice tells him the United States had been “very, very good to Ukraine” and suggests Ukraine hadn’t been living up to its end of the bargain.

“The United States has been very, very good to Ukraine," Trump says. “I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good, but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine.”

That’s significant because, even in the absence of a quid pro quo, Zelensky might logically have believed aid or some other form of assistance was tied to his decisions. Trump’s comment that the relationship hasn’t been “reciprocal” certainly suggests Ukraine isn’t doing what it should.

3- Trump immediately launches into asking for investigations

After Zelensky responds, Trump’s very next comments deal with investigations he’d like to see. The first involves the Russia investigation by Robert S. Mueller III and CrowdStrike, a U.S.-based Internet security company that initially analyzed the breach of the Democratic National Committee’s servers in 2016 and pointed to two hacker groups believed to be linked to Russia.

“I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it,” Trump said, in reference to those investigations.

“Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible,” Trump says of CrowdStrike.

Trump soon adds: “The other thing: There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can so with the Attorney General would be great... It sounds horrible to me.”

The proximity of Trump talking about these things and his comments about how “very, very good” the United States has been to Ukraine makes it even more suggestive.

4- An explicit threat would matter, but it’s not the whole ballgame

Plenty of ink has been spilled about whether Trump engaged in an explicit quid pro quo with Ukraine. And that’s an important question, both because the whistleblower has alleged some type of “promise” and because it might be especially damning for Trump.

But even without an explicit quid pro quo, consider where we are. Trump asked for what amounts to foreign assistance for his 2020 reelection campaign. (His personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani had been pushing for this by publicly noting it would be helpful to his client. So there’s really no disputing that.)

Trump also withheld nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine shortly before the call took place. The United States is in a position of power relative to Ukraine, because of this aid and its stature in the world. And on the call, Trump repeatedly asks for Ukraine to do specific things.

It’s difficult to see how Zelensky could interpret that set of circumstances as something other than a strong suggestion and even a veiled threat. It’s equivalent to your boss repeatedly suggesting you do something-- while noting what your compensation is-- without explicitly making a demand. What are you going to do: believe it to just be a gentle suggestion? No, you’re going to think there could be some relation between your pocketbook/job status and your future actions.

And we shouldn’t be surprised if we never find an explicit quid pro quo. That’s not how Trump works, as Michael Cohen explained in his testimony. Cohen said when Trump is talking about unsavory things, he “doesn’t give orders; he speaks in code. And I understand that code.”

It’s difficult to believe Zelensky couldn’t decode it too.

5- This is hardly an exoneration, and it’s only a piece of the puzzle

The rough transcript indicates there is no quid pro quo, but it is not the exoneration Trump will claim it to be.

The first reason is that the whistleblower complaint involves multiple events and no single communication, as the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, testified last week. This is the highest-profile known event involving Trump and Ukraine, but there are many unknowns. We don’t even know what other events might be involved, much less what transpired in them.

Indeed, the fact that Trump released the call and not the whistleblower complaint (at least yet, though that could be coming) suggests this piece of evidence is perceived as being better for him than the rest. It could also be a trial balloon to see how the call is received before making a decision on the full complaint.

The second is that, as Philip Bump wrote Tuesday, the whistleblower reportedly wasn’t even privy to the call; they heard about it secondhand. And Atkinson reviewed their complaint and determined it to be both credible-- suggesting there was some corroboration-- and of “urgent concern.” So both of them seemed to be relying upon plenty besides this call.

Also to keep in mind, the rough transcript is not a verbatim account of the conversation. It is a White House memorandum that is based on the notes and memories of officials in the room. A disclaimer in the rough transcript warns that a number of factors “can affect the accuracy of the record, including poor telecommunications connections and variations in accent.”

6- Zelensky brings up corruption first

The White House’s defense here has centered on the idea that they just wanted Ukraine to root out corruption-- even as the instances of alleged corruption they are focused on are entirely self-serving for Trump.

It’s worth noting, though, that Zelensky is actually the first one to bring up corruption, telling Trump, “Well yes, to tell you the truth, we are trying to work hard because we wanted to drain the swamp here in our country.” (Zelensky notably uses Trump’s “drain the swamp” mantra.)

It’s not surprising Zelensky would bring this up, given corruption in Ukraine has been a major concern in the West for years. But the White House will likely argue that Zelensky broached these matters first, at least in broad terms.

7- Trump appears to praise the ousted Ukrainian prosecutor general

Viktor Shokin is the prosecutor general who was ousted in 2016 thanks to the efforts of then-Vice President Joe Biden and other Western leaders. The Trump team has argued that this was corrupt because Shokin at one point had been investigating a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, that employed Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. (U.S. and Ukrainian officials have said that investigation was dormant when Biden helped force Shokin out.)

But despite that prosecutor being widely criticized both inside Ukraine and elsewhere for being soft on corruption, Trump actually seems to side with him.

“Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair,” Trump says. “A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved.”

Trump adds later: “I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything.”

Trump also criticizes his former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who Democrats have said was being targeted for removal by the Trump administration in a “political hit job.” She was recalled in May, two months before her scheduled departure date.

“The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that,” Trump says.

Also from The Post this morning, before the release of the incomplete and likely doctored transcript-- an interview with Larry Pfeiffer, the former senior director of the White House Situation Room from 2011 to 2013, who also spent roughly three decades in the National Security Agency and CIA. He described how a presidential phone call transcript with a foreign leader gets made and noted that "enough people are involved, that it would be 'foolish' of the administration not to release exactly what Trump has promised: 'the complete, fully declassified and unredacted transcript.' He said that "If they release anything that looks less like a verbatim transcript there are a handful of people involved in this process who could be fact witnesses for whether what was released is what was actually said."

Feelin' More Stressed These Days? Gallup Says You're Not The Only One

Gallup just released their 2019 Global Emoitions Report. It should probably come as no surprise that most people in Greece, the Philippines, Tanzania, Albania, Iran and Sri Lanka are stressed out. Sri Lanka just went through years and years of bloody civil war. The Philippines have a fascist tyrant as president who's a lot like Trump; Iran is isolated and in existential danger from nuclear powers. Greeks, Tanzanians and Albanians are suffering from extreme economic anxiety due to unemployment. What's counter-intuitive, though, is that Americans, the wealthiest country on earth, is tied with Albanians, Iranians and Sri Lankans as the 4th most stressed out people (55%)-- more stressed out than even Venezuelans (52%)!

Gallup barely touched on the subject, but the levels of stress among Americans seemed to correlate directly with Trump, reporting "there was "a strong relationship between stress, worry and disapproval of the job that President Donald Trump is doing. Those who disapprove of Trump's job performance are significantly more likely to experience each of these negative emotions than those who do... Younger Americans between the ages of 15 and 49 are among the most stressed, worried and angry in the U.S. Roughly two in three of those younger than 50 said they experienced stress a lot, about half said they felt worried a lot and at least one in four or more felt anger a lot... The disconnect between a strong economy and Americans' increasing negative emotions illustrates how GDP and other hard economic data only tell part of the story. In fact, the levels of negative emotions in the past several years are even higher than during the U.S. recession years. Given the ties that researchers are starting to find between negative affects like these and physical health and longevity, leaders need the whole story.

Gallup found that Americans who disapprove of Trump are far more stressed than those who approve (62% to 45%) and also worry more (51% to 35%).

Who do you think would be most stressed out watching the Thursday evening Lawrence O'Donnell video up top?

Fox Viewers Heard Napolitano Say This About Trump "That Is Immoral, That Is Criminal, That Is Defenseless And That Is Condemnable"

Fox News doesn't have Andrew Napolitano's segment about how Trump obstructed justice up on YouTube. If they wanted a lot of clicks, they'd have it available. As always, though, Fox would rather protect Trump. The random-- and partial-- posting above is likely to be taken down for infringement of Fox's material... so watch it quickly.

What is relatively easy to find, though, is Napolitano's written OpEd for Fox News. Trump, a non-reader, is less afraid of the written word than the televised spoken word, so somehow this remains available.

Last week, Attorney General William Barr released publicly a redacted version of Mueller's final report. That report concluded that notwithstanding 127 confirmed communications between the campaign and Russians from July 2015 to November 2016 (Trump said there were none), the government could not prove the existence of a conspiracy.

On obstruction, the report concluded that notwithstanding numerous obstructive events engaged in by the president personally, the special counsel would not charge the president and would leave the resolution of obstruction of justice to Congress. Congress, of course, cannot bring criminal charges, but it can impeach.

Trump initially claimed that he had been completely exonerated by Mueller-- even though the word "exoneration" and the concept of DOJ exoneration are alien to our legal system. Then, after he learned of the dozen or so documented events of obstruction described in the report, Trump used a barnyard epithet to describe it.

The Constitution prescribes treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors as the sole bases for impeachment. We know that obstruction of justice constitutes an impeachable offense under the "high crimes and misdemeanors" rubric because both presidents in the modern era who were subject to impeachment proceedings-- Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton-- were charged with obstructing justice.

Obstruction is a rare crime that is rarely completed. Stated differently, the obstructer need not succeed in order to be charged with obstruction. That's because the statute itself prohibits attempting to impede or interfere with any government proceeding for a corrupt or self-serving purpose.

Thus, if my neighbor tackles me on my way into a courthouse in order to impede a jury from hearing my testimony, and, though delayed, I still make it to the courthouse and testify, then the neighbor is guilty of obstruction because he attempted to impede the work of the jury that was waiting to hear me.

Mueller laid out at least a half-dozen crimes of obstruction committed by Trump-- from asking former Deputy National Security Adviser K.T. McFarland to write an untruthful letter about the reason for Flynn's chat with Kislyak, to asking Corey Lewandowski and then-former White House Counse lDon McGahn to fire Mueller and McGahn to lie about it, to firing Comey to impede the FBI's investigations, to dangling a pardon in front of Michael Cohen to stay silent, to ordering his aides to hide and delete records.

The essence of obstruction is deception or diversion-- to prevent the government from finding the truth. To Mueller, the issue was not if Trump committed crimes of obstruction. Rather, it was if Trump could be charged successfully with those crimes.

Mueller knew that Barr would block an indictment of Trump because Barr has a personal view of obstruction at odds with the statute itself. Barr's view requires that the obstructer has done his obstructing in order to impede the investigation or prosecution of a crime that the obstructer himself has committed. Thus, in this narrow view, because Trump did not commit the crime of conspiracy with the Russians, it was legally impossible for Trump to have obstructed the FBI investigation of that crime.

The nearly universal view of law enforcement, however, is that the obstruction statute prohibits all attempted self-serving interference with government investigations or proceedings. Thus, as Georgetown Professor Neal Katyal recently pointed out, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was convicted of obstruction for interfering with an investigation of his extramarital affair, even though the affair was lawful.

Famously, Martha Stewart was convicted of obstruction of an investigation into her alleged insider trading, even though the insider trading charges against her had been dismissed. And a federal appeals court recently upheld the obstruction conviction of a defendant who suborned perjury in order to impede the prosecution of the sister of a childhood friend.

On obstruction, Barr is wrong.

...The president's job is to enforce federal law. If he had ordered its violation to save innocent life or preserve human freedom, he would have a moral defense. But ordering obstruction to save himself from the consequences of his own behavior is unlawful, defenseless and condemnable.

So here we have former New Jersey superior court judge Andrew Napolitano, Trump confidant and the host of Liberty File on Fox Nation, making the point that the Mueller report illustrates clear and intentional obstruction of justice, constituting legal grounds for impeachment. In Trump's twitter feed, Napolitano is no longer Judge Andrew Napolitano; he's now 'judge' Andrew Napolitano. Trump has a new enemy and it's anyone's guess how long he'll last on Fox.

Trump claims it's all because Napolitano got angry at him for not appointing him to the Supreme Court. Quick, go get the popcorn.

“Ever since Andrew came to my office to ask that I appoint him to the U.S. Supreme Court, and I said NO, he has been very hostile! Also asked for pardon for his friend. A good ‘pal’ of low ratings Shepard Smith.”

Trump’s attack on his often-quoted Fox News judge, who was once his favorite personality on the network, came after Napolitano criticized the president’s actions listed in the Mueller report, which he argued rose to the level of obstruction of justice.

“When the president asked his then-White House counsel to get Mueller fired and then lie about it, that’s obstruction of justice. When he asked Don McGahn to go back to the special counsel and change his testimony, that’s obstruction of justice. When he dangled a pardon in front of [ex-attorney] Michael Cohen in order to keep Cohen from testifying, that’s obstruction of justice,” Napolitano said on his show last Wednesday.

This is the takeaway from what Napolitano said that Trump fears most: "To save a human life or to preserve human freedom, he would at least have a moral defense to his behavior. But ordering them to break federal law to save him from the consequences of his own behavior-- that is immoral, that is criminal, that is defenseless and that is condemnable."

Obstruction of Justice 2: William Barr by Nancy Ohanian