President Donald J. Projection Insists Jeffrey Goldberg Is A Con Man

Yesterday, CNN analyst John Harwood wrote that "From the outset of Donald Trump's presidency, Americans have told pollsters they consider him dishonest. That makes his re-election campaign entirely on-brand. In ways large and small, in targeted advertising and public remarks, Trump has made deceit the hallmark of his bid for a second term... Trailing Biden nationally and in key battleground states, Trump casts doubt on the legitimacy of the election by falsely associating mail-in balloting with rampant fraud. That amplifies what his own Department of Homeland Security calls Russian propaganda.

Attorney General William Barr joined him in that effort on CNN this past week by making assertions about fraud that the Justice Department later acknowledged were inaccurate. The president even suggested his North Carolina supporters attempt to vote in person after mailing in absentee ballots, which would be a crime.

American voters have noticed. In a July Quinnipiac University survey, 66% called Trump dishonest; 64% told Washington Post/ABC pollsters they didn't trust the president on coronavirus. Last week, a 55% majority told ABC/Ipsos said Trump's comments made disorder in American cities worse, not better. The recent Democratic and Republican conventions gave Americans a back-to-back opportunity to evaluate the unfiltered message of each presidential candidate. A CNN poll before either one showed that, by 51%-40%, voters preferred Biden over Trump for being 'honest and trustworthy.' After the conventions, the numbers changed. Trump's deficit on honesty had grown to 53%-36%."





Yesterday, in response to the national furor over Trump's latest exposure as an unpatriotic asshole who loves the military and hates the troops, he attacked Steve Jobs' widow, Laureen Jobs. Why? She's a part owner of The Atlantic, the magazine that started the whole furor for the would-be Führer. His pathetic tweet yesterday:

Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote the original exposé, is certainly not intimidated by Trump, generally considered the most despicable con man in American history, calling him a con-man. He was on Reliable Sources yesterday, where he told Brian Stelter that he "would fully expect more reporting to come out about this and more confirmation and new pieces of information in the coming days and weeks. We have a responsibility and we're going to do it regardless of what he says. We're not going to be intimidated by the President of the United States... We're going to do our jobs."

Trump and members of his foul regime are running around like chickens without heads denying his disdain for military service. I hope he read the report by Michael Kranish laying out his long history of disparagement. Big shot always derided men and women committed to any kind of public service-- but military service more than any. Years before he was a national figure and just a despised con man in New York, "Trump had bragged on a morning radio show about avoiding the Vietnam draft, remarking that one of the show’s hosts who had gotten out of service by declaring he had a bad knee had done a 'good job.'... Trump had a long track record of incendiary and disparaging remarks about veterans and military service... [H]e didn’t understand why the U.S. government spent so much effort to find missing soldiers who he believed had performed poorly and were caught. Trump told senior advisers that those who served in Vietnam were 'losers' because they didn’t find a way to avoid service."

Trump, who avoided military service by citing a bone spur in his foot, has disparaged veterans who were wounded or captured or went missing in action and even compared his fear of sexually transmitted diseases to the experience of a soldier, saying in 1993, “if you’re young, and in this era, and if you have any guilt about not having gone to Vietnam, we have our own Vietnam. It’s called the dating game.”

It is a history filled with contradictions, of a man who denigrates his handpicked generals while saying no one supports the military more than he does, and of a commander in chief who questions the bravery of some soldiers even as he reversed disciplinary action against a Navy SEAL over the objections of Pentagon officials. He was raised in a family that criticized the value of military service, according to niece Mary L. Trump, but nonetheless he was sent to a military academy for most of his teenage years.

And now, Trump and his aides are fiercely denying a report in the Atlantic in which the president is quoted denigrating U.S. soldiers, including calling those killed in combat “losers.”

...Trump has had a series of fights with the generals he put in power, some of whom left in anger and dismay. In a 2017 meeting at the Pentagon, he called his top generals “losers” and “a bunch of dopes and babies,” according to A Very Stable Genius, by Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol D. Leonnig. Among those who have departed include his chief of staff, retired general John F. Kelly, and his defense secretary, Jim Mattis, a McCain favorite.

Mattis said earlier this year that “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.” In response, Trump, who had once lavished praise on Mattis, tweeted: “I didn’t like his ‘leadership’ style or much else about him... Glad he is gone!”

A Nation In Crisis-- A Presidency On The Skids... And A Reelection Campaign Up Shit's Creek Without A Paddle

The picture John Harwood painted of the incompetent, traitorous boob in the Oval Office for CNN over the weekend wasn't attractive: impulsive, self-destructive and self-defeating. These traits help explain how he's driven U.S. pandemic response into a ditch where thousands of Americans will needlessly die. As of Sunday, the U.S. had over 2.6 million confirmed cases and almost 130,000 deaths. From Friday night to Sunday afternoon, 84,121 new cases drove the cases per million from 7,844 to 7,967.

Evidence of Harwood's description of Trump: his refusal to wearing masks during the pandemic. "His dogged stance, mimicked by supporters," wrote Harwood, "undercuts efforts by public health officials to stop the summer resurgence of coronavirus. That in turn impedes efforts to revive the US economy, now staggering under the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. Failures on both fronts has left Trump in a deep hole on his pre-eminent priority of winning reelection. And they leave public health experts mystified... In April, Trump said a masked president wouldn't look right. More recently, he suggested some Americans wear masks to signal disapproval of him."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's leading infectious disease authority, initially opposed mask-wearing by average Americans for fear of draining supplies needed for health care workers. Fauci later reversed course, saying last week that those still balking at mask-wearing need to "get past" political objections and "look at the data."

Yet Trump leads a party that, by ideology and temperament, has grown deeply skeptical of government mandates and scientific expertise. Many in the GOP, which increasingly relies on white voters without college degrees, look askance at higher education itself.

So libertarian Republicans oppose mask requirements as infringements on personal choice, while others on the fringes see plots against their freedom. Of 20 states that have implemented broad mask-wearing requirements, just four have Republican governors.

GOP politicians still have room to lead. In a recent Fox News poll, 68% of Republicans expressed favorable views of people who wear masks, even if they're less likely to consider masks important themselves.

"This is due to the misinformation surrounding mask-wearing, as well as their skepticism about a mask's capacity to help stop the spread," the GOP polling firm Public Opinion Strategies concluded in a recent analysis of attitudes in Ohio.

Trump could correct that misinformation. Had he done so two months ago, says Democratic public health expert Andy Slavitt, the US would have suppressed the virus enough by now to "have an open economy and no mask-wearing."

If 95% of Americans wore masks now, a University of Washington health institute projects, 33,0000 fewer people would die by October 1. As imprecise as such projections are, a swelling body of research agrees masks would significantly reduce the spread of infection.

"Universal masking is the most obvious and least intrusive intervention that states with large epidemics can now reach for," Gottlieb, the former Trump administration official, tweeted last week.

As the pandemic worsens, McClellan hopes "reality will set in" and produce "leadership on the conservative side." There are signs of movement.

Trump's deferential Vice President Mike Pence has begun wearing masks in some public appearances. Trump-friendly Republican governors in the Sunbelt, who earlier followed the President's call to re-open their economies before public health officials considered it safe, have been shaken by rising infection among their constituents.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida still won't require mask-wearing in public as cases hit record levels, but he let local governments do so.

"Everyone should just wear a damn mask," GOP Sen. Marco Rubio said.

Republican Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona adopted the same stance as DeSantis. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) continues to resist mandatory statewide mask-wearing, but now praises local officials for requiring them at businesses.

The mask mandate imposed by the city of Phoenix gave Trump a fresh example to shift course last week when he traveled there to address conservative students. The stakes had been raised days earlier by his Tulsa reelection rally.

Eight campaign staffers and two Secret Service agents involved in that event had tested positive for coronavirus. Lackluster attendance in a deep-red state-- the Tulsa arena was two-thirds empty-- underscored public fears of indoor crowds.

But Trump let the opportunity pass. He ignored the Phoenix mask mandate, and allowed his audience to do the same.

Meanwhile, Washington Post reporters Toluse Olorunnipa, Josh Dawsey and Yasmeen Abutaleb concluded that after 5 months of Trump's pandemic leadership, the U.S. has failed and looks worse than ever, a record surge in new cases "the clearest sign yet of the country’s historic failure to control the virus-- exposing a crisis in governance extending from the Oval Office to state capitals to city councils."

They reiterated how Trump, "who has repeatedly downplayed the virus, sidelined experts and misled Americans about its dangers and potential cures-- now finds his presidency wracked by an inability to shepherd the country through its worst public health calamity in a century. The dysfunction that has long characterized Trump’s White House has been particularly ill-suited for a viral outbreak that requires precision, focus and steady leadership, according to public health experts, administration officials and lawmakers from both parties."

As case numbers began rising again, Trump has held rallies defying public health guidelines, mused about slowing down testing for the virus, criticized people wearing masks and embraced the racially offensive “kung flu” nickname for a disease that has killed at least 123,000 Americans.

A similarly garbled message for the country has also been put forward by the president’s top aides and other senior administration officials, who contradict one another on a daily basis. On Friday, Vice President Pence used the first White House coronavirus task force briefing in almost two months to praise Trump’s handling of the virus and cast aside concerns about a record spike in new infections.

“We have made a truly remarkable progress in moving our nation forward,” Pence said, a few minutes after announcing that more than 2.5 million Americans had contracted the coronavirus. “We’ve all seen the encouraging news as we open up America again.”

Later Friday, the United States recorded more than 40,000 new coronavirus cases-- its largest one-day total.

It was the latest example of whiplash from the Trump administration, which has struggled to put forward a consistent message about the pandemic. While public health experts urge caution and preventive measures such as mask-wearing and social distancing, Trump, Pence and other top aides repeatedly flout their advice, leaving confused Americans struggling to determine who to believe.

“They’re creating a cognitive dissonance in the country,” one former senior administration official said. “It’s more than them being asleep at the wheel. They’re confusing people at this point when we need to be united.”

...America’s position as the world’s leader in coronavirus cases and deaths is in large part the result of human error, and the still-rising caseload stands as a stark reminder of the blunders that have characterized the national response. Trump’s actions, and his position in the Oval Office, make him a central figure in any assessment of the country’s handling of the outbreak.

...As local officials struggled to enforce stay-at-home orders and other restrictions, the virus continued to circulate throughout a country riven by partisan politics and devoid of a national public health strategy, said Max Skidmore, a political scientist at the University of Missouri at Kansas City and author of a book on presidential leadership during health crises.

“We’re the only country in the world that has politicized the approach to a pandemic,” he said.

Now, covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, is advancing at an accelerated pace in the United States, even as other countries reopen their economies after getting their outbreaks under control. European diplomats are poised to approve an agreement that will reopen the European Union to travel from many countries but not American tourists, because the coronavirus is still raging in the United States.

In contrast, states from Arizona to Florida are pausing or reversing their attempts to reopen their economies.

The new peak in cases-- coming so quickly after the first and with just months to go before a presidential election and an impending flu season-- has alarmed public health experts and the president’s political allies.

...The president has dramatically scaled back the number of coronavirus meetings on his schedule in recent weeks, instead holding long meetings on polling and endorsements, his reelection campaign, the planned Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, Fla., the economy and other topics, according to two advisers, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

While Pence continues to convene weekly calls with governors to discuss coronavirus testing, supplies and other issues, Trump no longer participates, the advisers said. Trump now receives his updates on the coronavirus effort from Pence, officials said.

Trump’s intense focus on his campaign comes as he has been sliding in public polling and trailing Democratic rival Joe Biden, who is winning support from voters who disapprove of the president’s handling of the pandemic and the accompanying economic recession. Some Republican officials have tried to advise the president to focus more intently on managing the public health crisis at hand, arguing that doing so would help his political standing-- and theirs-- while also speeding along the economic recovery.

But Trump has shown little indication that he plans to re-engage on shepherding a national coronavirus response in the wake of surging cases. He has expressed frustration to aides that he was criticized for a lack of adequate testing and is now not being given enough credit for the 500,000 daily tests that are currently being conducted, officials said. Trump has repeatedly claimed that the caseload is only going up because of the increasing number of tests, and he has openly discussed reducing testing.

“The number of ChinaVirus cases goes up, because of GREAT TESTING, while the number of deaths (mortality rate), goes way down,” Trump wrote Thursday on Twitter.

In several states, where hospitalizations and positivity rates are sharply increasing, Trump’s words offer little comfort to governors trying to figure out how to respond to a burgeoning crisis.

Some states are still struggling to procure testing kits and supplies for the kits, including swabs, and have pleaded for the federal government to play a larger role in coordinating purchases, resolving supply shortages and distributing the tests. Doctors and health-care facilities are still grappling with shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), including private doctors’ offices that cannot perform routine procedures safely because they do not have the necessary equipment, according to the American Medical Association.

“It is not clear to us how the administration has distributed PPE across the country during the pandemic, but having a single national coordinated strategy would help ensure that states, hospitals, physician offices and other facilities have a single, centralized authority to work through to acquire essential PPE,” said American Medical Association President Susan R. Bailey.

Politicization of the pandemic has left many Republican governors to choose between staying a doomed public health course while touting economic recovery or acting on recommendations from public health experts who Trump has dismissed.

We know what COVID-Ron is trying to sell

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has resisted calls for a statewide mask mandate, even as Florida’s cases jumped by 62 percent from its previous high of 5,511 on Wednesday to a new high of 8,942 on Friday. His argument, made publicly as recently as Thursday, is that not all parts of the state are experiencing the same level of outbreak, and therefore they should not be subject to a one-size-fits-all approach. The state announced Friday that all bars must shut down on-site consumption, three weeks after they reopened.

In Arizona, public health experts and local officials largely credit lobbying efforts by mayors for pushing Gov. Doug Ducey (R) to reverse his position and allow cities to implement mask requirements as they saw fit.

Kristen Pogreba-Brown, an epidemiologist at the University of Arizona, said she found it “disgusting” to watch politics penetrate considerations about public health precautions. She pointed in particular to issues of testing following the president’s erroneous suggestion that increased testing is to blame for the scope of the outbreak.

“The fact that we don’t have a federal testing program is pretty embarrassing, frankly,” she said, noting that her university is developing its own in-house testing system, because “we don’t have faith people can go out and get tested in the community.”

More than five months after the first test for the coronavirus was conducted in the United States, testing equipment is still being doled out based on which states manage to get federal officials on the phone to press their case. After a recent weekend that saw demand for testing outstrip capacity, the governor’s office in Arizona placed a call to the White House and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Daniel Ruiz, Ducey’s chief operating officer. Within 24 hours, they had secured expedited access to a rapid Roche testing machine, he said.

Some states are banding together to issue quarantine orders against visitors from regions with rising cases, further highlighting the lack of a federal standard. Conspiracy theories about masks, vaccines and social distancing have abounded, threatening to stymie local leaders’ attempts to enforce public health guidelines.

Trump’s willingness to ignore ordinances on masks and large crowds has added to the sense of confusion, public health experts said.

“Any time there is politicization of an infectious-disease response, it makes it much harder to intervene,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. People are “less likely to actually listen to public health authorities on what are the best actions to take and how to take them because they think that everything has been politicized in that there is no truth-- it’s truth from Democrats or Republicans, rather than the truth,” Adalja said.

The White House has played a central role in undermining the kind of clear and consistent messaging experts say is necessary to mount a successful public health response to a viral outbreak, current and former administration officials said.

...The partisanship that has come to surround mask-wearing was on stark display on Capitol Hill on Friday, as House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-SC) convened a hearing of the select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis.

Clyburn and the other committee Democrats attended wearing masks, while the committee’s Republican members were maskless, which led to angry exchanges.

Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-MD) accused Republican members who were maskless of provoking “terror and fear in your colleagues and perhaps your staff.”

Republicans, several of whom had worn masks into the hearing room before taking them off, contended that they could practice social distancing safely while seated maskless at the dais.

“We are six feet apart. We don’t need a mask,” said Rep. Mark Green (R-TN), who is a physician.

Publicly, GOP lawmakers remain largely supportive of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, declining to put any blame on him or the federal response for the upward trend in infections. They generally say the decision-making responsibility now lies with state governments, and that individual citizens bear the onus for responsible behavior to hold down infections.

The CDC is sending teams to states experiencing outbreaks, rather than following the usual policy of waiting for states to ask for help. The agency has sent nearly 150 people out to about 20 states, a federal official said, including California, Arizona, Texas and Florida. It has about three dozen more staffers awaiting deployment to hot spots to provide technical assistance, epidemiological support, surveillance and contact tracing, the official said.

While Trump has attacked some Democratic governors for their handling of the virus, its recent spread in Republican-led states such as Texas, Florida, Arizona, South Carolina and Oklahoma has complicated the politics around the president’s response.

Officials in some states that have contained much of the virus’s spread have called on Republican leaders in other states to take drastic measures to get control of the disease.

“As painful as it is, you’ve got to overdo it in terms of the aggressiveness in which you shut things down,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said in an interview.

While several Republican governors resisted shutdown efforts during the spring, some have begun to warn their residents that they are hardly immune.

Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s top health officer, told residents recently to be prepared for a lack of a hospital bed if they crash their cars or a lack of ventilators if they suffer a heart attack.

“If we’re not careful,” he said, “Mississippi will look like New York.”

States where governors followed Trump's absurd politicalization of the pandemic are the states experiencing the second spike of the first wave. A vaccine-- a real one, not a Trump one-- could save them, but one has to wonder just how many cases it will take states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, Iowa, the Carolinas, even Mississippi and Alabama before majorities of voters give up on the Republican Party and consign their candidates to political oblivion. (I didn't mention Wyoming because it's the country's lost cause and if everyone the state but ne person dies of COVID-19, that last person will still vote for Trump, for Cynthia Lummis, and for Liz Cheney.)

• Florida +8,530
• Texas +4,330
• Arizona +3,857
• Georgia +2,225
• Iowa +478
• South Carolina +1,381
• Alabama +358
• Mississippi +361

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!

Whatever You Wanted To Know About Bernie And Why He's Running And What He Plans To Do In The White House

John Harwood did an excellent interview with Bernie for, of all places, CNBC. Bernie explains what Democratic Socialism means-- basically working towards completing what FDR started. "what I'm trying to do in this campaign is pick up where Roosevelt left off and say that economic rights must be considered human rights." You should watch it in full. Believe me, this isn't the kind of interview you're going to ever see from Maddow on MSNBC.

Harwood wrote that "Four years ago, his message of dramatic change to remedy income inequality and other economic ills won a large following in his fight against Hillary Clinton for the nomination of a party he does not even formally embrace. The results encouraged him enough to try again for 2020, even at age 78. This race poses different and perhaps more formidable challenges. The political independent faces not only a moderate, conventional front-runner in former Vice President Joe Biden, but also a powerful fellow liberal in Sen. Elizabeth Warren brandishing ideas nearly as ambitious as his. In debates and on the campaign trail, Warren has expanded her support this year; polls suggest Sanders has not."

John Harwood: One health question as we start. Has what you went through affected you emotionally, how you think about life or what’s important?

Bernie Sanders: As somebody who has had great endurance as a kid-- I was a long-distance runner, thank God I’ve been healthy as a horse-- it was a little bit shocking to me when the doctor there told me, “Hey, you’re having a heart attack.” I could not believe that that was the case.

I don’t want to be overly political in saying this, but my life is political. I went into the hospital and I didn’t worry about whether I could afford to pay. I have good insurance. And I’m sitting there, and thinking somebody else here has that same discomfort, and they’re sitting and thinking, “Should I go into the hospital and end up with a large bill? Maybe it’ll get better tomorrow, maybe I’ll forget about it.” Some of those people die or suffer permanent health damage. That’s one of those things that I thought about.

John Harwood: You recently distinguished yourself from Senator Warren-- she’s a capitalist to her bones, and you’re not.

Bernie Sanders: That’s how she has defined herself.

John Harwood: Is that just a marker of you being a little more progressive, or do you think that has real practical significance?

Bernie Sanders: I think it does, in a couple of ways. At this particular moment in history-- where the average worker has not seen a real inflation accounted for wage increase in 45 years despite an explosion of technology and productivity, where you have a political system which is totally corrupt and owned by billionaires, where you have massive amounts of corporate corruption, I think the time is now, if we’re going to save this country, for a political revolution.

It’s not just more regulation. It’s about involving millions of people, working people, young people, people who believe in justice, in the political process, to tell the corporate elite that enough is enough. We’re going to change the system politically, economically. We’re going to change the value system of this country. We’re not going to worship corrupt billionaires anymore, we’re going to respect teachers and child care workers and cops and firefighters and small business people. That’s what our campaign, uniquely I believe, is about.

John Harwood: Do you have any problem with the work that she’s done in the past, advising corporations-- Dow Corning, Dow Chemical-- on legal problems?

Bernie Sanders: I’ll let the American people make that judgment. I have never worked for a corporation myself. I’ve never carried their baggage in the United States Senate.

People have the opportunity to look at my record. It’s not last year, not two years ago-- I was for “Medicare for All” when I was mayor of Burlington in the 1980s. During my career, I have taken on every powerful corporate interest, whether it’s the drug companies, the insurance companies, fossil fuel, Wall Street. I’ve been doing this for 30 or 40 years. These are not new ideas for me.

John Harwood: You identify as a democratic socialist. You got the endorsement of Representative Ocasio-Cortez over the weekend. How far do you think you can take the United States of America toward democratic socialism?

Bernie Sanders: It depends on what we mean by democratic socialism. What I am trying to do, in many ways, is pick up where Franklin Delano Roosevelt left off. In a not widely publicized State of The Union speech he gave in 1944, this is what he said in so many words: “We have political rights. You have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion. All of that’s great, but what we don’t have are guaranteed economic rights.”

So you could vote, but you also have the privilege of sleeping out on the street. You can protest, but you also have the freedom to work 60 or 70 hours a week at starvation wages. You have the freedom not to have health insurance, not to be able to send your kids to college. What I’m trying to do in this campaign is say that economic rights must be considered as human rights.

John Harwood: Do you also embrace the part of FDR that said adversaries hate me and I welcome their hatred?

Bernie Sanders: Absolutely. You can judge a person by the friends they have. You can judge a candidate for president by the enemies they have.

There was a guy who was head of Third Way, the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. He said, “Bernie Sanders is an existential threat to the Democratic Party.” I agree with him. I am. I want to convert the Democratic Party, to break its dependency on big money and corporate interests, and make it a party of working-class people, of young people, of all people who believe in justice.

John Harwood: Would it be your intention to appoint democratic socialists to big positions in your administration?

Bernie Sanders: Well, you’re going a little bit too crazy on the word here.

I will appoint people who believe in the working class and the working families of this country, who are prepared to stand up to the incredibly powerful corporate interests, that today dominate our economic and political life. I will appoint an attorney general, who for the first time in modern history, will go after the white-collar crime, which I believe is rampant. Instead of arresting kids whether they are selling marijuana, maybe we go after some of the crooks on Wall Street or in other major industries. I will appoint an attorney general who is prepared to enforce the antitrust laws that are on the books, that have been neglected for so very long.

So when I talk about democratic socialism, let’s be clear, what does it mean? Let’s not get people overly nervous about it.

John Harwood: The DSA website said, “We can’t eliminate private corporations in the short term, so we have to confront them.” Would it be your intention, in the medium or long term, not to have private corporations?

Bernie Sanders: No, that’s not my intention. What is my intention, though, is to make sure that workers have representation on those large corporations. We’ve presented the Corporate Accountability Act. Not terribly radical-- it exists in one form or another in other countries, including Germany. Instead of just being a cog in the machine, what about giving that worker some power and responsibility in terms of the shaping of that corporation?

Should Wall Street and a handful of members of a board determine whether a factory remains in the United States or whether it goes to China? Should a handful of wealthy board members determine whether or not there is a stock buy-back, whether workers get decent wage increases and decent benefits?

John Harwood: You’re not impressed by the statement that Jamie Dimon and the Business Roundtable put out saying that, “We are going to take considerations broader than just profit into our practices.” You don’t think they’re serious?

Bernie Sanders: No. Of course not.

John Harwood: If you require that 45% of the board be workers, a required distribution of profits to workers, if you ban stock buybacks, do you accept that would have a slowing effect on economic growth?

Bernie Sanders: It’s not good enough just to look at economic growth. That has been the biblical stature that corporate America has been looking at-- we have growth, we have growth. The average worker is no better off than he or she was 45 years ago. In the last 30 years, the top 1% have seen a $21 trillion increase in their wealth. The bottom half of America’s seen a decline in their wealth. Half the people today are living paycheck to paycheck.

The question is, is our economy working for the people here? Is it working for ordinary Americans? Do people feel secure? Do they know that when they get sick, they can go to a doctor in a hospital? Do they know that their kids, everything being equal, can have a better standard of living?

John Harwood: How do you factor in the fact that modern global capitalism has substantially reduced poverty in other parts of the world?

Bernie Sanders: When you talk about the global economy, you’re right. Thank God. The terrible, terrible poverty in the developing world, some of that is receding. That’s great. On the other hand, you are looking at an unbelievable and grotesque level of global income and wealth inequality. You are seeing in country after country, the incredible power of large multinational corporations and Wall Street in determining the future of those countries. You’re also seeing in many countries a movement toward increased authoritarianism and away from human rights and democracy.

John Harwood: On Wall Street reform, you say you want to end “too-big-to-jail.” You said the other day that Sherman Act violations by monopolists ought to have the potential for criminal indictments. I wonder if you think that principle also applies to cases like the Boeing CEO. He’s been stripped of his position as board chairman, the head of the Max airplane was fired. Is that the kind of case that criminal law is relevant to?

Bernie Sanders: This is the kind of discussion that we need as a nation, and that will take place when I’m president. I’ll give you three examples.

In 2008, Wall Street drove this country into the worst economic recession in modern history. Wall Street has paid tens and tens of billions of dollars in fines for their illegal activity. Wasn’t a mistake. They were selling subprime mortgages that they knew were worthless.

How many of these Wall Street executives went to jail?

John Harwood: I don’t think any.

Bernie Sanders: No, and that is why the American people are disgusted with what goes on in Washington, D.C. They see a kid selling marijuana, gets picked up by the cop. That kid will have a criminal record the rest of his life. And a Wall Street executive that causes a massive tragedy for our economy, no punishment.

Another example-- the pharmaceutical industry. They’re not only greedy, they are corrupt. They are engaged in collusion and in price-fixing. Right now, as you know, state attorneys general are mounting a massive lawsuit against the opioid manufacturers. What they are saying is, these guys knew exactly what they were doing. They were selling an addictive product all over this country. Many have died. How do you define that behavior? I call it criminal.

One more example. How do we define, how do we describe the behavior of the fossil fuel industry?

John Harwood: You tell me.

Bernie Sanders: All right, I will tell you. They have known, for a very long time, the executives of Exxon Mobil and other fossil fuel industries knew that the product that they were producing was causing climate change and in fact helping to destroy this planet.

John Harwood: You put them in the same category as tobacco executives.

Bernie Sanders: Exactly. If you are producing a product and you don’t know that it’s causing harm, that’s forgivable. But if you are like the tobacco industry-- we go before Congress, we swear that all of our research has shown that there is not a problem with tobacco causing cancer or heart disease. They lied. My father died because he smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Millions of people are in the same boat. These are liars. These are criminals. By the way, they’re still selling their bloody products all over the world. Same thing with fossil fuel.

We need as a nation to do something we have never done before, and say to these corporate executives who have so much power, we’re tired of your greed and we are tired of your corruption. I support and respect business people who produce new products, create jobs. God bless them. I do not respect or support criminals who are killing people, who are harming people, and are lying about what they’re doing.

John Harwood: Let me ask a question about real-world governance rather than campaign rhetoric. Joe Biden said earlier this year, nothing really fundamental has to change. You have proposed enormous changes. Would the practical results of a Biden administration really be that different from the practical results in a Sanders administration, given the fact that there are so many constraints on things getting done in Congress?

Bernie Sanders: John, you’re forgetting one very important thing: I am a different type of politician, and my administration will be unique in modern American history at least going back to FDR.

You talk about the fact that nothing much really big ever happens. And there’s truth to that. But what you’re missing is that right now you have a Congress and a White House that are dominated by a corporate elite who have unbelievable amounts of money and influence over the political and economic life of this country. I’m not going to be dominated by those guys. I will take them on and I’ll beat them.

The way we beat them is with the understanding that real change has never taken place without millions of people standing up and demanding that change. That is the history of the labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the gay movement, the environmental movement. I will not only be commander in chief of the military, I will be organizer in chief. I will be organizing with a strong grassroots movement.

We already have the nucleus. It’ll be involving the labor unions, the African American communities, the Latino community, the young people of this country. All people who believe in justice, working-class people, who are prepared to stand up and fight and take on the corporate elite. And when you do that, John, then you’re not talking about incremental changes.

John Harwood: But even if you get elected, even if it’s successful to the point that Democrats win a small majority in the Senate, is Joe Manchin going to vote for your program? Is Jon Tester going to vote for your program?

Bernie Sanders: Yeah. Damn right they will. You know why? We’re going to go to West Virginia.

Your average politician sits around and he or she thinks, “Let’s see. If I do this, I’m going to have the big money interests putting 30-second ads against me. So I’d better not do it.” But now they’re going to have to think, “If I don’t support an agenda that works for working people, I’m going to have President Sanders coming to my state and rallying working-class people.”

You know what? The 1 percent is very powerful-- no denying that. The 99%, when they’re organized and prepared to stand up and fight, they are far more powerful.

John Harwood: You’ve been running for president for five years. If there were a latent political revolution waiting to happen, wouldn’t we see more of it by now?

Bernie Sanders: Let’s talk about that. Think about the ideas that I introduced four years ago. Four years ago, $15 an hour minimum wage-- “radical and crazy.” Four years ago, Medicare for All, health care as a human right-- “Bernie, that’s un-American.” Seventy-one percent of Democrats now support that. Climate change is a major threat.

John Harwood: That’s more people talking about it, not stuff having gotten through the process. Bernie Sanders: How’s it going to get through the process when Donald Trump is president, who is beholden to his billionaire friends? And when Mitch McConnell runs the Senate?

But the House of Representatives did pass a $15 an hour minimum wage. The House of Representatives did pass significant election reform, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s waiting. The ideas that I am talking about are by and large supported by the American people.

As president, I help bring our country together by talking about issues that Republicans agree on. Republicans think that we should not have a trade policy that sends good-paying jobs to China and Mexico. I agree with that. We can bring people together around an agenda that works for working families, not just the 1%.

John Harwood: One of the constraints has been fiscal. Senator Warren is producing plans to pay for Medicare for All. You’ve identified revenue sources for about half of it. Do you think it’s important to identify revenue sources for the other half? Or do you believe, as those who subscribe to modern monetary theory believe, that we’ve been a little bit too constrained by concerns about the deficit?

Bernie Sanders: We’re trying to pay for the damn thing. At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, it is my view that the wealthiest people in this country, the top 1/10th of 1% should be paying substantially more than they’re paying right now. You have an insane situation. Let my Wall Street friends there tell me why it makes sense.

John Harwood: You have Wall Street friends?

Bernie Sanders: No, I don’t. That was just a metaphor. I was trying to sound nice.

But you know, please, defend for me Amazon, owned by the wealthiest guy in the country, making $11 billion in profits last year and not paying a nickel in federal income taxes. I want to hear the defense. John, I don’t hear it. There is no defense. And it’s not just Amazon, it’s dozens of these corporations.

John Harwood: But you still have more revenue to go to make it fully paid for, yes?

Bernie Sanders: The fight right now is to get the American people to understand that we’re spending twice as much per capita, that of course, we can pay for it. We’re paying it now in a very reactionary, regressive way. I want to pay for it in a progressive way.

You’re asking me to come up with an exact detailed plan of how every American-- how much you’re going to pay more in taxes, how much I’m going to pay. I don’t think I have to do that right now.

John Harwood: You think it’s foolish that Senator Warren is trying to?

Bernie Sanders: I’m not saying it’s foolish. All that I’m saying is that we have laid out a variety of options that are progressive. We’ll have that debate. At the end of the day, we will pay for every nickel of Medicare for All, and it will save the overwhelming majority of the American people, who will no longer pay premiums.

John Harwood: Would you envision that at the end of a Sanders administration, the deficit would not be larger than it is now?

Bernie Sanders: Under Trump, what we have seen is a huge increase in the deficit. I think I will do a lot better than Trump.

Every major proposal that we have brought forth-- whether it’s Medicare for All, dealing with climate change, transforming our energy system, making public colleges and universities tuition-free and eliminating all student debt in America-- that’s all paid for.

John Harwood: Congress has not been able to raise the gas tax by pennies to fix crumbling roads and bridges. You’ve got a wealth tax, which is enormous. Congress has not been able to pass card-check unionization. You’re proposing a huge increase in the clout of organized labor. How are those things even conceivable in 2019?

Bernie Sanders: OK, it’s a good question. It’s a fair question. But you’re looking at status quo politics. I often use a statement that Nelson Mandela made: “It always seems impossible until it is done.”

These ideas-- “Oh my God, it can’t be done.” Imagine everybody in America having health care. Duh-- that’s what exists in every other country on Earth. Why is that so impossible?

Imagine the United States leading the world in transforming our energy system and saving the planet for our kids and grandchildren. “Oh my God, it’s impossible.” Really? What’s the alternative?

You’re right in saying that these are big ideas. I concede that. You’re right in saying that we have more or less a dysfunctional Congress. I agree with you.

But where you’re not right is understanding that if you and I were sitting here 25 years ago, and I said to you, “You know John, I think that gay marriage will be legal in every state in this country”. What would you have said to me? You would have said, “you’re crazy.”

John Harwood: Yes, I would have.

Bernie Sanders: I grew up at a time when African Americans could not vote, right? Kids could not go to a local school, could not drink at a water fountain. And change took place. Martin Luther King Jr., others, they stood up and they fought. 100 years ago, women did not have the right to vote, because as we all know, women’s place is in the house; 100 years ago-- not a long time.

Change can take place when you motivate people, when you get people organized when they stand up for justice. That’s what I believe.

John Harwood: If you’ve got a one-shot in your first year...

Bernie Sanders: Wrong question! I know where you’re going. You’re going to ask me to prioritize.

John Harwood: Yes.

Bernie Sanders: No. Once you get moving, you can move. I think that the American people can chew bubble gum and walk at the same time.

We must save the planet. That’s not an option. We have got to combat climate change. America’s got to lead the world.

I will demand that every American has health care as a human right. I will not allow hundreds of thousands of bright young kids not to be able to go to college because they lack the income or 45 million people to be suffering from large student debt.

John Harwood: You don’t accept that you’ve got to pick one to start?

Bernie Sanders: No. That’s old thinking.

John Harwood: Last question. When we did this interview four years ago, you ended it by saying, “don’t underestimate me.”

Bernie Sanders: Did I say that, John?

John Harwood: You did.

Bernie Sanders: And you underestimated me.

John Harwood: I confess that I did. But right now, I think a whole lot of people are discounting your chances, or in your view may be underestimating you. What would you say to them?

Bernie Sanders: When I became mayor of the city of Burlington way back when in 1981, a local reporter said, “Well the odds of Sanders winning against the five-term incumbent, running as an independent, are about 100 to 1.” I won. Last time around, taking on the entire Democratic establishment, we ended up winning 22 states and got more young people’s votes than Trump and Clinton combined.

The ideas that I talked about four years ago seemed so radical and extreme. Today they’re kind of mainstream ideas, right?

Don’t underestimate me.

Everyone should vote for Bernie, except the selfish and most greedy, self-interested billionaires. Everyone else should. Great again? Making America great again? There's no one else but Bernie to do that who's running for president. This 2020 ActBlue thermometer on the right is a place where you can contribute to Bernie's campaign; I did; you should too. And you can also contribute to progressive congressional candidates who support him and his platform and will help him pass the programs he's talking about. I want to repeat a comment Washington state candidate Rebecca Parson gave me for why she endorsed Bernie: "I am backing Bernie because he's the best choice for the working class. He's been saying the same things for decades, even when it was inconvenient, because he believes them. Unlike all other presidential candidates, Bernie supports federal rent control (as a renter myself, this is massive); supports true, single-payer, non-wishy washy M4A; wants to cancel ALL student debt; and can actually beat Trump. And unlike all other candidates, his theory of change is one that will result in a true transformation of this country instead of surface-level reforms. Bernie's theory of change is the 'inside-outside strategy,' and unlike Obama, he won't abandon the grassroots when he's in the White House. For all these reasons and more, I endorse and support Bernie all the way."