Think Of All The Reasons You Detest Trump-- Many Of Them Are The Reasons His Base WIll Never Abandon Him

Peter Wehner served in the administrations of 3 presidents-- Reagan and each Bushs. Now he's a #NeverTrumper and yesterday he did a piece for The Atlantic, Why Trump Supporters Can’t Admit Who He Really Is, concluding that many Republicans believe-- despite "the corruption, chaos, and general insanity that is continuing to engulf the Trump campaign and much of the Republican Party right now"-- that if Biden wins the presidency "America dies," although I think what Wehner meant to say is they fear that if Biden is elected the America of white privilege dies. He wrote that the "chthonic portrait... allows Trump and his followers to tolerate and justify pretty much anything in order to win. And 'anything' turns out to be quite a lot," beyond just "a four-year record of shame, indecency, incompetence, and malfeasance." He painted a stark picture of severe mental illness in the Oval Office as well. "Trump," he concluded, "because of the corruption that seems to pervade every area of his life and his damaged psychological and emotional state, has shown us just how much people will accept in their leaders as a result of 'negative partisanship,' the force that binds parties together less in common purpose than in opposition to a shared opponent." [That pretty much describes the entire 2020 presidential race-- on both sides, I'm afraid to say.]

In an interview by CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick yesterday, John Bolton warned that Trump's inability to think strategically, is the blame for the severity of the pandemic in America and he warned that if Trump is reelected it could-- he really meant would but was unable to say it-- get worse.

Bolton said that during his tenure, “In many cases, the president came to decisions in the national security space that I agreed with.” “But he did it not because of the merits of the argument in favor of a particular policy, but because of the fear of the political blowback he would get domestically if he went in a different direction,” said Bolton.

He said that if Trump is re-elected, “that political guardrail is, if it’s not eliminated entirely, it’s certainly minimized.”

“And so I think the possibility for erratic decisions centered on what Trump perceives as his own personal good fortune increases and the political pressure to move in other directions decreases,” Bolton said.

Andrew Sullivan may not have been watching, but he noted yesterday that Trump is a metastasizing cancer and urged his readers to vote for Biden as quickly as possible. He wrote that "the complete loss of any moral authority the United States might have once had, along with the collapse of a system of alliances that rallied liberal democracies against foul tyrants for decades, are the consequence" of having elected a man sympathetic to authoritarians to the presidency... Gone is "the kind of basic moral clarity that the West once tried to advance, even if we often failed, and has now been sacrificed tout court for one wannabe tyrant’s depraved, delusional psyche... He has delegitimized capitalism by his cronyism, corruption, and indifference to dangerously high levels of inequality. He has tainted conservatism indelibly as riddled with racism, xenophobia, paranoia, misogyny, and derangement. Every hoary stereotype leveled against the right for decades has been given credence by the GOP’s support for this monster of a human being."

The only way out of this spiral is an unlikely figure, Joe Biden. An old-school moderate representing a party fast moving leftward, he is, quite simply, the least worst we’ve got. I’m worried the far left will eat his lunch in office, but that is a less pressing worry than the potential destabilization of the entire system if Trump wins in November. The potential for spiraling unrest in a Trump second term could prompt the dictatorial nightmare many of us have been worried about for years.

Biden is not perfect. He’s too old. But he understands our democratic system; he loves this country and has a grasp of the Constitution. He’s trusted by African-American voters who gave him the nomination, and has not alienated white voters in the middle who loathed Hillary Clinton. He is not deranged; he is not lacking in basic human empathy; and he does not treat all his opponents as enemies.

Some Democrats mock his vow to restore a semblance of dialogue with some Republicans. And I understand their position. It is not without reason. But I reject it. If Trump is defeated, and a modicum of reason and decorum returns, and the embers of liberal democracy are not completely extinguished, we have a chance to rebuild the republic. But it may be our last one.

CNN analyst Stephen Collinson is seeing a Trump "close to full derailment." So this isn't full derailment, just close to it? This is going to be a scary couple of months! "Trump," he predicted, "will ignite a new uproar soon enough. It's clearer than ever that his platform for this election is his own wild behavior that animates his hyperbolic claim that a Democratic presidency would see the suburbs torched by rioters-- not the statesmanlike script choreographed at the RNC. No President in modern history has gone into a reelection race warning that the process of choosing a government that is the bedrock of American democracy is illegitimate. Trump's conduct risks a full-on post-election constitutional crisis."

[W]hile Trump's constantly disruptive behavior and refusal to play the role of a traditional president horrifies Beltway elites, it's exactly what makes him attractive to supporters who long ago soured on conventional politicians. The more he trolls the media, the more his base and his conservative media cheerleaders love it. The question is whether a President who looked every day for four years like he's waging an endless GOP primary campaign can secure a path to victory without broadening his base.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

The president does read and he also consumes intelligence verbally. This president, I'll tell you, is the most informed person on planet Earth.

- White House Press Secretary Kayleigh "Baghdad Barbie" McEnany

Imagine if JFK had told Nikita Khrushchev that he was fine, very fine, with the Russian missiles being installed in Cuba back in '62. Suppose JFK had a cozy relationship with Khrushchev at the same time. Imagine if JFK had done nothing. You might not be reading this. I might not be writing this. You might not have even been born.

Here we are, 4th of July weekend 58 years later, and this time we have a traitor for a president, not that it's any surprise. Anyone with eyes, ears, and a functioning brain could see that back in 2016; Russia if you're listening and all that. Who's your daddy, Donnie? Who's your Daddy? 62,000,000 people who call themselves Americans had no problem with any of it, just like they had no problem with so much else. Don't expect people like that to change come November.

The waves of denials and made up stories from the West Wing of The Kremlin at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue just keep on coming and each one, in turn, gets destroyed and buried by the subsequent disclosures from reporters, investigators, and, most important of all, true patriots working in our government who know a clear and present danger when they see it. Bounty stories? What bounty stories? First Traitor Don said "no one told me." He didn't know just like he didn't know he was tweeting a White Power video to the world on the same weekend.

Then it was revealed that the White House knew 3 months ago. And then it was 1 whole year before that! Then we heard that National Security Advisor John Bolton didn't tell Traitor Don and next we heard that several of those near Bolton say Bolton did tell him of the threat; the threat Secretary of State Mike Pompeo now claims is "nothing new" to anyone. Nothing new? How about that we have a president that does whatever the head of our nation's adversary tells him to do? How about the fact that our Secretary of State is an apologist for this traitor as much as any bot or GRU troll? This "nothing new" was reportedly even removed from Bolton's book under the guise of "being classified" by the Kremlin White House; nothing new, common knowledge, classified Top Secret common knowledge, all of the above! Only guilt would motivate the removal of the bounty threat story from the book. It's removal connotes guilt. They didn't want the sick farcical handling of this getting out. They knew how bad it made them look, especially Traitor Don. The multiple stories and versions connote both coverup and guilt. Nothing says you're guilty quite like a tidal wave of implausible rotating explanations.

In summary, the bounty threat to our soldiers that was either deemed "nothing new" and therefore unimportant by Kremlin West, or deemed all but non-existent, was classified as a secret. The classified secret story that was unimportant was then removed from the book that does exist despite the massive efforts of Trump to edit and even prevent its publication. What else didn't make the final manuscript?

The threat of bounties against our soldiers was real. Then it wasn't real, or at least "not verified" (as if not being verified was reason enough to not let the president know). Then it was verified and in the president's daily brief. The president doesn't read but he does. The story never got to him but he's "the most informed person on planet Earth." The president wasn't briefed (why not?) and then he was. Once he was briefed, he never acted on it, never even called for sanctions on his friend in Moscow, no response of any kind at all. He then called the whole thing a hoax. Then, Putin's bank transfers to the Taliban were verified. Some hoax, eh? A hoax with a paper trail. The Kremlin White House forgot to mention that in either of the two meetings they held for selected members of Congress; one for Republicans and one for Democrats; obviously a case of two different meetings equalling two different explanations. Traitor Don still calls the whole thing a hoax even though we now know that the bounty paid by his pal Putin is $100,000 per U.S. corpse.

Yeah, yeah, I've got it Mr. President. Yeah, it's all a bigly hoax, just like Obama's birth certificate, climate change, "Russia Russia," the coronavirus, the examples of your multiple bankruptcies, your virulent racism and everything else that gets in your way. They're all bigly bigly hoaxes, tremendous hoaxes, democrat hoaxes, conspiracies against you, all pulled off by thousands if not millions of people, every one of whom can keep the secret that it's all just a bigly made up hoax.

We have a man who is the Commander-in-Chief of our soldiers who acts like this bounty story is of no importance, so he does nothing. Same with his entire administration. But, it does matter to us and it certainly matters to the families of our soldiers, living and recently killed. They want to know the truth from a Kremlin affiliate in Washington that can't even keep its stories straight from hour to hour let alone from day to day. Our Kremlin White House is a 10-year-old boy who did something very bad and can't keep his story straight.

The traitors at Kremlin West say their Dear Leader didn't know, yet the brief was widely disseminated in addition to being given to him. Showing their utter contempt for us all, they'd have us think that of all of the other traitors under Traitor Don, all of those who got the briefing, from Vice President Pence on down, of all of them, not a single one did the job they swore to do and ever told their boss. A few of them would have us believe that they all knew but all of them, every single one, was afraid to tell Trump what was on the page of paper that sat before him on his desk because they would be fired. That's a lot more than mere "dereliction of duty' as some would have us believe. They knew too much. They'd rather keep their jobs working in a den of filth than protect a country that they obviously do not see as deserving of their allegiance. Who among them deserves to not be tried for being an accomplice to treason, convicted and taken out, put against a wall (how ironic), and shot?

Again, the media and so many political hacks float the idea that it was just incompetence. It is simply not believable that every single one of those who knew the facts, verified or not, kept silent, especially in light of the fact that their boss, their boss that had the information in front of him on his desk and is in such a close relationship with Putin and flaunted it in Helsinki, that he was against sanctions of any kind against his friend, whenever he was briefed, that meets with him in secret without witnesses in, that he was trying to get him admitted to the next G7 meeting, the meeting he so wanted to hold at Mar-a-Lago so he could sponge up still more of our taxpayer dollars, that calls him on the phone to play kissy kissy who knows how many times a week. They all kept silent, everyone one of them? They did so even in light of the fact that their Dear Leader had personally invited his master, Vladimir Putin to come to Washington and walk right into the oval office. Traitor Don would still do nothing in response even if Putin brought the bodies with him and dumped them on the White House lawn. It was already bad enough that, in the first few days of his presidency, he had had a Russian spy chief into the oval office and handed him classified Israeli intelligence. Russia if you're listening? He knows they are because he's telling them and he's telling them whatever they want to know. Pick ten of our best Marines. Give him a blindfold and stuff a hamberder in his mouth.

What Will Congress Do About Annexation?

Historically, AIPAC has been aligned with the Democratic establishment-- and when progressive elements have rebelled and demanded even-handed policies towards Palestine, AIPAC has been able to successfully full smear campaigns-- unrelated to Israel-- against them and replace them with more malleable members of Congress. AIPAC, for example, destroyed the political careers of both Earl Hilliard (D-AL) and Cynthia McKinney (D-GA). Fear of AIPAC has kept Democrats in line. On Friday, The Forward wondered aloud if that is now over: AIPAC's Biggest Democratic Allies Break Ranks To Publicly Oppose Israeli Annexation.

It's worth mentioning that not all of AIPAC's biggest allies have broken ranks. Netanyahu's #1 ally in the House, Eliot Engel, chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee-- in the midst of a red-hot primary into which AIPAC is funneling over a million dollars for Engel-- has been silent. "Top congressional Democrats," wrote Aiden Pink, "have issued multiple public statements Thursday and Friday expressing their opposition to Israel’s plan to annex part of the West Bank. The pro-Israel organization AIPAC has publicly expressed its opposition to such statements, but some of the signatories include the lobby’s most prominent and longstanding Democratic allies."

Lockstep AIPAC shills Chuck Schumer, Bob Menendez and Ben Cardin released a joint statement opposing annexation:

As strong and dedicated supporters of the U.S.-Israel relationship, we are compelled to express opposition to the proposed unilateral annexation of territory in the West Bank.

A sustainable peace deal that ensures the long-term security of Israel and self-determination for Palestinians must be negotiated directly between the two parties. Real diplomacy via direct negotiations, while an arduous road, is the only path for a durable peace. For that reason it has consistently been the long-standing, bipartisan policy in Congress to oppose unilateral action by either side. Unilateral annexation runs counter to those longstanding policies and could undermine regional stability and broader US national security interests in the region.

We are committed to sustaining a US-Israel relationship based on shared democratic values and our important security assistance partnership. We are also committed to continuing to engage Israelis and Palestinians to find ways to live together with peace, freedom, security and dignity and achieve a two-state solution.

Netanyahu has been threatening to unilaterally begin the process of proclaiming sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in two weeks. Trump and Pompeo are encouraging him. 115 House Democrats sent their own letter, authored by Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Ted Deutch (D-FL) and David Price (R-NC)-- all mayor Israel supporters-- to Netanyahu, Gantz and Ashkenazi last week.

We write as American lawmakers who are long-time supporters, based on our shared democratic values and strategic interests, of Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship. We firmly believe in, and advocate for, a strong and secure Jewish and democratic State of Israel, a state able to build upon current peace treaties and expand cooperation with regional players and the international community. We have consistently endorsed the pursuit of a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians resulting in two states for two peoples and a brighter future for the Israeli people and the Palestinian people. In that vein, we write today to express our deep concern that the push for unilateral annexation of territory in the West Bank after July 1st will make these goals harder to achieve.

Longstanding, bipartisan U.S. foreign policy supports direct negotiations to achieve a viable two-state solution that addresses the aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians, and their desire for long-term security and a just, sustainable peace. This position was twice reconfirmed by the U.S. House of Representatives last year. Our fear is that unilateral actions, taken by either side, will push the parties further from negotiations and the possibility of a final, negotiated agreement.

We remain steadfast in our belief that pursuing two states for two peoples is essential to ensuring a secure, Jewish, democratic Israel able to live side-by-side, in peace and mutual recognition, with an independent, viable, de-militarized Palestinian state.

Unilateral annexation would likely jeopardize Israel’s significant progress on normalization with Arab states at a time when closer cooperation can contribute to countering shared threats.  Unilateral annexation risks insecurity in Jordan, with serious ancillary risks to Israel. Finally, unilateral annexation could create serious problems for Israel with its European friends and other partners around the world. We do not see how any of these acute risks serve the long-term interest of a strong, secure Israel.

As committed partners in supporting and protecting the special U.S.-Israel relationship, we express our deep concern with the stated intention to move ahead with any unilateral annexation of West Bank territory, and we urge your government to reconsider plans to do so.

Pink wrote that "The list of 115 signatories 'runs the gamut from J Street Democrats to AIPAC Democrats,' a Democratic congressional source told Jewish Insider. Other members of Congress are reportedly expected to sign on before the letter is released to the public next week. The large number of AIPAC allies is surprising considering the lobby’s opposition to the letter. 'We have not taken a position on annexation,' an AIPAC spokesperson told Haaretz. 'However, we do not support this letter. It publicly criticizes Israel for potentially deciding upon a policy that would only be adopted with the approval of the U.S. government, it fails to reaffirm America’s full commitment to Israel’s security assistance, and it focuses only on what it sees as inappropriate Israeli behavior, while failing to note that Palestinian leaders have been unwilling to return to the negotiating table for nearly a decade.'"

A similar letter signed by 19 Democratic senators, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, was released two weeks ago. Individual Democratic senators, like Kamala Harris, have also written personal letters of their own to Netanyahu expressing their views.

“As the United States has repeatedly made clear, unilateral moves by either party, such as annexation, put a negotiated peace further out of reach,” wrote Harris, who is considered a leading contender for the Democratic vice presidential nomination. “Both Israel and the Palestinians must avoid unilateral moves in order to preserve prospects for an eventual peace.”

And how does Biden feel about annexation? He seems opposed, at least tepidly. One of his foreign policy advisors, Nicholas Burns-- an under secretary of state under George W. Bush-- told an Israeli foreign policy magazine that annexation "would greatly harm Israel, internationally and among its strongest supporters" and that annexation "is the one issue which could most harm the U.S.-Israel relationship."

Trump's foreign policy has been disjointed and chaotic... often influenced by bad actors with skin in the game happy to offer the notoriously corrupt Trump what amounted to bribes. Sunday night former national security advisor (#3), John Bolton, shared his thoughts about the disaster that is Trump with Martha Raddatz, just hours after announcing that he plans to vote for Joe Biden in November.

A Completely Morally Odious Individual You Would Not Want In Your Organization Or Anywhere Around You

"Guess what," said Chris Hayes Wednesday night in a brilliant commentary (above) on the Bolton-Trump revelations, "Donald Trump is exactly as terrible as we thought he was and John Bolton is exactly who we thought he was as well. That afternoon, we had all read how Trump begged President Xi Jinping of China to help him win reelection. Today in an interview Trump did with the Wall Street Journal's Michael Bender, he struck out at Xi. "He said that the country was nearing the end of the coronavirus pandemic," wrote Bender, and that he believed China may have encouraged the international spread of coronavirus as a way to destabilize competing economies. 'There’s a chance it was intentional,' Mr. Trump said... Trump said China may have had economic motives for letting coronavirus spread beyond its own border. Asked if that was to extend economic consequences, Mr. Trump said: 'Correct. They’re saying, man, we’re in a mess. The United States is killing us. Don’t forget, my economy during the last year and a half was blowing them away. And the reason is the tariffs.'"

Trump admitted he may be wrong and admitted he has no intelligence to support the claim, only an internal sense, which may be wrong. "But it has had an impact,” he told Bender.

Trump spent a significant portion of the interview criticizing John Bolton, his former national security adviser, for writing a scathing book about the president’s handling of foreign policy. In the book, Mr. Bolton says Mr. Trump’s decision making prioritized his re-election over the national interest and said the president had a penchant for “giving personal favors to dictators he liked.”

“The only thing I liked about Bolton was that everybody thought he was crazy,” Mr. Trump said. “When you walk into the room with him, you’re in a good negotiating position, because they figure you’re going to war if John Bolton was there.”

CNN's Nicole Gaouette summarized what we've learned so far from The Room Where It Happened, Bolton's still unpublished book-- which Trump is fighting to keep from ever being published.. or at least not before the first Tuesday of November. (The book is supposed to come out Tuesday, as voters in New York, Kentucky and Virginia head to the polls.)

• Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping for help in getting reelected

Bolton described a conversation between the two world leaders at the June 2019 G-20 meeting in Osaka, Japan, where Trump told Xi that Midwestern farmers were key to his reelection in November 2020. Trump urged Xi to buoy his political fortunes by buying American agricultural products, linking a promise to waive some tariffs on China in exchange. Trump "stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome," Bolton wrote.

Bolton also says that it's hard for him to think of a single decision Trump made during his stint at the White House "that wasn't driven by reelection calculations."

• Trump had no problem with China's concentration camps

Bolton describes several instances where Trump waffles on China-related issues after conversations with Xi, notably on the mass concentration camps Beijing was using to imprison and "re-educate" Uyghur Muslims. Bolton writes that according to the US interpreter in the room during a conversation between Xi and Trump at the G-20 meeting in June 2019, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was "exactly the right thing to do."

Bolton adds that Trump didn't want to sanction China for their crackdown on the Muslim minority because of ongoing trade negotiations. "Religious repression in China was also not on Trump's agenda; whether it was the Catholic Church or Falun Gong, it didn't register," Bolton writes.

• Pompeo, famously loyal to the President, may have trash-talked him

Bolton describes a meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un in which the North Korean despot blamed troubled relations between his country and the US on the actions of prior administrations. Emphasizing the meetings he and Trump had held, Kim told the President that they could dispel mistrust and work quickly toward a nuclear agreement. After Trump told Kim that he would seek Senate ratification of any agreement with North Korea, Bolton writes that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo passed him a notepad. On it was scribbled the message, "he is so full of shit."

"I agreed," Bolton writes, going on to note that Kim promised no further nuclear tests. The State Department has not responded to CNN's request for comment about Pompeo's alleged note.

• Trump offered to help Turkey's leader avoid a Justice Department probe

Bolton writes that in December 2018, Trump offered to help Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with a Justice Department investigation into a Turkish bank with ties to Erdogan that was suspected of violating US Iran sanctions. When the Turkish leader presented Trump with a memo from the law firm representing Halkbank, Trump flipped through it and then declared he believed the bank was totally innocent of violating US sanctions related to Iran.

Trump told Erdogan he would "take care of things," and explained that the Southern District prosecutors "were not his people, but were Obama people," and the problem would be fixed when they were replaced by his people.

Bolton notes that "this was all nonsense" because the Justice Department prosecutors were career employees who would have taken the same path with the Halkbank probe regardless of who was president.

• The Israeli prime minister didn't understand why Kushner led on Middle East peace

Before joining Trump's White House, Bolton says he had a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who questioned Jared Kushner's role in developing a Middle East peace plan.

Netanyahu "was dubious about assigning the task of bringing an end to the Israel-Palestinian conflict to Kushner, whose family Netanyahu had known for many years. He was enough of a politician not to oppose the idea publicly, but like much of the world, he wondered why Kushner thought he would succeed where the likes of Kissinger had failed."

• The White House decision-making process was like a 'food fight'

Bolton says the weekly meetings to discuss issues, chaired by Trump in the Roosevelt Room or the Oval Office, more closely resembled college food fights than careful decision-making, with no lower-level effort or involvement by the relevant agencies to sort out the issues and the options. "After these sessions, had I believed in yoga, I probably could have used some," Bolton wrote.

It's a theme Bolton returns to more than once, describing a mercurial President who has little interest in learning how the federal government worked. Instead, he describes Trump as very focused on how decisions will play in the media.

• Trump didn't like sanctions on Russia

Bolton claims that Trump privately complained about sanctions and other punitive measures imposed on Russia with "extended grumbling and complaining," even as he touted them in public.

After the US announced a first round of sanctions on Russia for poisoning former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK, Bolton said Trump wanted to rescind the penalties and thought they were being too tough on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Trump told Pompeo to call Lavrov and say 'some bureaucrat' had published the sanctions-- a call that may or may not have ever taken place," Bolton wrote.

Bolton also claimed Trump stopped the issue of a statement criticizing Russia on the tenth anniversary of its invasion of Georgia. The former national security adviser writes that these actions were a reflection of Trump's "difficulty in separating personal from official relations."

• Trump's revealing questions: Is Finland a part of Russia?

Before the summit with Putin in Helsinki, Trump asked his advisers if Finland was a part of Russia, or whether it was a "kind of satellite of Russia."

On his way to the Helsinki meeting, Trump stopped to see then-British Prime Minister Theresa May in the UK. During that meeting, May's national security adviser, speaking about the Skripal poisoning, referred to the attack as one on a nuclear power. "Trump asked, 'oh, are you a nuclear power?,' which I knew was not intended as a joke," Bolton wrote.

And on multiple occasions, Bolton said Trump repeatedly mixed up Afghan President Ashraf Ghani with former President Hamid Karzai.

• Trump told people that Venezuela is 'really part of the US' and wanted to invade

Bolton writes that in discussions about toppling the regime of Nicolas Maduro, Trump "insisted on military options for Venezuela," telling advisers that the country "is really part of the United States." During a March 2019 meeting at the Pentagon, Trump grilled military leaders about why the US was in Afghanistan and Iraq, but not in Venezuela.

Trump's repeated insistence that military options be considered to oust Maduro often shocked aides, lawmakers and advisers, Bolton writes. In a meeting with Florida Republicans, "Trump still wanted a military option," leaving Sen. Rick Scott and Gov. Ron Desantis "plainly stunned," while Sen. Marco Rubio, who had heard Trump on the subject before "knew how to deflect it politely."

• Trump wanted Attorney General Bill Barr to make CNN reporters 'serve time in jail'

When news leaked about a hush-hush meeting on Afghanistan at Trump's Bedminster resort, Trump complained that CNN had reported the summit was taking place, Bolton writes. The President told White House counsel Pat Cipollone to call Attorney General Bill Barr about his desire to "arrest the reporters, force them to serve time in jail, and then demand they disclose their sources."

Now you don't have to buy it and put money in Bolton's pocket. Oh, one more thing. Late yesterday, Gabe Sherman, writing for Vanity Fair, revealed that exact words that Trump used when he begged Xi for help with his re-election bid:

According to an unredacted passage shown to Vanity Fair by a source, Trump’s ask is even more crudely shocking when you read Trump’s specific language. "Make sure I win," Trump allegedly told Xi during a dinner at the G20 conference in Osaka, Japan last summer. "I will probably win anyway, so don’t hurt my farms... Buy a lot of soybeans and wheat and make sure we win." ...Another passage shows Trump’s racist views on immigration. Bolton describes how Trump derailed a White House meeting about Iran strategy by bringing up a right wing conspiracy that Black South Africans were killing white South African farmers and stealing their land. According to Bolton, Trump blurted out that he wanted to grant the white South Africans "asylum and citizenship."

How Many Books Will Trump Try To Censor Before The Election?

Trump isn't suing [UPDATE: oops!]  his niece and isn't that worried about the harrowing and salacious book, Too Much and Never Enough, that's being released next month (July 28). (Pre-sales drove it into the best seller list already.) But he-- or at least Barr on his behalf-- is suing his former national security advisor, John Bolton, to prevent the release of his memoir, The Room Where It Happened. It's not salacious but from what I'm hearing it is absolutely devastating.

Martha Raddatz taped an interview with Bolton for ABC News this Sunday. It's supposed to be top secret but an old friend of mine who did watch it (the whole show, not this), on the down low-- and who is not given to hyperbole, told me that it will be "the most damning report in American politics ever." Oo; can't wait.


In fact, at least in part, we don't have to. Some of the best parts started leaking out today. Writing for the Washington Post earlier, Josh Dawsey noted that, according to Bolton, during a one-on-one meeting at the June 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan, Xi "Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 U.S. election, telling Xi during a summit dinner last year that increased agricultural purchases by Beijing from American farmers would aid his electoral prospects... [having] turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win." Bolton further wrote that "I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise." Maybe it was just a coincidence, but Trump gave Xi the thumbs up on China's policy of building concentration camps for the Uighurs... Bolton says he was so alarmed by Trump’s determination to do favors for autocrats such as Erdogan and Xi that he scheduled a meeting with William Barr in 2019.





Too bad the DNC isn't as nimble and quick on its feet as the Lincoln Project appears to be. I guess the DNC is too busy undermining progressives to bother with Trump, though.

ABC New reported yesterday that the Trumpist Justice Department's 27page filing "also requests that a judge order Bolton to take any actions 'within his power' to stop the publication of his book as it's currently drafted and 'retrieve and dispose' of any copies that may have been sent out to third parties. The DOJ additionally requests for Bolton to be ordered not to further disclose information he wrote about in the book or release details 'in any form or media... without first obtaining written permission. The United States is not seeking to censor any legitimate aspect of Defendant's manuscript; it merely seeks an order requiring Defendant to complete the prepublication review process and to take all steps necessary to ensure that only a manuscript that has been officially authorized through that process-- and is thus free of classified information-- is disseminated publicly,' the filing says."

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this week, Bolton's lawyer Chuck Cooper said White House attempts to accuse Bolton of violating his non-disclosure agreement were merely an attempt to "censor Bolton."

"This last-minute allegation came after an intensive four-month review, after weeks of silence from the White House, and-- as Mr. Eisenberg admits in his letter-- after press reports alerted the White House that Mr. Bolton's book would be published on June 23," Cooper said. "This is a transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr. Bolton, in violation of his constitutional right to speak on matters of the utmost public import."

The filing Tuesday offers insight into the process behind the pre-publication review, acknowledging that the National Security Council's senior director for records Ellen Knight had completed her review of the book and "was of the judgment that the manuscript draft did not contain classified information."

The next person to take up the review was a deputy legal adviser for the NSC Michael Ellis, who according to the filing "was concerned that the manuscript still appeared to contain classified information, in part because the same administration that the author served is still in office and that the manuscript described sensitive information about ongoing foreign policy issues."

The DOJ alleges in the filing that in its current form, the manuscript "contains certain passages, some up to several paragraphs in length-- that contain classified national security information."

"In fact, the NSC has determined that information in the manuscript is classified at the Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret levels," the filing says.

In the event the judge rejects the request from the DOJ, both Bolton and his publisher could still face potentially significant financial and even criminal jeopardy, legal experts argue, by moving forward in publishing a book that the White House claims contains classified information.

Reacting to the filing Tuesday, attorney Mark Zaid, an expert in national security law who has previously represented multiple individuals through the pre-publication review process, noted the suit stops short of what would have been a more extraordinary step in filing for an injunction to halt publication of the book altogether.

"This is a routine civil action for breach of contract for (Bolton) violating his non-disclosure agreement, which his own lawyer has admitted he did," Zaid said. "Absent something extraordinary happening, Bolton should be prepared to take out his check book and may never see a dime in profit. The lawsuit also asserts Bolton has released classified information which potentially subjects him to criminal prosecution under the Espionage Act."

"I think that Bolton faces real risk to the extent he publishes material that a reasonable person could describe as classified," said Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. "Presumably, he has taken care to scrub the book of anything that could plausibly be described as classified information, but we have that this administration that takes extraordinarily broad view of its classification power."

On Monday, in fact, President Donald Trump, in an exchange with reporters, argued his view that "every conversation with me as president highly classified," garnering significant skepticism among those who have previously been involved with such pre-publication reviews.

"That is not something that any Executive Branch has responsibly said let alone any court has ever said," said Joshua Geltzer, a visiting law professor at Georgetown who previously served as the NSC's senior director for counterterrorism. "That legal theory would get them laughed out of court."

But, Geltzer noted that it's true the president does have broad classification authorities. And in the event that a judge were to agree that the book contained classified material after its publication, Bolton could face potential prosecution under the Espionage Act-- though such cases are rare.

However, Bolton's most imminent legal danger, according to Zaid, could be the open violation of his non-disclosure agreement as alleged by DOJ in the Tuesday filing.

"Bolton is in serious trouble with at least a breach of contract, which is literally a hands-down winner for the government," Zaid said. "Bolton has an obligation before publication to receive approval from the government-- a lack of approval breaches his contractual obligation and that has nothing to do with whether or not there's one word of classified information in the book."

The problem is that Trump-- and Barr-- insist that by exposing Trump as an ignorant and foolish old man-- he once asked Bolton, for example, if Venezuela was ever part of the U.S.-- national security has been breached. He also asked if Finland, which he visited and where he had his infanmous meeting with Putin, is part of Russia. He insists he is the state, the way Louis XIV used to do.

Racist Pig: Oink, Oink

There can be little doubt why the leakiest White House in living memory is so obsessed with stopping the constant flow of secret information to the press. Trump himself has been climbing the walls about the impending release (June 23) of The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, former national security advisor John Bolton's reportedly scathing tel-all about life in the dysfunctional White House. (Worth noting that after Trump's legal shenanigans forced the release date from May 12 to June 23, the number of pages increased from 528 to 576-- and no one has seen those nearly 50 new pages.) Bloomberg News reported yesterday that Bolton has pained "an unflattering picture of Donald Trump in his forthcoming memoir, writing that the president’s foreign policy choices were driven primarily by political considerations," noting that Bolton wrote "I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by re-election calculations."

Perhaps there are still some hardcore Trump supporters with the brain-power left to understand the inappropriateness of a president to think that way or why it is dangerous to the country. But probably not. Nor are they likely to care about the leaks Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post used Thursday for their story about Trump's racism. Trump, charging into a series of fights over the nation’s racist legacy, they speculated, is gambling that taking divisive stances on Confederate symbols and policing will energize his mostly white supporters in November. But many Republicans and even some of Trump’s own advisers worry that the approach risks further alienating voters who have already started to abandon him, including college-educated whites, and to harden opposition to him among minorities. Though Trump has long sought to exploit class resentment and racial tensions for political gain, his decision to continue to do so in the wake of the death of George Floyd-- an unarmed black man killed in Minneapolis policy custody-- has left some in his orbit uneasy, and Democrats eager to capitalize on what some say is a racist president revealing his true beliefs. Trump in recent weeks has repeatedly signaled that his sympathies lie with the police over the protesters, whom he has broadly portrayed as members of a loosely affiliated anti-fascist movement known as antifa, though the vast majority of the demonstrators across the country have been peaceful. Since Floyd’s death, he has tweeted about 'LAW & ORDER!' more than a dozen times."

In the aftermath of Floyd’s death, the president’s positions on issues ranging from racism in policing to Confederate symbols have appeared out of step with public opinion and moves by many corporations and institutions to implement changes.

On Wednesday, as White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was defending Trump’s position not to rename military bases honoring Confederate generals, NASCAR announced that it was banning the Confederate flag from all of its events and properties, saying it ran “contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment.”

The changes, both political and cultural, kept coming on Thursday. Lady Antebellum, the country music group, announced it was changing its name to Lady A, because of the term’s association with the slavery era. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) endorsed a package of sweeping police restructuring measures for a state battered by protests over Floyd’s death. And House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), an ally of the president, said he supports a Democratic proposal to ban police chokeholds and signaled an openness to renaming some military bases named after Confederate leaders.

Recent polling shows that Trump’s harsh approach to the protests is not in sync with much of the country. A Washington Post-Schar School poll released Tuesday found that 74 percent of adults supported the protesters, including 53 percent of Republicans. A Monmouth University poll conducted from May 28 to June 1 found that while 17 percent said the actions of protesters such as burning a police precinct in Minneapolis were “fully justified,” a 57 percent majority said the anger that led to these protests was fully justified.

“It seems to me that Trump represents the death rattle of an older America,” said Eddie Glaude, chair of the department of African American studies at Princeton University. “Everything he’s doubling down on is precisely what we’re trying to leave behind, and so the battle that is now being engaged is precisely a battle surrounding what kind of country will we be moving forward, and he is holding onto with all of his might this idea of America as a white nation.”

Inside Trump’s orbit, several of the president’s aides are frustrated that some of his crafted statements on the recent unrest have been eclipsed by his incendiary tweets or remarks. Some also regret the decision on June 1 to use force to clear Lafayette Square of protesters before he staged a photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

Trump’s pollsters and political advisers have also been encouraging him to soften his message in an effort to win back suburban women and other moderate voters in swing states where he is trailing in the polls.

One administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal dynamics, expressed frustration that Trump was gratuitously weighing in on Confederate memorials and a protester getting shoved to the ground in Buffalo, as well as unnecessarily attacking rivals like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), who marched in a Black Lives Matter protest over the weekend. The official added that Trump is mainly surrounding himself with a small knot of aides and even then is often not following their advice.

Two White House officials said the public largely agrees with the president that calls to defund the police go too far, and allies have said they wish Trump would focus on painting the Democrats as supporting lawlessness.

During a meeting with Republicans at the White House last week, Trump said what happened to Floyd was “horrible,” said one of the attendees, speaking anonymously to share details of a private conversation. But the president then veered into heralding “law and order” and getting tough on looters and protesters, the person added.

Trump has told allies that his stance against protesters will poll better than they think, a person who has spoken to him about it said.




“If he was trying to lose, he’d be doing basically what he is doing right now,” said a Republican strategist in frequent touch with the White House.

In some instances, both the president and his team have been surprised at the backlash he has prompted. After Trump suggested in a tweet that a 75-year-old Buffalo protester who was hospitalized after being shoved to the ground by police might have been an “ANTIFA provocateur,” a senior White House official said the president was taken aback by the negative reaction, which “threw the West Wing into a tailspin for many hours.”

Some Republicans and Trump allies were also upset after realizing the president’s team had scheduled his first campaign rally since coronavirus outbreak for Juneteenth in Tulsa, although several people familiar with the planning said the date was unintentional. Some allies warned against moving ahead with the rally, but other Trump aides said they were not overly bothered about the historical significance and that Trump himself is “not at all concerned” about safety implications, whether from the coronavirus or protesters.

White House spokesman Judd Deere defended Trump’s handling of the recent racial unrest, saying that “any coordinated attempt by the Left and the media to suggest otherwise is shameful and only meant to sow division and ignore the President’s work for underserved communities.”

“President Trump’s record as a private citizen and as president has been one of fighting for inclusion and advocating for the equal treatment of all,” Deere said in a statement.

Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser for the Trump campaign, also touted Trump’s work for black Americans. “President Trump has a track record of success for Black Americans, including record-breaking low unemployment numbers prior to the pandemic, all-time high funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, criminal justice reform, and Opportunity Zones have lifted millions of Black Americans out of poverty,” she said in a statement.

Trump’s move to shift Republican nomination events to Jacksonville, Fla., because he objected to coronavirus safety restrictions in the original national convention city of Charlotte is also fraught with racial controversy.

The date that Trump is expected to accept the nomination, Aug. 27, would coincide with the 60th anniversary of Ax Handle Saturday, considered one of the darkest days in Jacksonville’s history. A mob of about 200 white people armed with ax handles and baseball bats attacked a group of demonstrators after they left a sit-in at a local whites-only lunch counter.

Local civil rights leaders were planning an event in a downtown Jacksonville park to commemorate the violence on that day. Rodney Hurst-- who helped organize the Jacksonville sit-ins 60 years ago and wrote a book about Ax Handle Saturday-- said the presence of the Republican convention in the city could simply increase the number of people planning to attend Ax Handle Saturday events, which are set to held about a mile from where Trump would give his prime-time speech.

“Donald Trump is a racist,” Hurst said. “I don’t think it requires any real insight to know who and what Donald Trump is.”

"I Can't Breathe" by Nancy Ohanian

Earlier this week, a team of Washington Post reporters noted that "As racial justice demonstrations stretched into their third week, President Trump said Wednesday that he would “not even consider” growing calls to rename U.S. military bases that honor Confederate generals. 'Our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with,' Trump tweeted. Civil rights activists and former military officials, including retired U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, have stepped up pressure to rename installations such as Fort Bragg and Fort Benning, saying they wrongfully glorify leaders who committed treason to defend slavery in the United States." They listed some developments that show how increasingly alone with the KKK Trump has become:

• NASCAR announced Wednesday that it was banning displays of the Confederate flag at all its “events and properties.”
• Amazon has banned police from using its controversial facial-recognition technology for a year amid ongoing nationwide protests over police brutality and racial profiling. Studies have shown that facial-recognition systems misidentify people of color more often than white people.
• Statues honoring Christopher Columbus were toppled, destroyed and disfigured in St. Paul, Boston and Richmond on Wednesday — the latest in a wave of attacks on historic monuments by George Floyd protesters.
• More than 1,250 former Justice Department workers on Wednesday signed a letter calling on the agency’s internal watchdog to investigate Attorney General William P. Barr’s involvement in law enforcement’s move last week to push a crowd of largely peaceful demonstrators back from Lafayette Square using horses and gas before Trump’s photo op at St. John’s Episcopal Church.
• Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said he was withdrawing from contract negotiations with the local police union as he pursues reforms that would make it easier to terminate officers who act inappropriately.
• Floyd’s family and the Rev. Al Sharpton are expecting 100,000 people to attend a new March on Washington in August to push for criminal justice reform on the 57th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s original March on Washington.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Well, today's the big day. The $enate Trumpers will make it official. It was a perfect treason. If fake Democrats like Joe Manchin want to be Vichy-style collaborators, they will. The Trump Republicans have decided "We don't need a stinkin' Reichstag Fire! We'll just give our cheetomatic boy the ol' nod and wink and let him know that he's free to do whatever he wants. All is permissible! You got da power, Herr Donnie! You got carte blanche, just keep the crackpot judges and the rubles coming! Why scare the populace into giving you total power when they already voted for you and couldn't care less. We know! That's why we're here too!"

In the end, that's what the Untied States $enate, aka The League Of Extraordinary Assholes, has done. After all, as another great Russo-Republican says, "Truth isn't Truth." As if Rudy wasn't enough, another old, senile wack-job named Dershowitz took time off from getting massages at the late Jeffrey Epstein's middle school sorority house to come in and tell the nation that crime isn't crime. Whoopee! Presumably, he had his underwear on but, since he was behind a podium, maybe he wasn't even wearing pants. Now, that would be one-upping Gym Jordan! Trump couldn't find one witness who would come forward to defend his lard butt so he banned the witnesses who could have testified against him faster than if they had been Muslims or Latinos. Yep, no John "Johnny Swiffer" Bolton or Mick "Get Over It" Mulvulva).

You didn't really expect honor and courage from the United State $enate, did you? Like I've said over and over, Washington takes care of its own. That goes for both hoses and both parties but you could have 100 articles of impeachment and the result would be the same. Film of Donnie killing someone? To republicans, that's just great porn! The current $enate is nothing short of Politburo West. This is what happens when you don't pay attention, don't care and/or don't vote. Cover up accomplished. But this will be, by comparison, the good old days.

Expect More Evidence Of Trump's Guilt To Continue To Seep Out Despite The Senate's Decision To Perpetrate A Coverup

Lisa Murkowski wimped out on even just calling Bolton as a witness and so did retiring Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander. Why? John Harwood wrote that "Trump's vituperative attacks, regularly trained on critics through his vast social media following, make every Republican politician wary of crossing him. But that represents the lesser factor in the party's fealty. More significantly, decades of American political realignment have tightened the bonds holding Republicans together in any high-stakes fight with Democrats. The ongoing diversification of American society further unites an overwhelmingly white GOP around a shared fear of impending doom. Together, those changes lend weight and rigidity to Republican partisanship that did not exist that last time a GOP chief executive faced impeachment. The modest barrier that once separated Republicans from Democrats has become a dense, multi-layered wall reinforced by ideology, race, education and religion as well as party identification. That helps explain why so many Republican senators have cast aside consistency, logic and unrebutted evidence to shield their president from impeachment charges. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell aims for a Friday Senate vote in which Republicans would refuse even to hear new testimony about Trump's culpability before summarily acquitting him."

Well, that might work just fine for senators in Wyoming, Idaho, Arkansas and Oklahoma, where the PVIs are, respectively, R+25, R+19, R+15 and R+20, but that doesn't explain the calculus going on in the minds of senators for states that are looking more shaky for incumbents this year:

• Cory Gardner (CO)- net approval- minus 18
• Martha McSally (AZ)- net approval- minus 3
• Joni Ernst (IA)- net approval- minus 9
• David Purdue (GA)- net approval- minus 2
• Kelly Loeffler (GA)- net approval- minus 2
• Thom Tillis (NC)- net approval- 0
• Dan Sullivan (AK)- net approval- minus 2
• John Cornyn (TX)- net approval- +1

Worse, even as more and more evidence of Trump's wrongdoing floods in, the GOP suicide pact doesn't break. Yesterday, for example, around the same time Murkowski announced she was killing the chance of Bolton being subpoenaed-- despite overwhelming numbers of voters demanding exactly that-- the NY Times published another explosive Bolton leak from by Maggie Haberman and Mark Schmidt. They reported that over two months before he asked Ukraine’s president to investigate the Biden's, Señor Trumpanzee had directed "Bolton, then his national security adviser, to help with his pressure campaign to extract damaging information on Democrats from Ukrainian officials." Bolton wrote that Señor T ordered him to do so during an Oval Office conversation in early May that included Mulvaney, Giuliani and Cipollone, who is now leading Trump's impeachment defense, and should certainly be disbarred.

Trump told Bolton to call the recently elected Zelensky to ensure that he would meet with Giuliani. Bolton never did so and today Trump was screeching that that is "proof" he never gave the order.

The previously undisclosed directive that Mr. Bolton describes would be the earliest known instance of Mr. Trump seeking to harness the power of the United States government to advance his pressure campaign against Ukraine, as he later did on the July call with Mr. Zelensky that triggered a whistle-blower complaint and impeachment proceedings. House Democrats have accused him of abusing his authority and are arguing their case before senators in the impeachment trial of Mr. Trump, whose lawyers have said he did nothing wrong.

The account in Mr. Bolton’s manuscript portrays the most senior White House advisers as early witnesses in the effort that they have sought to distance the president from. And disclosure of the meeting underscores the kind of information Democrats were looking for in seeking testimony from his top advisers in their impeachment investigation, including Mr. Bolton and Mr. Mulvaney, only to be blocked by the White House.

In a brief interview, Mr. Giuliani denied that the conversation took place and said those discussions with the president were always kept separate. He was adamant that Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Mulvaney were never involved in meetings related to Ukraine.

“It is absolutely, categorically untrue,” he said.

...Mr. Bolton described the roughly 10-minute conversation in drafts of his book, a memoir of his time as national security adviser that is to go on sale in March. Over several pages, Mr. Bolton laid out Mr. Trump’s fixation on Ukraine and the president’s belief, based on a mix of scattershot events, assertions and outright conspiracy theories, that Ukraine tried to undermine his chances of winning the presidency in 2016.

As he began to realize the extent and aims of the pressure campaign, Mr. Bolton began to object, he wrote in the book, affirming the testimony of a former National Security Council aide, Fiona Hill, who had said that Mr. Bolton warned that Mr. Giuliani was “a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”

Mr. Trump also repeatedly made national security decisions contrary to American interests, Mr. Bolton wrote, describing a pervasive sense of alarm among top advisers about the president’s choices. Mr. Bolton expressed concern to others in the administration that the president was effectively granting favors to autocratic leaders like Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Xi Jinping of China.

...The White House has sought to block the release of the book, contending that it contains classified information. The government reviews books by former officials who had access to secrets so they can excise the manuscripts of any classified information. Officials including Mr. Trump have described Mr. Bolton, who was often at odds with Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Mulvaney, as a disgruntled former official with an ax to grind.

Mr. Bolton has angered Democrats-- and some Republicans-- for remaining quiet during the House investigation, then announcing that he would comply with any subpoena to testify in the Senate and signaling that he is eager to share his story. Administration officials should “feel they’re able to speak their minds without retribution,” he said at a closed-door lunch in Austin, Texas, on Thursday, the NBC affiliate KXAN reported, citing unnamed sources.

“The idea that somehow testifying to what you think is true is destructive to the system of government we have-- I think, is very nearly the reverse, the exact reverse of the truth,” Mr. Bolton added.

The Oval Office conversation that Mr. Bolton described came as the president and Mr. Giuliani were increasingly focusing on pushing the Ukrainian government to commit to investigations that could help Mr. Trump politically. At various points, Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani and their associates pressed Ukrainian officials under Mr. Zelensky and his predecessor to provide potentially damaging information on the president’s rivals, including Mr. Biden and Ukrainians who Mr. Trump’s allies believed tried to help Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Mr. Giuliani had just successfully campaigned to have the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch, recalled, convinced that she was part of an effort to protect Mr. Trump’s political rivals from scrutiny. Mr. Giuliani had argued she was impeding the investigations.

At the time of the Oval Office conversation Mr. Bolton wrote about, Mr. Giuliani was planning a trip to Kyiv to push the incoming government to commit to the investigations. Mr. Giuliani asserted that the president had been wronged by the Justice Department’s Russia investigation and told associates that the inquiry could be partly discredited by proving that parts of it originated with suspect documents produced and disseminated in Ukraine to undermine his onetime campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, whose work in Ukraine became a central focus of the Russia inquiry.

Mr. Giuliani, a private consultant with a range of international clients, had said none were involved in the Ukraine effort, Mr. Bolton wrote, adding that he was skeptical and wanted to avoid involvement. At the time, Mr. Giuliani was working closely with two Soviet-born businessmen from Florida, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, to carry out the shadow Ukraine effort.

After pushing out Ms. Yovanovitch, Mr. Giulian turned his attention to other American diplomats responsible for Ukraine policy. During the Oval Office conversation, he also mentioned a State Department official with the last name of Kent, whom Mr. Bolton wrote he did not know. Mr. Giuliani said he was hostile to Mr. Trump and sympathetic to George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has long been a target of the far right.

George P. Kent, a top State Department official who oversees Ukraine policy, went on to be a key witness in House Democrats’ impeachment investigation, testifying that claims by Mr. Giuliani’s allies of Mr. Soros’ wide influence in Ukraine were used to smear Ms. Yovanovitch.

Mr. Bolton left the Oval Office after 10 minutes and returned to his office, he wrote. Shortly after, two aides came into his office, saying Mr. Trump had sent them out of a separate meeting on trade to ask about Mr. Kent, Mr. Bolton wrote.

The conversation that Mr. Bolton describes was separate from another one that Mr. Bolton wrote about, where he observed Mr. Mulvaney and Mr. Trump talking on the phone with Mr. Giuliani about Ukraine matters. Mr. Mulvaney has told associates he would leave the room when Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani were talking to preserve their attorney-client privilege, and his lawyer said earlier this week that Mr. Mulvaney was never in meetings with Mr. Giuliani and has “no recollection” of the first discussion.

Around the time of the May discussion, The Times revealed Mr. Giuliani’s efforts and his planned trip to Ukraine. Mr. Giuliani said at the time that Mr. Trump was aware of his efforts in Ukraine, but said nothing else about any involvement of Mr. Trump or other members of the administration. The disclosure created consternation in the White House and Mr. Giuliani canceled his trip.

A day after The Times article was published, Mr. Giuliani wrote a letter to Mr. Zelensky, saying he was representing Mr. Trump as a “private citizen” and, with Mr. Trump’s “knowledge and consent,” hoped to arrange a meeting with Mr. Zelensky in the ensuing days. That letter was among the evidence admitted during the House impeachment inquiry.

Talk about a swamp! This is another reason Bernie should be the nominee and not Status Quo Joe, whose swamp problems aren't as bad as TRump's but way too exploitable by a compulsive liar like Trump... and way too disgusting to allow him anywhere near the White House!