Will Bill Taylor Wind Up As The Hero Of The Trump Impeachment? And Viktor Orban, Along With Putin, Of Course, The Villain?

Rebecca Ballhaus, Siobhan Hughes and Natalie Andrews reported for the Wall Street Journal that members of Congress were shocked by Bill Taylor's testimony. Michigan Democrat Andy Levin, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee who has just come back from an official visit to the sprawling Rohingy refugee camps in Bangladesh seemed gobsmacked telling the reporters "All I have to say is that in my 10 short months in Congress-- it’s not even noon, right-- and this is my most disturbing day in Congress so far. Very troubling."

Washington Post reporters Anne Gearan, Rachel Bade and John Wagner wrote that Acting Ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor's testimony directly contradicted Trump’s denial that he used the money allocated by Congress for Ukraine's defense as leverage for his own political gain. "Upon arriving in Kyiv last spring he became alarmed by secondary diplomatic channels involving U.S. officials that he called “weird,” Taylor said, according to a copy of his lengthy opening statement obtained by the Washington Post. Taylor walked lawmakers through a series of conversations he had with other U.S. diplomats who were trying to obtain what one called the “deliverable” of Ukrainian help investigating Trump’s political rivals. Taylor said he spoke to Ambassador Gordon Sondland, the U.S. envoy to the European Union. 'During that phone call, Amb. Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President [Volodymyr] Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election,' Taylor said in the statement... 'Amb. Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations-- in fact, Amb. Sondland said, everything was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,' Taylor told House investigators."

“He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.’

...“It was just the most damning testimony I’ve heard,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said in an interview partway into Taylor’s testimony.

...“He drew a very specific direct line from President Trump to the withholding of foreign aid and the refusal of a meeting,” between Trump and the new Ukrainian leader, Wasserman Schultz said, “directly related to both insisting on Zelensky publicly say that he’ll have an investigation, that they will investigate.”

...An official working on the impeachment inquiry said Tuesday that Taylor is testifying under subpoena after the State Department attempted to block his appearance.

“The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena to compel his testimony this morning,” said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss the arrangements. “As is required of him, Ambassador Taylor is now complying with the subpoena and answering questions from both Democratic and Republican Members and staff.”

Taylor took the job on temporary assignment earlier this year after the sitting ambassador was removed, in what she told the committees was political retaliation by the Trump administration.

Taylor, a retired former ambassador to Ukraine and a foreign policy elder statesman, had exchanged text messages with two other diplomats in which he called it “crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign” and a “nightmare scenario.”

“It’s like if you have a 1,000 piece puzzle, which is what this is,” Wasserman Schultz said. “This filled in a ton of that puzzle.”

She and other Democratic lawmakers said Taylor’s morning testimony stood in contrast to the appearance last week of Sondland, a Trump donor and a key player in efforts to secure a statement from Zelensky committing to investigations.

“There were many things that Ambassador Sondland didn’t remember that Ambassador Taylor remembered in excruciating detail,” Wasserman Schultz said.

...Taylor agreed to go to Kyiv as a placeholder ambassador because he thought the U.S.-Ukraine relationship was at a critical moment following Zelensky’s election last spring, other diplomats said.

Taylor wanted to reinforce U.S. support for Zelensky’s anti-corruption agenda and his independence from Russia, people who know Taylor said.

He also told friends he worried that the relationship would drift after the forced recall of former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, and he made it clear within the State Department that he objected to her treatment, current and former administration officials said.

On July 21, four days before Trump and Zelensky had a phone call in which Trump asked Zelensky to conduct those investigations, Taylor exchanged text messages with Sondland.

Zelensky wants Ukraine to be “taken seriously” and not just serve as “an instrument in Washington domestic, reelection politics,” Taylor told Sondland, a key player in the effort to draw Ukraine into the election-related investigations.

And on Sept. 1, the day Vice President Pence was set to meet with Zelensky, Taylor again texted Sondland.

“Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” Taylor asked.

“Call me,” Sondland replied, in what Democrats have said is probably an effort to prevent a paper trail.

On Sept. 8, Taylor and Sondland tried to get on the phone with Kurt Volker, then the special U.S. envoy for Ukraine, but Volker couldn’t hear the conversation.

“Gordon and I just spoke,” Taylor texted Volker. “I can brief you if you and Gordon don’t connect.” Taylor continued: “The nightmare is they give the interview and don’t get the security assistance. The Russians love it. (And I quit.)”

Taylor probably was referring to a potential statement to the press from the Zelensky government committing to the investigations. He was apparently worried that Zelensky would give in, but still not receive his promised aid, and that Russia would then use that opening to portray the new Ukrainian leader as a patsy.

Volker turned over copies of the text messages when he testified voluntarily earlier this month.

“The message to the Ukrainians (and Russians) we send with the decision on security assistance is key,” Taylor texted the next day. “With the hold, we have already shaken their faith in us. Thus my nightmare scenario.”

Sondland replied, saying that “we have identified the best pathway forward.”

“As I said on the phone,” Taylor replied, “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

Five hours went by before Sondland replied. Sondland later testified that he was relaying only what Trump had told him in an intervening phone call.

“Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions,” he wrote. “The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind. The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign.”

Democrats have pointed to that message, which differs in tone and detail from the chatty earlier exchanges, as an effort to establish a cover story.

Taylor is a former Army officer and Vietnam War veteran who has served in government posts in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. He is expected to return to his senior position at the U.S. Institute for Peace sometime next year.

The official White House response, from Trumpist Regime Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, was absolutely classic... and beyond shameful in the way it smeared Taylor, a West Point graduate who fought in Vietnam and has honorably served this country ever since: "President Trump has done nothing wrong-- this is a coordinated smear campaign from far-left lawmakers and radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution. There was no quid pro quo. Today was just more triple hearsay." Meanwhile, Rep. William "Lacy" Clay (D-MO) termed Taylor's testimony yesterday "a smoking canon."

What a shame Congress can't subpoena Hungarian neo-Nazi Viktor Orban, who-- along with Putin-- persuaded that Ukraine is an enemy. David Brennan, reporting for Newsweek wrote that White House aides were so worried about Trump's affinity for authoritarian leaders that they attempted to block his meeting with far-right Hungarian strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The efforts to keep Orban away from Trump broke down early in the year "as some officials left the White House and were replaced by others more sympathetic to Orban's euroskeptic, anti-immigration, anti-free press and other far-right sentiments-- among them acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Orban eventually visited the White House in May. His visit began with an hour-long meeting with Trump at which nobody took notes. After, the pair were joined by the Hungarian foreign minister and then-National Security Advisor John Bolton. Trump praised Orban at the meeting, telling reporters, 'I know he's a tough man but he's a respected man.' He also suggested that the prime minister had 'done the right thing, according to many people on immigration.' Democrats Eliot Engel, chairman of the Foreign Affairs committee, and Marcy Kaptur co-chair of the Congressional Hungarian caucus, didn't share Trump's admiration for Orban. Before the May meeting, the pair released a joint statement that said Orban represents 'so many things that are antithetical to core American values.' They continued: 'He has overseen a rollback of democracy in his country, used anti-Semitic and xenophobic tropes in his political messaging, and cozied up to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. He has also suppressed independent media and academic freedom in an effort to consolidate his increasingly autocratic rule.'" Sounds like Trump's kind of guy.

Orban's role was detailed by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent at a closed-door session with House impeachment investigations last week, the Post explained. He said Trump's conversations with Orban helped undermine the president's opinion of Zelenskiy in the lead up to the now-infamous July phone call. Orban's opposition to Zelenskiy and his reformist government in neighboring Ukraine is both ideological and driven by regional political concerns.

Orban hopes Russia continues dismembering Ukraine so that Hungary can grab the Transcarpathia region on its own border.

Trump Will Never Tweet That He Has Decided To Institute Fascism Per Se

The regime is moving at break-neck speed to set its neo-fascist agenda in cement and change the country fundamentally. “Billboards. TV campaigns. Radio programs. The anti-immigrant government… uses different levers to influence public opinion… Even school textbooks… [T]he far-right leader’s message is now woven into the school curriculum.” The country’s Constitution has been re-written and the judiciary reshaped. The leader’s appointees or supporters dominate many artistic institutions and universities. A growing number of plays and exhibitions have had nationalist undertones. Religious groups and nongovernment organizations critical of [his party] have seen funding dry up. He has especially vilified pro-democracy organizations funded by the Hungarian-American philanthropist, George Soros… National opinion surveys are used to steer public opinion as much as collect it, while history is also up for grabs. The government has jousted with educators over textbooks while promoting a narrative of… victimhood and ethnocentrism.”

Steve Bannon: “He’s my hero… the most significant guy on the scene right now.” But “That scene, some say, is the unraveling of democracy… on the “threshold of autocracy.” Another supporter insists that “The government is using its democratic legitimacy not only to reform the state but to reform the society… This is common in democratic societies.”

The leader is doing what he can “to increase the life span of his governance.” And a vert well-connected “right-wing theorist has written widely that the duty of nongovernmental groups is to preserve national identity and uphold Christian values. Most tellingly, he argues that since an elected government represents the will of the people— and since civil society should strive to fulfill the people’s will— then civil society exists to carry out a ruling party’s manifesto, rather than to challenge it. “Obviously, civil society needs to help and support the government to follow through with its promises,” [he] said in an interview this month. “This is an incredibly important thing.”

But while tax dollars are channeled towards government supporters, the government has simultaneously squeezed alternative sources of funding for NGOs that oppose its ideas, especially human rights groups and arts groups, universities and churches.

Sounds like what the Trumpist Regime is headed for, but this was something I read in the NY Times when Roland was trying to persuade me to go back to Hungary with him. To close for comfort?

think tank called Veritas, has a more demonstrably political aim. Its main mission is to provide revisionist interpretations of 20th-century Hungarian history— including the reign of Miklos Horthy, the autocrat who led Hungary before and during the Second World War.

Soon after Veritas was founded in 2014, its director, Sandor Szakaly, gave a sense of what this revision might involve. He described the deportation of Jews under Horthy in 1941 as a mere “police action against aliens.”

This kind of revisionism has also crept into the national curriculum. High school graduates can now be tested on the new preamble to the Hungarian Constitution— a controversial text which implies that Hungarian nationality is exclusively Christian, even though Hungary has a substantial Jewish minority. Its wording also reduces the agency of Hungarian officials in the final year of the Second World War, during which time hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were murdered.

To exert greater influence over churches and synagogues themselves, Fidesz has also stripped hundreds of religious institutions of their legal status, and scrapped their state funding.

And like Trump, Viktor Orban, Hungary’s elected fascist leader is a Putin puppet. Don’t recall Hungary’s rehabilitated national hero, Admiral Miklos Horthy? About a year ago were tried putting his legacy into the context of another Hungarian fascist and current day admirer of his (and Trump, Sebastian Gorka. Or watch this if you want to get a better idea of where Trump’s brand of neo-fascism is leading:

Not Even U.K. Right-Wing Crackpot Boris Johnson Wants To Be Associated With Trumpism

The editors of the Washington Post agreed they would never endorse Trump, calling him "uniquely unqualified" to be president and a "unique threat to American democracy... A Trump presidency would be dangerous for the nation and the world." In case anyone wasn't paying close attention, the editors wrote that "The Republican Party has moved the lunatic fringe onto center stage, with discourse that renders impossible the kind of substantive debate upon which any civil democracy depends." The NY Times editors weren't as florid in their condemnation, but they didn't leave any doubt about what they thought about the danger Trump poses for America either:

Given a chance to replace the empty sloganeering and self-aggrandizement of his primary campaign with solid proposals worthy of Americans’ trust, Mr. Trump made clear that he instead intends to terrify voters into supporting him, who will protect them from violence, a word that occurs over and over in his remarks.

...The consequences for the Republican Party still lie ahead. Mr. Trump emerged as a political force with the racist claim that President Obama was not born in the United States. He has since sought advantage by playing to disaffected people’s worst instincts, inventing scapegoats and conspiracy theories, waging and inciting vicious attacks on those who disagree with him. He is a poisonous messenger for a legitimate demand: that an ossified party dedicate itself to improving working people’s lives, instead of serving the elite.

The brainwashed Hate Talk Radio and Fox News zombies can easily dismiss that as the liberal media ganging up on their hero. They'll probably say the exact same thing, though, about the far right propaganda sheet, the Weekly Standard which has been pushing a similar line on Trump, as Stephen Hayes did again yesterday: Donald Trump Is Crazy, And So Is The GOP For Embracing Him. Regarding Trump's childish accusations that Ted Cruz's father was somehow involved with the assassination of JFK-- which Trump was babbling about again Friday-- Hayes pointed out that "this isn't the behavior of a rational, stable individual. It should embarrass those who have endorsed him and disgrace those who have attempted to normalize him." And, of course, my normalizing Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin and Michael Savage, the Republican Party-- including the Weekly Standard own what these 5th rate intellects have done to their party and are attempting to do to America.

The degree of this normalization is stunning. The Republican nominee for president made comments Friday that one might expect from a patient in a mental institution, the kind of stuff you might read on blog with really small print and pictures of UFOs. And yet his remarks barely register as news. There are no condemnations from fellow Republicans. His supporters shrug them off as Trump being Trump.

To the extent Trump's latest outburst has generated any attention, it's been a discussion of the tactical mistake he's made. There's been head-shaking that he's gone "off-message," expressions of wonder at his lack of discipline, speculation about the electoral impact of his latest comments, disbelief about the timing of his comments and bewilderment at their target.

All of this misses the point. It's not about tactics or messaging. It's about something simpler and something much more important: Donald Trump is not of sound mind.

His amplification of the Cruz-Oswald conspiracies is part of a long pattern of embracing crazy. He hinted that Antonin Scalia was murdered. He's suggested autism is linked to vaccinations. He claimed "thousands" of Muslims celebrated in the streets of New Jersey after 9/11. He said many people consider Vince Foster's death a "murder" and called it "very fishy." And before he ran for president, his deepest foray into politics was a campaign to prove that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States. (It failed.)

Trump has praised Alex Jones, whose radio program is to conspiracy theories what ESPN is to sports. Jones, a prominent 9/11 truther, claimed there was a "98 percent chance" that the 9/11 attacks were controlled bombings perpetrated by the U.S. government. In an appearance on Jones's radio show last year, Trump offered the host deferential praise. "Your reputation is amazing," Trump said. "I will not let you down."

The implications of Trump's irrationality are troubling. Would a President Trump believe-- and potentially act on-- conspiracy theories presented to him in a bilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin? Trump has expressed admiration for Putin, just as he's praised the National Enquirer. In his comments Friday, Trump called the National Enquirer "respected" and wondered aloud why such a credible publication hasn't won the Pulitzer Prize. If he accepts as fact the reports in a publication like the Enquirer, why wouldn't he believe someone like Putin? The possibilities for manipulating the leader of the free world are endless and terrifying.

So, what should Republican leaders do? Trump is, after all, their nominee for president and the leader of their party. Isn't it better to simply make the best of a bad situation?

I suppose that's one possibility and I'd assume it's what virtually all Republicans will do. There's little doubt that this bit of Trumpian insanity will fade away like the ones that came before. So this party of followers, nearly all of them, will keep their heads down and wait for this latest incident to be eclipsed by other news-- the Munich attacks, Hillary Clinton's running mate, the Democratic National Convention.

The better course would be to speak out against Trump, to say in public what some of you said when you initially opposed his candidacy, to say what many of you have said to me privately: Donald Trump isn't fit to serve as president, and electing him president would be dangerous. That might mean saying that you're unwilling to support the nominee of your party. It might mean retracting an endorsement.

Trump supporters would pretend that your refusal to support Trump means you're backing Hillary Clinton. It's an absurd argument, of course. There are other options. This election is not a "binary choice" as Trump backers claim. If the top candidates are, on the one hand, a congenital liar who jeopardized national security in service of her own ambition, and on the other, an unstable conspiracy theorist, the best choice is none of the above-- a non-endorsement, a third party candidate, a write-in.

Doing this would be risky and perhaps costly. It'd also be right.

Even right-wing goofball, U.K. foreign secretary Boris Johnson wants to be clear his policy agenda-- including Brexit-- is not related to Trump or Trumpism. The U.K. Conservative Party has enough problems without the taint of that stink sticking to them. Speaking in New York, at the UN, Johnson dismissed a suggestion posed by a reporter that Trump’s campaign pledge to "put Americanism before internationalism" might bear "similarities to Brexit." Johnson: I would draw a very, very strong contrast between Brexit and any kind of isolationism... Brexit means us being more outward looking, more engaged, more energetic, more enthusiastic on the world stage than ever before." The Guardian reported that "Johnson cautioned that it would be 'quite wrong' for him to take sides within the US election campaign, and stressed that 'we in the UK government will work with whoever is elected.' But his remarks appeared to amount to a pointed rejection of suggestions by several commentators that Brexit and Trump’s ascent are part of one wave of inward-facing rightwing populism." Hungary's fascist prime minister, Viktor Orban, isn't as reticent about embracing fellow fascist Trump, referring to him as "this valiant American presidential candidate."

"I am not a Donald Trump campaigner," he said in the televised speech. "I never thought I would ever entertain the thought that, of the open options, he (Trump) would be better for Europe and for Hungary.

"But I listened to the candidate and I must tell you he made three proposals to combat terrorism. And as a European I could have hardly articulated better what Europe needs... If we keep prioritizing democracy over stability in regions where we are unlikely to succeed with that, we will create instability, not democracy."