Moscow Mitch Completes A Cover-Up That Doesn't Really Cover Up Much At All

Though the House impeachment managers proved beyond any reasonable doubt that Trump was guilty on both counts he was charged, the Senate voted 52-48 to cover up those crimes, let alone the others he wasn't even charged with. Mitt Romney was the only Republican with the guts to vote his conscience and for the best interests of the country. The Washington Post noted that he said his decision to vote to convict Trumpy-the-Clown was "the hardest decision" he has ever faced. Listening to his speech the Senate floor, above, doesn't sound like it was really that hard of a decision. The decision was only hard for faithless politicians worried about Trump's penchant for revenge. I want to add that very real courage was demonstrated yesterday by Doug Jones, who is up for reelection in November... in Alabama. He has told friends that he had no choice but to follow his conscience without taking partisan politics into account. David Perdue (R-GA) did exactly the opposite, as former Columbus mayor Teresa Tomlinson explained right after the vote: "The evidence was clear-- overwhelming, in fact, as Lamar Alexander admitted. When David Perdue voted today to acquit the president he made an impermissible political decision in a constitutional matter."

Every progressive Democrat running for Senate should do a similar meme

So why did Romney vote to convict, while Moscow Mitch lead the rest of the traitorous Republicans to pretend Trump wasn't guilty or that his crimes weren't serious enough? "My faith," said Romney, "is at the heart of whom I am. I am profoundly religious," subtly contrasting himself with the irreligious and satanic Trump. It looks like he had to prevent himself from crying at that point. He reminded his colleagues that "the verdictis ours to render under our Constitution. The people will judge us for how well and faithfully we do our duty." Imagine Trump enablers up for reelection in November-- Cory Gardner, Joni Ernst, Susan Collins, Martha McSally, Thom Tillis, David Perdue, John Cornyn, Dan Sullivan for example-- squirming in their seats, figuratively if not literally. I asked Andrew Romanoff, the progressive Democrat taking on Cory Gardner-- and having to fight off the status quo instincts of Schumer at the same time-- and he told me that "6 years ago, Cory Gardner promised to be a 'new kind' of politicians. Today, he proved again: that line was as old-- and as hollow-- as they come. Gardner ignored his constitutional duty, blocked evidence and acquitted a President who boasted about breaking the law. It’s time for both to go." Susan Collins' progressive opponent, Betsy Sweet was just as critical of Collins: "Senator Collins 'disappointed' but voting to acquit. She said on national tv that she thought he had learned some lessons from this. But Trump, when asked, said he didn’t learn anything because he had done nothing wrong. The real question is, have we learned our lesson-- which is that Collins will always vote with McConnell when he wants her to. She will always put party above democracy. Something I will never do as Maine’s next Senator."

Romney made it clear it was anything but a "perfect call"-- for anyone but Trump and Putin-- and immediately after he was done speaking, the White House announced that reporters were no longer invited into the Oval Office for a scheduled 2:15 pm opportunity to hear Trump boasting. Reporters were already lined up on the South Lawn ready to go in when Trump demanded the whole thing be cancelled. Romney said Trump "is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust. What he did was not perfect; no, it was a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security and our fundamental values. Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one's oath of office that I can imagine."

Coverup by Nancy Ohanian

How many of the 60,933,504 votes that Romney got were from Republicans who don't give a damn about anything he said yesterday? Romney won 24 states and, with the possible exception of Arizona and Utah, I'd bet that at least 80% of Republicans in them are wishing Romney ill. Why does Trump give a damn? He had planned to say the impeachment was a partisan hoax with no Republican support. Couldn't do that. He also feels betrayed by Romney, who he endorsed when he ran for the Senate, not that Romney sought or needed his endorsement. And now the news was as much about Romney's courageous vote as about Trump's "exoneration."

Kentucky state Rep, Charles Booker, one of the Democrats competing to take on Moscow Mitch in November, said that he had been clear from the beginning of this impeachment trial, "that Donald Trump should be convicted and removed. In contrast, Mitch McConnell began this process by touting his partiality. All of the aspects of this trial that brought shame upon our country, including blocking witnesses and evidence, can all be traced back to one person: Mitch McConnell. He sold out Kentuckians on a false hope that it will help him stay in power. Whether you believe Donald Trump should be removed or acquitted, we can all agree that Mitch McConnell did a disservice to all Americans by making a mockery of our democracy for the whole world to watch."

Pelosi's official statement:

Today, the President and Senate Republicans have normalized lawlessness and rejected the system of checks and balances of our Constitution. Our Founders put safeguards in the Constitution to protect against a rogue president. They never imagined that they would at the same time have a rogue leader in the Senate who would cowardly abandon his duty to uphold the Constitution.

President Trump was impeached with the support of a majority of the American people-- a first in our nation’s history. And now he is the first President in history to face a bipartisan vote to convict him in the Senate. A full 75 percent of Americans and many members of the GOP Senate believe the President’s behavior is wrong. But the Senate chose instead to ignore the facts, the will of the American people and their duty to the Constitution.

The President will boast that he has been acquitted. There can be no acquittal without a trial, and there is no trial without witnesses, documents and evidence. By suppressing the evidence and rejecting the most basic elements of a fair judicial process, the Republican Senate made themselves willing accomplices to the President’s cover-up.

Even without additional witnesses and documents in the Senate trial, our House Managers laid out an overwhelming, compelling and incriminating case about President Trump’s scheme to corrupt the 2020 elections and proved his guilt. The President’s legal team could not and did not refute the facts of the case. Instead, they argued that the American people have no right to stop the President from using the power of his office to cheat in our elections. They argued that if the President thinks that his re-election is good for the country, he can use any means necessary to win, with no accountability or consequences.

In December, the House defended democracy by passing two articles of impeachment to hold the President accountable for abusing his office for his own personal, political gain at the expense of our national security and the integrity of our elections. The President has been impeached forever.

Sadly, because of the Republican Senate’s betrayal of the Constitution, the President remains an ongoing threat to American democracy, with his insistence that he is above the law and that he can corrupt the elections if he wants to.  The House will continue to protect and defend the checks and balances in the Constitution that safeguard our Republic, both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion. Democrats will continue to defend our democracy For The People.

State of the Union-- Nancy Pelosi by Nancy Ohanian

Trump Wants Revenge

Oh, girl!

Unless Trump gives it the go ahead-- tantamount to chopping off a finger-- Joe Manchin's fatuous proposal to censure Trump instead of impeaching him tomorrow, is DOA. The only good thing is that he would just need 51 votes to pass it-- all 48 Democrats + 3 Republicans. But there aren't 3 Republicans with the guts to go up against Trump. On the Senate floor yesterday, Manchin he sees "no path to the 67 votes required to impeach" Trump but that said he believes "a bipartisan majority of this body would vote to censure President Trump for his action in this matter. Censure would allow this body to unite across party lines. Censure would allow a bipartisan statement condemning his unacceptable behavior in the strongest terms." (He later admitted that there aren't enough Republican votes to pass it.)

This is the resolution Manchin wrote and circulated:

RESOLUTION
Relating to the censure of Donald John Trump.

Whereas Donald John Trump used the Office of the President of the United States to attempt to compel a foreign nation to interfere with domestic political affairs for his own personal benefit;

Whereas Donald John Trump wrongfully enlisted his personal lawyer to investigate a domestic political rival by meddling in formal diplomatic relations in a manner that is inconsistent with our established National Security Strategy;

Whereas Donald John Trump hindered the thorough investigation of related documents and prohibited Congress and the American people from hearing testimony by firsthand witnesses with direct knowledge of his conduct;

Whereas Donald John Trump, through his conduct in this matter, abused the trust of the American people;

Whereas Donald John Trump fully deserves censure for engaging in such behavior;

Whereas Donald John Trump’s conduct in this matter is unacceptable for a President of the United States, does demean the Office of the President, and creates disrespect for laws of the land;

Whereas Donald John Trump’s conduct in the matter has brought dishonor to himself, the Nation, and the Office of the President;

Whereas future generations of Americans must know that--

(1) such behavior is not only dangerous to our national interest but does not align with American values and the principles of the Constitution of the United States; and

(2) such actions bear grave consequences, including loss of integrity, trust, and respect; and

Whereas no one, not even the President, is above the law:

Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That--

(1) the Senate does hereby censure Donald John Trump, President of the United States, and does condemn his wrongful conduct in the strongest terms;

(2) allowing this statement of censure and condemnation to remain intact for all time; and

(3) the Senate now move on to other matters of significance to our people, to reconcile differences between and within the branches of Government, and to work together-- across party lines-- for the benefit of the American people.

After tomorrow's acquittal vote, Trump will be looking for revenge. Gabriel Sherman at Vanity Fair: It's Payback Time and Trump, who has nothing better to do, is plotting revenge against his enemies. He wants the Department of Justice to investigate-- criminally-- Bolton, Romney, Nadler and Schiff. If only Roy Cohn were his Attorney General, or... someone... like... him. "Washington," wrote Sherman, "is bracing for what an unshackled Trump does next. Republicans briefed on Trump’s thinking believe that the president is out for revenge against his adversaries." A prominent Republican told him that Señor Trumpanzee "has an enemies list that is growing by the day... "Trump’s playbook is simple: go after people who crossed him during impeachment."

Several sources said Bolton is at the top of the list. Trump’s relationship with Bolton was badly damaged by the time Bolton left the White House in September. Trump has since blamed his former national security adviser for leaking details of his forthcoming memoir that nearly derailed the impeachment trial by pressuring Republicans to call witnesses. In the book Bolton reportedly alleges Trump told him directly that Ukraine aid was tied to Ukraine announcing investigations into the Bidens (Bolton has denied being a source of the leak).

Augustus Gloop Trump

The campaign against Bolton has already begun. On January 23, the White House sent a cease and desist letter to Bolton’s lawyer demanding that Bolton’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, not release the book in March without removal of certain information. Trump intends to ratchet up the pressure, and some Republicans close to the White House fear how far Trump will take things after he’s gotten off for a second time (Trump famously made his July 25 call to Volodymyr Zelensky the day after Robert Mueller testified before Congress.) “Trump has been calling people and telling them to go after Bolton,” a source briefed on the private conversations said. The source added that Trump wants Bolton to be criminally investigated. A person familiar with Trump’s thinking said Trump believes Bolton might have mishandled classified information. According to a former official, the White House is planning to leak White House emails from Bolton that purportedly allege Bolton abused his position at the National Security Council. The official said that West Wing officials have discussed releasing emails “showing [Bolton] was doing pay-to-play,” the official said. A person close to Bolton dismissed the story. “John plays things straight,” the person said.

I Cheat All The Time At Golf, Taxes, Wives, Elections And Bathroom Scales-- I'm Not 239 Pounds; I'm 475 Pounds... I Cut The Funding To The CDC, So This Wang Chung Virus Is Really Going To Be Bad

The SNL fantasy trial was good for a laugh, but there is genuine and deep concern among many who have seen the damage Putin-- and Moscow Mitch-- have been able to do to American democracy on the cheap. Philip Rucker attempted to give the true nature of the disaster voice in a report on how Trump's acquittal-- as illegitimate as his presidency-- will change the institution of the presidency, perhaps forever. Republicans might quibble, at least in public, with how Rucker began his report. "The evidence of President Trump’s actions to pressure Ukraine was never in serious dispute. After a systematic presentation of the facts of the case, even some Senate Republicans concluded that what he did was wrong. But neither was the verdict of Trump’s impeachment trial ever in doubt. The Senate’s jurors are scheduled to etch an almost-certain acquittal into the historical record on Wednesday. The impending judgment that the president’s actions do not warrant his removal from office serves as a testament to Washington’s extraordinary partisan divide and to Trump’s uncontested hold on the Republican base. The expected acquittal also has profound and long-term ramifications for America’s institutions and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches, according to numerous historians and legal experts. In effect, they say, the Senate is lowering the bar for permissible conduct for future presidents." Or at least for presidents of the same same party that controls a Senate that Moscow Mitch has shamelessly turned into a shrivelled appendage of the Executive Branch.

Keep the results from the national polling NBC and the Wall Street Journal released yesterday, namely that majorities of voters believe that Trump abused his power (52-41%) and obstructed Congress (53-37%) and that Trump is trailing the major Democratic presidential candidates in hypothetical matchups for the general election. According to this poll, Biden leads Trump by 6%, Bernie leads him by 4%, Warren by 3% and even Mayo Pete is ahead of him by 1%. And in the generic battle for Congress, Democrats lead Republicans by 6 points (49-43%).

“It’s a dispiriting moment for an American system that in many ways was founded on the insight that, because humankind is frail and fallen and fallible, no one branch of government can have too much power,” said Jon Meacham, an American historian and author. “The president’s party, instead of being a check on an individual’s impulses and ambitions, has become an instrument of them.”

Since the moment House Democrats opened their impeachment inquiry last September, Trump has projected a sense of persecution and self-pity. He called the effort a coup to overthrow him and defraud the results of the 2016 election.

Again and again, Trump proclaimed on Twitter, “READ THE TRANSCRIPT!”-- though the notes from his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not seem to exonerate him. Rather, the notes made plain Trump’s scheme to get Ukraine to open an investigation into former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

With Trump commanding such exceptionally high approval ratings among Republican voters, however, even senators who acknowledged his actions were wrong voted Friday to block new evidence in the trial and pave the way for acquittal.

One of Democrats’ great hopes to permit fresh testimony from firsthand witnesses, including former national security adviser John Bolton, had been Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), a self-described institutionalist who is retiring and would not have to face the wrath of the GOP’s pro-Trump base.

Yes, one of the Democrats' great hopes... but hopes for what? There were never going to be 20 Republican flips to actually convict Trump. He could hand the deed to Alaska over to Putin in the middle of Fifth Avenue and Dan Sullivan would vote to commend him while Lisa Murkowski just looks on... confused. The Democrats' approach was never really to perform the impossible miracle of persuading the Senate to convict Trump. It was always to persuade the American people Trump shouldn't be reelected in November-- and that neither should the members of his party who backed him. We'll know if they succeeded not on Wednesday, but on election day, 2020. Remember, when Lamar Alexander admitted that Trump’s actions were "inappropriate" and had "already been proven" by House impeachment managers, and that there was "no need for more evidence," he really was helping the Democrats do the job they had set out to do. "Let the people decide," he said.

“This impeachment was a fait accompli at all times,” said Bill Whalen, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “You talk to congressional Republicans and there’s a feeling that the president is being persecuted, that impeachment was a conviction in search of a crime.”

William A. Galston, chair of the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies Program, said acquittal “was not only perfectly predictable, but in my judgment, completely inevitable.”

“The United States political scene is as deeply polarized along partisan lines as it has been for at least a century,” Galston added. Noting Trump’s high ratings among Republican voters, he said, “It would take a very brave Republican indeed to break ranks with the president under these circumstances.”

This is not the first instance in which Trump has skirted penalties for wielding the powers of his office for personal or political gain. Former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found that the president repeatedly worked to block or thwart the Russia investigation, acts to obstruct justice that would have prompted charges were he not a sitting president. But Trump sidestepped any punishment then, just as he appears to now with Ukraine.

One of the president’s lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, proffered a sweeping argument on the floor of the Senate last week that Trump using the powers of his office to pressure Ukraine to open a corruption investigation into the Bidens was not impeachable or illegal because it was done in pursuit of his reelection.

“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” Dershowitz said during the trial.

In the face of stinging criticism from constitutional scholars and legal experts, Dershowitz said later on Twitter that his comments were being mischaracterized. “A president seeking re-election cannot do anything he wants,” Dershowitz wrote. “He is not above the law.”

Still, Dershowitz’s argument was persuasive for some Republican senators looking for arguments with which to defend Trump irrespective of what the evidence showed.

“Let’s say it’s true, okay? Dershowitz last night explained that if you’re looking at it from a constitutional point of view, that that is not something that is impeachable,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) told reporters.

Timothy Naftali, a historian at New York University and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, said the arguments advanced on Trump’s behalf in the Senate trial could have lasting consequences for the future of presidential power.

“The Republicans have embraced a theory that permits future abuses of power,” Naftali said. “The outcome of acquittal was predictable... but I’m afraid that this process in the Senate is more enabling of an abusive president than expected.”

The nation’s founders gave Congress oversight responsibilities and powers of impeachment as a check on the executive. Yet, with this week’s likely acquittal of Trump, Meacham argues, the Senate instead has become a tool in the president’s perpetuation of his own power.

“It is not hyperbolic to say that the Republican Party treats Donald Trump more like a king than a president,” Meacham said. “That was a central and consuming anxiety of the framers. It is a remarkable thing to watch the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower and Reagan and the Bushes become an instrument of Donald Trump’s. That’s a massive historical story.”

Late Saturday night, also writing for The Post, Seung Min Kim and Rachael Bade reported how the impeachment trial has solidified Mitt Romney's outlier status among Senate Republicans and how Moscow Mitch was able to manipulate the Republican caucus on behalf of tactics set in the White House for goals set in Moscow. "In the end," the two reporters wrote, "McConnell held his conference together, arguing that witnesses would drag the trial out for weeks and delay other Senate work. Several Republicans acknowledged that the president did use nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine as leverage to benefit himself politically, calling it inappropriate, but argued it wasn’t grounds to oust him from office." In the end it was 100% about electoral politics.

Unlike other issues in the Senate, there were no substantive attempts to broker a bipartisan agreement that would cool tensions, ensuring that the impeachment proceedings began-- and ended-- as a near-partisan exercise.

“It has just been a lot harder over the last two weeks to have conversations with Republican friends,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT). “The mood in that room is super tense and super heavy.”

Democrats heavily pressured vulnerable Senate Republicans up for reelection this fall, driving a message declaring any trial without witnesses would be a “coverup.” But GOP senators and aides were confident that voters were paying little attention based on a survey conducted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the official campaign arm of Senate Republicans.

“You know, Iowans right now-- honest to God-- they want us to get this thing over with,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA). “They’re like, ‘Why aren’t you doing the business of the American public?’”

In a closed-door party meeting in McConnell’s suite of offices-- where GOP senators have held some of their most consequential strategy sessions-- it was those precise swing-state Republicans like Sens. Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) who said they were prepared to just move on to a final vote without calling additional witnesses.

That was after Bolton’s blockbuster allegation, laid out in an unpublished manuscript of his book as reported by the New York Times, that Trump directly tied the holdup of aid to Ukraine to the political investigations.

The Times report rocked the GOP conference and made Romney believe it increased the likelihood that more Republicans would join in his effort to call Bolton. At a Jan. 27 lunch, Sens. Patrick J. Toomey (R-PA) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) spoke up about a witness trade, appearing to briefly consider the notion. Romney joined them, making a forceful argument that they had a duty as senators to hear all the relevant evidence.

Moscow Mitch prevailed and today Republican senators are trying to defend their votes to not call witnesses. On Meet the Press yesterday, Lamar Alexander, who-- remember-- is retiring, said Trump's behavior may have been bad but was still not impeachable. Alexander: "I think he shouldn’t have done it. I think it was wrong. Inappropriate was the way I’d say-- improper, crossing the line."

Iowa imbecilic senator, Joni Ernst, who is, rightfully, one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the Senate and who yesterday called for Congress to start impeachment proceedings against Biden immediately if he's elected, was a guest on State of the Union, said that while the call to pressure the president of Ukraine was "Maybe not the perfect call" and that Trump should have used the Department of Justice to talk with him about corruption, she was still planning to vote for acquittal. As if she ever considered voting otherwise! The Senate will be a far better place without Jimi Ernst.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Susan Collins' whole life is an upside down pyramid of ever-growing shamelessness and duplicity. It's easy to see what she must have been like as a child, since she must have chosen her path early to get to the monumental point where she is today.

Would You Vote For Anyone-No-Matter-Who Against Trump? What About Republican-Pretending-To-Be-A-Democrat Michael Bloomberg?

Did you get inundated with requests for contributions on Friday? The DCCC and DSCC-- and the lame consultants they work with-- encourage their candidates to flood everyone's mailboxes with desperate, hollow pleas for donations for the bullshit "end of the month deadline." It used to be all about the end of the quarter deadline. Soon it will be about the end of the week deadline and eventually the end of the day deadline.

Coincidentally, the final reports have come in with the end of the quarter FEC filings. Let's talk a look at the FEC reports filed for each candidate vying for the Democratic presidential nomination filed for the quarter ending December 31. Tom Steyer raised $205,380,488 and spent $199,989,748. 98.58% of his money raised was self-funded ($202,496,602).

Bloomberg raised $200,359,618.56 and spent $188,385,951.94. He self-funded virtually all of it-- $200,114,049 (00.88%).

Among the candidates not trying to buy the White House, these are the raised/spent numbers so far for the cycle:

• Bernie- raised $107,916,369, spent $89,743,329
• Elizabeth- raised $81,291,563, spent $67,576,254
• Mayo- raised $75,427,078, spent $60,908,002
• Status Quo Joe- raised $59,545,050, spent $50,601,488
• Yang- raised $31,331,251, spent $27,158,259
• Klobuchar- raised $28,736,113, spent $23,762,532
• Tulsi- raised $12,447,703, spent $9,689,816
• Michael Bennet- raised $6,831,685, spent $6,314,126

Writing for Open Secrets, Karl Evers-Hillstrom of the Center for Responsive Politics reported that Bloomberg has already shattered all self-funding records in history-- and just two months after announcing.

By generously funding his own campaign, Bloomberg has already surpassed his 2020 rival Presidential Donald Trump in the record books. Not adjusted for inflation, Trump held the self-financing title for his 2016 campaign, pouring over $66 million of his own money into it. But Trump relied on contributions in the general election and is not personally bankrolling his reelection campaign.

Bloomberg’s figure dwarfs even that of billionaire Ross Perot, who spent $63.5 million of his own money on his 1992 presidential bid. That’s about $115 million when adjusted for inflation.

Bloomberg, who has already accumulated $33 million in debt to his own committee, stuck by his promise to reject all campaign contributions. He argues in his campaign ads that he is the only candidate not beholden to “special interests.”

The former New York City mayor spent $180 million through the end of the year, twice as much as the next top spender in the Demcoratic primary, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Bloomberg has already spent $300 million on TV and digital ads through the end of January, according to an estimate from Advertising Analytics.

Sanders campaign aides have expressed concern about Bloomberg’s massive spending, but so have aides to former Vice President Joe Biden. The two moderates are headed for a clash on Super Tuesday, where Bloomberg has concentrated almost all of his ad spending. Biden aides are reportedly concerned that Bloomberg’s rise could hand Sanders the nomination.

A recent survey from the Los Angeles Times and University of California found that Sanders has a strong lead in California, which holds roughly 40 percent of Super Tuesday’s convention delegates. Sanders is polling at 26 percent, compared to Biden’s 15 percent and Bloomberg’s 6 percent, according to the poll.

The Democratic National Committee handed Bloomberg a win Friday when it changed its qualification rules for its Feb. 19 debate in Nevada. Candidates no longer need to hit a donor threshold, only needing to reach 10 percent in four relevant polls.

If he doesn’t win the nomination, Bloomberg has said he will convert his campaign into an independent effort to support the Democratic nominee in November. He is reportedly willing to spend $1 billion on the election, which would be an unprecedented amount of spending by a single person.

A reliable source inside and high up in Team Bloomie contradicts what Bloomberg-- a notorious liar-- has said about supporting whichever Democrat wins the primary. According to the source, who has never steered me wrong, if Bernie wins-- as appears likely-- Bloomberg will try to mount an independent campaign, reportedly with Stacey Abrams as his running mate, to throw the election to Trump and keep Bernie out of the White House. Fake right-wing Democrats like Bloomberg have tried to do the same thing in the past, successfully against William Jennings Bryan and unsuccessfully against FDR.




In his Washington Post column yesterday, ex-Republican Max Boot wrote that the GOP doesn't deserve to survive the debacle they created. Boot began by claiming he would never rejoin the GOP, which he left the day after Trump won the 2016 election. [NOTE: It's important to remember that Boot and other #NeverTrumpers are conservative Republicans at heart, not Democrats, and while we welcome their hatred of Trump, the Democratic Party actually stands for things they despise. They should have no role in picking our candidates.] Boot noted that when Trump leaves the White House "he will leave behind a quasi-authoritarian party that is as corrupt as he is. The failure to call witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial revealed the GOP’s moral failure."

He Can Do It by Nancy Ohanian

The most significant of the “nay” votes was Lamar Alexander (TN), a 79-year-old political warhorse who is retiring this year. He admitted what the most purblind Trump partisans will not: that “it was inappropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate his political opponent.” The reason he did not need to hear any witnesses, Alexander explained, was because “there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven.” So far, so good. But then he pivoted to argue that for some reason Trump’s misconduct doesn’t meet the “high bar for an impeachable offense.” He concluded that the verdict on Trump should be left to “the presidential election”-- you know, the election Trump just tried to fix.

Alexander’s statement raises more questions than it answers: If Trump’s attempt to blackmail Ukraine into helping him politically does not rise to the level of impeachable conduct, what does? Does Alexander subscribe to Alan Dershowitz’s doctrine of presidential infallibility? And, even if he doesn’t want to keep Trump off the ballot, why doesn’t he advocate Trump’s censure or political defeat? But instead of advocating any punishment for Trump’s “inappropriate” conduct, Alexander wants him rewarded by being reelected.

Sen. Marco Rubio (FL) at least made clear that he rejects the argument-- raised by the president’s lawyers but rejected by almost all scholars-- "that ‘Abuse of Power’ can never constitute grounds for removal unless a crime or a crime-like action is alleged.” He, too, seems to assume that Trump is guilty, although he doesn’t quite say so. But Rubio argued “against removal in the context of the bitter divisions and deep polarization our country currently faces.”

Of course, if Trump were removed, it would require the support of 20 Republican senators, so it would hardly be partisan. But lest anyone think that Rubio is refusing to call witnesses for purely partisan reasons, he patted himself on the back for rejecting “calls to pursue [the] impeachment of President Obama,” without specifying what Obama could have been impeached for. You can bet that if Obama had done what Trump did, Rubio would be in favor of impeachment.

But wait. It gets worse. The prize for the most illogical statement must go to Sen. Lisa Murkowksi (AK). She wrote: “Given the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout, I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate.” She then announced her opposition to calling witnesses-- a move that could have made the trial a lot fairer. Huh?

Given the flimsiness of the Republicans’ rationales, it’s hard not to conclude that something else accounts for their decision-making. It’s obvious what’s going on in Rubio’s case-- he thinks he has a future in politics and wants to stay on the good side of Trump supporters. His colleagues who are facing reelection this year, such as Cory Gardner (CO) and Thom Tillis (NC), are no doubt terrified Trump will endorse a primary challenger. Some other Republicans are no doubt deluded enough to imagine that Trump’s call was “perfect.” But what about Alexander and other senators who know better and will never face the voters again?

Tim Alberta of Politico makes a convincing case that even retiring lawmakers fear breaking with the president would hurt their future “earning power” and subject them to unwelcome “harassment” from Trump cultists. These concerns are understandable but should not be dispositive. Senators who shirk their constitutional duties are cowards who disgrace their oaths of office and betray the Constitution. Our troops risk their lives for this country; these senators won’t even risk some unpleasantness.

I want nothing to do with a party led by the deluded and the dishonest. I fervently hope our democracy survives this debacle. I fervently hope the Republican Party does not.

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!

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Watching the Trump Impeachment "trial" has shown us more than just the depths to which politicians will dive for their despotic leader if a nice wad of "campaign contributions" recently converted from rubles to dollars is in the offing. There are good people who are lawyers, really, but Donald Trump's "crack legal team" in this "trial" has also shown us perhaps the best example of why people often place lawyers in the same basket of deplorables as used car salesmen and street hustlers who run 3-Card Monte games and those who push drugs cut with things that are even worse than the drugs themselves. I know Rudy wishes he could be there.

As I watched Jay Sekulow and that excessive combover hair weave that engulfs his head, perv-meister Alan "I Kept My Underwear On" Dershowitz, Trump White House Counsel Pat Cipollone who claims that "impeachment would be the most massive interference in an election in American history," (Well, yeah, bozo. Isn't that the point? That remedy is exactly what's needed! It's in the Constitution!), the self-contradicting, blow job obsessed Ken Starr who has a history of looking the other way when it suits his wallet or his politics, and, of course former Florida Attorney General (say no more!) Pam Bondi who is best known for her very brief marriages and dropping her state's case against Trump University after Trump sent a nice check to her campaign, the number one question I kept going back to was "How do these people face any relatives they may have?" We can tell what kind of people they married just as we know what kind of people work in the Trump White House. We can see what they've taught their children. We can see that they're trying to teach all children in America that not only does crime pay but crime isn't really criminal, and, oh, lies mean nothing; the bigger the better.

To these true deplorables, absolutely nothing is impeachable; apparently not even, as the leader of their cult says, standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shooting someone. Dershowitz even pushes the idea that anything Trump "may" have done is not impeachable simply because Trump feels his reelection is in "the national interest." He babbles on and on and on like a classic village idiot or FOX "News" talking head preaching from a wall in your park, same nonsense over and over and over. Bondi knows two words Biden and Hunter, over and over again. Two words, that makes her electable in Florida. I won't even give further mention to Cipollone. He and his wife have 10, count 'em 10, kids. 10 kids who will probably each have 10 super-warped kids of their own who will each in turn have 10 and on and on into the future. This is just another example of Idiocracy (One of the most 'must see' movies of all time, by the way).

Get the fuckin' net! You watch these people and you wait and wait for the guys in the white coats to wrestle them to the floor, shoot them up with tranquilizers and put the straitjackets on them and cart them off. Yet, our society, being also as loonie as it is, tolerates being spoken to like this. FOX "News" is horrific enough, but this is FOX "News" being broadcast live from the United States $enate and no one does shit about it or ever will. These lawyers are the end result of Americans watching decade after decade of mindless reality television and gameshows. These lawyers couldn't even make it as gameshow hosts, yet, here they are, paid for and brought to you by an Idiocracy president.

Addendum:

Sekulow, has been especially pitiful as he displays the awkward vocal inflections of a person who doesn't believe what was coming out of his own mouth, but, hey, there's money and a book deal in it. Dershowitz? He would have us all believe that there's nothing suspicious or wrong about getting a massage in a house full of underaged girls as long as one (allegedly) keeps his underpants on. In fact, he seems to think we should think better of him for it.

Trump Multi-Faceted Vote Buying Schemes

On Tuesday evening, Trump held one of his lunatic rallies for the pigs in the Wildwood, New Jersey area who support him and his newest puppet, former DCCC-Blue Dog Jeff Van Drew. Trump asserted, absurdly, that Van Drew was a symbol of the future. Then he pulled out of his ass a new refrain he'll be gaslighting America with, claiming "that an increasing number of Americans were 'disgusted' by congressional Democrats who, he said, are 'obsessed with demented hoaxes, this crazy witch hunt and deranged partisan crusades'... They’ve spent the last three years and probably even before I came down on that beautiful escalator with our beautiful future first lady, trying to overthrow the last election, and we will make sure that they face another crushing defeat in the next election." His moron supporters eat that crap up but normal Americans are ready to see him go. The latest YouGov poll, just released by The Economist, shows that if the congressional elections were held today the Democrats would win 48-39% and that 47% of registered voters (and that includes Republicans) want Trump removed while just 46% oppose removing him.

Trump paid Van Drew to switch parties. This is part of the payback. Trump also forced Republican David Richter, the top Republican in the race-- who had just moved into the district-- to withdraw and go run somewhere else (where there already is a Republican challenging Democrat Andy Kim). She immediately derided Richter as a "seat shopper who apparently believes he's entitled to party support-- somewhere, anywhere." Richter is a self-funder who had already given his campaign against Van Drew $500,000. And now he was forced to endorse Van Drew, who he's been denouncing in no uncertain terms for months.

But I'm sure it surprises no one that Trump uses bribery as a political tool. He used to brag about it in 2016 during the campaign-- about buying political favors from slimy politicians. You watch Pam Bondi making a jackass out of herself at the impeachment hearings the other day? Paying back a cash debt. Does this Politico headline surprise you? Trump lures GOP senators on impeachment with cold cash. Alex Isenstadt wrote that "Trump is rewarding senators who have his back on impeachment-- and sending a message to those who don't to get on board. Trump is tapping his vast fundraising network for a handful of loyal senators facing tough reelection bids in 2020. Each of them has signed onto a Republican-backed resolution condemning the inquiry as 'unprecedented and undemocratic.' Conspicuously absent from the group is Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a politically vulnerable Republican who’s refused to support the resolution and avoided taking a stance on impeachment. With his new push, Trump is exerting leverage over a group he badly needs in his corner with an impeachment trial likely coming soon to the Senate-- but that also needs him."

Most eager to sell out to Trump were Cory Gardner (CO), Joni Ernst (IA) and Thom Tillis who signed onto the resolution and just received a fundraising letter from Trump. Another shameless whore, David Perdue (GA), also signed on and is getting a Trump-hosted fundraising event next week. Isenstadt reported that "Attendees are being asked to give up to $100,000." He's also doing one of those for Moscow Mitch.

Party officials said there are likely to be additional Trump-led digital fundraising efforts for senators and that those who weren't included in this wave could be in a later one.

The president has been a fundraising boon for Republican senators. Earlier this month, Texas Sen. John Cornyn sent out an appeal to donors that prominently featured an image of Trump flashing a thumbs-up. The plea asked givers to “Show President Trump you have his back!” and invited them to split their donations between the president and Cornyn’s reelection campaigns.

The Texas senator tweeted afterward that his campaign “had its biggest online fundraising day ever."

“The donors listen to the president, and he has the most capacity to energize small-dollar contributions by making the case that he needs a Senate majority to be successful,” said Scott Jennings, a former political aide in the George W. Bush White House.

A few hours ago, former Gov. Chris Christie told ABC News that Republicans who vote for witnesses should expect retribution. That's the stick part of Trump's carrot and stick strategy for dealing with his own party. "You could very well see the president encouraging or creating primaries against senators that are up this year if they went and voted the other way I could definitely see him at least attempting to do that."

Trump is running the most transactional swampy regime in American history. Fat cats know if they open their wallets for Trump, they get whatever they want. It's all pay-to-play. Scott Reed, the senior political strategist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that "Trump has the ability to turn on the money spigot like no one else."

Another Politico reporter, Ben Schreckinger, wrote another shocking story about the Trump Swamp: Trump allies are handing out cash to black voters. Short version: the Trumpists have begun holding events in black communities where they lavish praise on the president while handing out tens of thousands of dollars in giveaways.

The first giveaway took place last month in Cleveland, where recipients whose winning tickets were drawn from a bin landed cash gifts in increments of several hundred dollars, stuffed into envelopes. A second giveaway scheduled for this month in Virginia has been postponed, and more are said to be in the works.

The tour comes as Trump’s campaign has been investing its own money to make inroads with black voters and erode Democrats’ overwhelming advantage with them. But the cash giveaways are organized under the auspices of an outside charity, the Urban Revitalization Coalition, permitting donors to remain anonymous and make tax-deductible contributions.

The organizers say the events are run by the book and intended to promote economic development in inner cities. But the group behind the cash giveaways is registered as a 501(c)3 charitable organization. One leading legal expert on nonprofit law said the arrangement raises questions about the group’s tax-exempt status, because it does not appear to be vetting the recipients of its money for legitimate charitable need.

"Charities are required to spend their money on charitable and educational activities,” said Marcus Owens, a former director of the Exempt Organizations Division at the Internal Revenue Service who is now in private practice at the law firm Loeb & Loeb. “It's not immediately clear to me how simply giving money away to people at an event is a charitable act.”

Asked about the legality of the giveaways in a brief phone interview, the Urban Revitalization Coalition’s CEO, Darrell Scott, said that most gifts were between $300 and $500, and that the group mandates that anyone who receives over $600 fills out a W-9 form in order to ensure compliance with tax law. He did not respond to follow-up questions about how the giveaways were structured and whether they met the legal standard for a charitable act.

Scott declined to name the donors funding the effort. "I'd rather not,” he said. “They prefer to remain anonymous."

Scott, a Cleveland-based pastor, has been one of Trump’s closest and most prominent black supporters. He struck up a relationship with the real estate mogul in the years before Trump’s presidential run, and-- along with Trump’s former lieutenant Michael Cohen-- co-founded the National Diversity Coalition for Trump to promote that run.

...The group’s “Christmas Extravaganza” event in Cleveland last month featured a $25,000 giveaway and an appearance by Ja’Ron Smith, a deputy assistant to the president. A Cleveland native who worked on Trump’s criminal justice reform, Smith is among the highest-ranking black officials in the White House.

At the event, which also featured an appearance by television personality Geraldo Rivera, Lanier compared the investigative scrutiny faced by Trump to the plight of wrongfully incarcerated black men. He also defended Trump’s record on race.

"President Donald Trump-- the one that they say is racist-- is the first president in the history of this country to incentivize people who have the money to put it into ... urban areas,” he said.

...The election year initiative by the Urban Revitalization Coalition to improve Trump’s image in black communities could bolster those efforts.

The coalition planned a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event at Virginia Union University, a historically black school in Richmond. Advertisements for the event said it would feature a $30,000 cash giveaway and would honor Trump as well as his son-in-law, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner.

But school administrators canceled the Jan. 20 event, saying it had been described to them as an “economic development discussion” when it was first booked. In a letter to Lanier, university President Hakim Lucas said: “The event advertised is vastly different from the event VUU agreed to co-host.”

Scott told Politico that the school had initially “begged” him to have the event there. He said that the coalition intends to reschedule it at another venue at a later date.

Scott also said the group was planning to unveil a slate of additional future events and that he would reveal additional details. He did not respond to follow-up queries about the group’s upcoming schedule.