Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[JBS]

Donald Trump Jr walks out of Triggered book launch after heckling – from supporters

"Donald Trump Jr ventured on to the University of California's overwhelmingly liberal Los Angeles campus on Sunday, hoping to prove what he had just argued in his book – that a hate-filled American left was hell-bent on silencing him and anyone else who supported the Trump presidency.

But the appearance backfired when his own supporters, diehard Make America Great Again conservatives, raised their voices most loudly in protest and ended up drowning him out barely 20 minutes into an event scheduled to last two hours.

The audience was angry that Trump Jr and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, would not take questions. The loud shouts of "USA! USA!" that greeted Trump when he first appeared on the stage of a university lecture hall to promote his book Triggered: How The Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us quickly morphed into even louder, openly hostile chants of "Q and A! Q and A!"

The 450-strong audience had just been told they would not be allowed to ask questions, "due to time constraints".

At first, Trump and Guilfoyle tried to ignore the discontent, which originated with a fringe group of America Firsters who believe the Trump administration has been taken captive by a cabal of internationalists, free-traders, and apologists for mass immigration.

When the shouting would not subside, Trump Jr tried – and failed – to argue that taking questions from the floor risked creating soundbites that leftwing social media posters would abuse and distort. Nobody was buying that.[...]

Pertinent to the above

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/11/20948317/alt-right-donald-trump-jr-conservative-tpusa-yaf-racism-antisemitism

[Wendell_E]

US elections 2020: When are the debates, primaries, conventions?
A guide to all the important dates for the 2020 US presidential election.

looking down that list: what comes from the American Samoa, Puerto Rico and Guam primaries and Virgin Islands caucuses?

The same thing that comes from the other primaries and caucuses: delegates. The territories don't get to vote in the actual election, but the parties allow them a little say in who's nominated.

[SimonNZ]

Trump Tells Crowd Ivanka Has Created 14 Million New Jobs

"At a speech to the Economic Club of New York today, President Trump declared that his daughter, Ivanka, has personally created 14 million new jobs. The president announced this figure — so astonishingly ludicrous it would embarrass a Stalin-era pronouncement — and then repeated it twice more as the crowd applauded politely.

The entire U.S. economy has created fewer than 6 million new jobs since Trump took office. So Trump is crediting his daughter with having personally created more than 200 percent of all new jobs in the United States. This is like supply-side economics but for authoritarian nepotism.

Exactly how she did this remains a subject of some confusion. The mechanism involves the "Pledge to America's Workers," in which the chief executives of various firms promise to create some arbitrary number of training and other opportunities. You can read about this program at its official White House page, but the details are sparse even by the standards of a White House messaging site. There truly does not seem to be any policy here other than Ivanka asking businesspeople to promise to create jobs.

Last October, Ivanka claimed this initiative had created 6.3 million jobs. Lydia DePillis interviewed some of the companies that contributed to this number, and several admitted they had simply credited all real (or, in some cases, hypothetical) job openings to the Ivanka initiative.

Donald Trump touted this initiative in January, insisting, "My daughter has created millions of jobs." Now it has more than doubled to 14 million. As Trump told his supportive audience, "14 million and going up!" It is almost certainly true that the number of jobs Trump claims his daughter created is going up. By next year, it might exceed the entire workforce."

[drogulus]

     Democrats' impeachment lawyer cut his teeth prosecuting mobsters, Wall Street cheats

     Goldman has an advantage because he knows how to deal with a Paulie and his gang. He has another advantage because Trump is a Paulie that talks on the phone and on TV. He can't shut up about how guilty he is.

     

     This Paulie did it right and he still got caught.

[BasilValentine]

Seth Meyers highlights just a few of the brilliant young legal minds Trump has nominated for the federal bench, all rated unqualified by the ABA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXyds_jalBU

[Karl Henning]

Seth Meyers highlights just a few of the brilliant young legal minds Trump has nominated for the federal bench, all rated unqualified by the ABA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXyds_jalBU

But, they'll say what he pays them to say...

[SimonNZ]

Stephen Miller's Affinity for White Nationalism Revealed in Leaked Emails

"In the run-up to the 2016 election, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols after Dylann Roof's murderous rampage, according to leaked emails reviewed by Hatewatch.

The emails, which Miller sent to the conservative website Breitbart News in 2015 and 2016, showcase the extremist, anti-immigrant ideology that undergirds the policies he has helped create as an architect of Donald Trump's presidency. These policies include reportedly setting arrest quotas for undocumented immigrants, an executive order effectively banning immigration from five Muslim-majority countries and a policy of family separation at refugee resettlement facilities that the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General said is causing "intense trauma" in children.

In this, the first of what will be a series about those emails, Hatewatch exposes the racist source material that has influenced Miller's visions of policy. That source material, as laid out in his emails to Breitbart, includes white nationalist websites, a "white genocide"-themed novel in which Indian men rape white women, xenophobic conspiracy theories and eugenics-era immigration laws that Adolf Hitler lauded in "Mein Kampf."

Hatewatch reviewed more than 900 previously private emails Miller sent to Breitbart editors from March 4, 2015, to June 27, 2016. Miller does not converse along a wide range of topics in the emails. His focus is strikingly narrow – more than 80 percent of the emails Hatewatch reviewed relate to or appear on threads relating to the subjects of race or immigration. Hatewatch made multiple attempts to reach the White House for a comment from Miller about the content of his emails but did not receive any reply.

Miller's perspective on race and immigration across the emails is repetitious. When discussing crime, which he does scores of times, Miller focuses on offenses committed by nonwhites. On immigration, he touches solely on the perspective of severely limiting or ending nonwhite immigration to the United States. Hatewatch was unable to find any examples of Miller writing sympathetically or even in neutral tones about any person who is nonwhite or foreign-born."[...]

[SimonNZ]

Trump prepared for impeachment hearings with an epic Fox News binge

"In the hours leading up to an especially pivotal day in his presidency — the House begins public impeachment hearings Wednesday morning — President Donald Trump indulged in an epic Fox News binge.

Trump started watching Lou Dobbs on Fox Business sometime around 7:30 pm last night. He later flipped the channel over to Fox News to catch Sean Hannity's show. Then, this morning, he began his day with Fox & Friends.

How do we know this? Because Trump provided commentary for each of the shows he watched on Twitter. He altogether posted 12 tweets quoting or tagging Fox News personalities over about a 12-hour stretch. And with one exception — a Dobbs-inspired post spreading misleading figures about crimes committed by DACA recipients — all of Trump's Fox News-inspired tweets railed against the impeachment hearing.

None of them made a very convincing case. Trump, citing Dobbs, urged people to read the White House summary of his fateful July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — a document that fueled the impeachment proceeding by indicating Trump used military aid to Ukraine as leverage for political favors:

Trump then posted a string of tweets quoting a Hannity rant in which he called the Democrat leading the impeachment inquiry — Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) — "compromised" and a "coward." (Ad hominem attacks are a logical fallacy.)

"Sean the amazing warrior!" Trump tweeted in tribute to Hannity at the end of the thread.

Trump wasn't done heaping abuse on Schiff. In his string of tweets responding to Fox & Friends on Wednesday morning, Trump attacked Schiff as "corrupt" and criticized the procedure the House voted to follow for the hearings. Citing host Steve Doocy, Trump falsely accused Democrats of "leaking out everything" when in fact they released hearing transcripts that were vetted by lawyers and broadly corroborate a government whistleblower's account of how Trump abused his office during his dealings with Ukraine.

To close out his Fox News binge, Trump, citing commentary from Charles Hurt, suggested he did nothing wrong because Ukraine ultimately received the aid he withheld. But that talking point ignores the fact that aid was only released after the CIA's top lawyer reportedly made a criminal referral to the DOJ about the July Trump-Zelensky phone call and on the same day House Democrats announced they were opening an inquiry into the matter. If you get caught robbing a bank and decide to leave the cash and make a break for it, that doesn't mean you didn't do anything wrong.

[Karl Henning]

Trump prepared for impeachment hearings with an epic Fox News binge

"In the hours leading up to an especially pivotal day in his presidency — the House begins public impeachment hearings Wednesday morning — President Donald Trump indulged in an epic Fox News binge.

Trump started watching Lou Dobbs on Fox Business sometime around 7:30 pm last night. He later flipped the channel over to Fox News to catch Sean Hannity's show. Then, this morning, he began his day with Fox & Friends.

How do we know this? Because Trump provided commentary for each of the shows he watched on Twitter. He altogether posted 12 tweets quoting or tagging Fox News personalities over about a 12-hour stretch. And with one exception — a Dobbs-inspired post spreading misleading figures about crimes committed by DACA recipients — all of Trump's Fox News-inspired tweets railed against the impeachment hearing.

None of them made a very convincing case. Trump, citing Dobbs, urged people to read the White House summary of his fateful July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — a document that fueled the impeachment proceeding by indicating Trump used military aid to Ukraine as leverage for political favors:

Trump then posted a string of tweets quoting a Hannity rant in which he called the Democrat leading the impeachment inquiry — Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) — "compromised" and a "coward." (Ad hominem attacks are a logical fallacy.)

"Sean the amazing warrior!" Trump tweeted in tribute to Hannity at the end of the thread.

Trump wasn't done heaping abuse on Schiff. In his string of tweets responding to Fox & Friends on Wednesday morning, Trump attacked Schiff as "corrupt" and criticized the procedure the House voted to follow for the hearings. Citing host Steve Doocy, Trump falsely accused Democrats of "leaking out everything" when in fact they released hearing transcripts that were vetted by lawyers and broadly corroborate a government whistleblower's account of how Trump abused his office during his dealings with Ukraine.

To close out his Fox News binge, Trump, citing commentary from Charles Hurt, suggested he did nothing wrong because Ukraine ultimately received the aid he withheld. But that talking point ignores the fact that aid was only released after the CIA's top lawyer reportedly made a criminal referral to the DOJ about the July Trump-Zelensky phone call and on the same day House Democrats announced they were opening an inquiry into the matter. If you get caught robbing a bank and decide to leave the cash and make a break for it, that doesn't mean you didn't do anything wrong.

So, President Snowflake spent the day wallowing in his Safe Space.

[SimonNZ]

quoting in full:

Crazy for Trump: On the G.O.P. Plan to Keep Impeachment Partisan
The hearings open with diplomatic gravitas—and nutty conspiracy theories.

" It didn't take long for the crazy to start. Even before the first two witnesses in the public impeachment hearings of Donald Trump had been sworn in to testify at the House Intelligence Committee Wednesday morning, the panel's top Republican, Representative Devin Nunes, was going on about various conspiracy theories. First, he talked about a "three-year-long operation by the Democrats, the corrupt media, and partisan bureaucrats to overturn the results of the 2016 election." A few sentences later in his opening remarks, he mentioned an alleged Democratic plot to obtain "nude pictures of Trump" from Russia. Soon after that, he blasted the Democrats for creating a "cult-like atmosphere" in their private depositions of witnesses.

None of it had anything to do with the matter at hand in the House's impeachment investigation—President Trump's pressure campaign to force Ukraine to launch investigations that would benefit his personal political interests. Nor had a single word yet been uttered by either George Kent or William Taylor, Jr., the career diplomats who sat waiting patiently to testify in the storied but frigid House committee room, where the impeachment hearings—only the fourth in American history—will take place over the next two weeks. Still, Nunes attacked both their integrity and that of the State Department, accusing them of "undermining the President" "who they are supposed to be serving," along with people in the F.B.I. and the Justice Department who launched the earlier Mueller investigation of Trump and Russia's 2016 election interference. The message from Nunes was confusing, in that it did not make sense to anyone who had not been tracking the murky conspiracies reported on by Fox News and an array of conservative Web sites. But, at the same time, Nunes was making a simple, easily understandable point: This impeachment is a nefarious plot against the President. The details don't matter, whether it be the specifics of "the Russia hoax" or "its low-rent Ukrainian sequel," as Nunes called it.

But, oh, those details. There were many of them in the subsequent six hours of testimony by Kent and Taylor, and they are increasingly difficult for even Trump's most ardent defenders to explain away. From the moment that the two diplomats were sworn in, soon after 10:30 a.m., it was clear they came from a different world than that of Nunes and Trump, a world where America's actions have consequences beyond the public spectacle that our politics have become. Both Kent and Taylor appeared to have travelled to the hearing in a time machine from America's recent past. They oozed rectitude and establishment expertise as they recounted their amazement and dismay at discovering Trump's plot to withhold congressionally appropriated aid from Ukraine and a coveted Oval Office meeting from Ukraine's new President, Volodymyr Zelensky, unless he agreed to investigations into the former Vice-President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, as well as a debunked conspiracy theory, à la Nunes, that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that actually meddled in the 2016 U.S. election.

Taylor's voice bore such a resemblance to that of Walter Cronkite that the late CBS anchor's name was soon trending on Twitter. Kent's bow tie and three-piece suit seemed straight out of the Truman era. Both men insisted, with wonkish precision, on substance, offering a master class on Ukraine and the stakes involved in withholding American military assistance, as Trump tried to do, from a struggling democracy that has lost fourteen thousand of its citizens fighting Russian aggression on its territory. Taylor, who is now the senior diplomat in Kiev, since Trump fired the previous ambassador this spring, spoke of visiting the Ukrainian front line in the Donbass, in Eastern Ukraine, just last week, on a day when one Ukrainian soldier died and four were injured. This is where the nearly four hundred million dollars in military aid that Trump held up was going.

Taylor—a silver-haired Vietnam veteran who had been called back into service by the Trump Administration and had reluctantly accepted an assignment he knew to be fraught with politics—looked and sounded like a Hollywood version of an American ambassador as he recounted his own incredulous, dawning awareness of what he memorably called the "irregular policy channel" that took over from the regular policy channel in Ukraine at Trump's direction. Partway through his opening statement, Taylor offered the major news of the day, revealing that one of his aides had come forward to tell Taylor about a call he had overheard between the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, and Trump. The President could be heard inquiring about the investigations he had been seeking from Ukraine. After the call, Taylor testified, when Taylor's aide asked Sondland what the President had said, "Ambassador Sondland responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden" than Ukraine.

It was powerful, serious, damning. Seven times in his opening statement, Taylor said that he found the events "concerning." He called them "alarming." He told one of his congressional questioners that he had never, in his decades in the Foreign Service, seen any other example of American policy being changed by a President in order to benefit his personal interests. And yet, somehow, the country still heard only what it wanted to hear. Many of those who watched were comparing Taylor with Cronkite, but the days when one gravelly-voiced anchor could shape how Americans heard the news are long gone. As Taylor read his testimony, MSNBC highlighted Taylor's concerns about what he had called the "crazy" plan to withhold aid from Ukraine and his "clear understanding" of the linkage Trump had made between that aid and the investigations. On Fox News, meanwhile, a graphic simply displayed Trump's talking points about Taylor, saying that the President had dismissed the diplomat, his own Administration's choice for the job, as a "Never Trumper" and noting that the White House had called his testimony "hearsay." The Fox graphic made no mention of what that testimony was.

There seemed to be little appetite on the part of Trump's defenders to actually argue the facts. Nowhere in his opening statement had Nunes so much as mentioned Trump's case for himself, which is that his actions toward Ukraine were not only proper but "perfect." As the rest of the long day wound on, not a single Republican made the case for Presidential perfection. Instead, they decided on a safer course: trying to convince the country to tune out. Taylor's testimony wasn't dramatic, they said; it was a snooze. At midday, the White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, tweeted that the "sham hearing" was both "boring" and a waste of taxpayer money. Representative Mark Meadows, one of Trump's closest allies, had been sitting in the committee room for the morning session, and he, too, came out to tell reporters that he didn't think it amounted to anything. "I don't know about you, but it's hard for me to stay awake and listen to all of this," Meadows said. Soon, Trump appeared before the cameras. First, he said that he was "too busy" to watch the hearings, then he proceeded to comment on them in detail.

Wherever this impeachment is headed, it was hard to find even Republicans who thought that the first session of the hearings was good for the President. On Fox News, the anchor Chris Wallace, well known for his sharp-edged questioning of politicians from both parties, called Taylor a "very impressive" witness and his testimony "very damaging" toward Trump, though the Fox Web site was more skeptical. "bombshell or hearsay?" its headline read. Over at the Washington Post, the bombshell interpretation carried the day. "new testimony ties trump more directly to ukraine pressure campaign" its headline said.

The Republican playbook here is a time-honored one: delay, deny, obfuscate, and, if that fails, beg Americans to turn off the TV. In his opening statement, the House Intelligence chairman, Adam Schiff, had contended that there was not much debate over the facts. Throughout the long day, I did not hear much, if any. Although they are very different Presidents faced with very different accusations, this was the case with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, too—a proceeding that began in the House of Representatives almost twenty-one years ago to the day. In Clinton's case, it was pretty clear all along that the President had had an affair with his former intern, Monica Lewinsky, and lied about it under oath. The issue was what, if anything, Congress should do about it.

In this case, Trump is accused of what appears to be a much more serious abuse of the power of his office to extort a foreign leader into acting in the President's personal interest, rather than the national interest. "If this is not impeachable conduct, what is?" Schiff asked. Ultimately, this is what the debate will come down to, when the articles of impeachment are drawn up, and when the Senate has to deal with the President's conduct in a trial. Trump appears to have done what he is accused of doing. The question is whether any Republicans will join Democrats in arguing that it is impeachable and warrants his removal from office."

[drogulus]

     As a fervent admirer of the idiocy of Devin Nunes (though not the man himself) I was not disappointed. He said that the Ukraine conspiracy was a real thing and sending Rudy to investigate it was justified. So why didn't the former chairman of the Intelligence Committee investigate the Ukraine connection and clear the very innocent Manafort when he had the power and duty to do so?

[BasilValentine]

     As a fervent admirer of the idiocy of Devin Nunes (though not the man himself) I was not disappointed. He said that the Ukraine conspiracy was a real thing and sending Rudy to investigate it was justified. So why didn't the former chairman of the Intelligence Committee investigate the Ukraine connection and clear the very innocent Manafort when he had the power and duty to do so?

If it were a real thing, sending the FBI and CIA would be justified. Sending Rudy screams that it's not.

[SimonNZ]

Prosecutors Just Rested Their Case Over Roger Stone's Lies: "Truth Matters"
"Mr. Stone lied to Congress. He obstructed justice and he tampered with a witness, and that matters. And you don't look at that and you don't say: 'So what?'"

Roger Stone: Trump ally convicted of lying to Congress

and Trump is Tweeting about how unfair it is that his laundry list of enemies are still free, and Alex Jones is saying he's going to publish the names and addresses of the jury members, and Ken Starr is saying Trump should pardon him "out of friendship"


Transcript Shows WH Made Up Details of Trump's Zelensky Call

"The release of the transcript of President Donald Trump's first call in April with Ukrainian President-elect Volodomyr Zelensky was meant to bolster the case that Trump had nothing but good intentions in his dealings with Ukraine—but it also showed a White House summary of the same call released to the public shortly after it occurred was largely fabricated.

The White House readout, a summary of the call released hours after it occurred, claimed Trump "underscored the unwavering support of the United States for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity—within its internationally recognized borders—and expressed his commitment to work together with President-elect Zelensky and the Ukrainian people to implement reforms that strengthen democracy, increase prosperity, and root out corruption."

Such statements are nowhere to be found in the transcript of the call released by the president on Friday. That transcript shows Trump congratulating Zelensky on his recent election win, promising to arrange a White House visit for him, and recounting the large number of Ukrainian women who participated in Trump's Miss Universe competitions.

Nowhere does Trump mention efforts to address Ukrainian corruption, economic prosperity, or democratic institutions. Nor does he even allude to its efforts to beat back the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea."[...]

[SimonNZ]

Trump smears and witness drama: key Marie Yovanovitch takeaways
The former Ukraine ambassador became the third witness to appear publicly – and her testimony was hugely persuasive

"Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch became the third witness to testify in public impeachment hearings on Friday investigating whether Donald Trump sought to bribe Ukraine to boost his chance of re-election by investigating a US political rival.

Yovanovitch was recalled by Trump from her post in Ukraine in May, shortly after the state department had asked her to stay on another year.

"The question before us is not whether Donald Trump could recall an American ambassador with a stellar reputation for fighting corruption in Ukraine," said House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff, "but why would he want to?"

Here are key takeaways from a hearing which sought to answer that question:

1) A bombshell hearing
After relatively subdued testimony on Wednesday, the impeachment inquiry accelerated dramatically on Friday as Yovanovitch told impeachment investigators she felt "shocked and devastated" by Trump's personal attacks on her, and that she was "amazed" corrupt elements in Ukraine had found willing American partners to take her down.

While Trump has denied wrongdoing, the feeling that something very wrong indeed had happened was palpable as Yovanovitch, a widely respected, 33-year veteran of the foreign service, described her recall and a smear campaign that preceded it.

2) Trump's Twitter attack
As Yovanovitch spoke, Trump unloaded on Twitter, writing "Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go?" and "It is the US president's absolute right to appoint ambassadors."

Then, in an astonishing moment of political theater, Schiff read the tweets to Yovanovitch in real time and asked her to reply.

"I don't think I have such powers," she said. "Not in Mogadishu, Somalia, and other places."

Asked how it felt to be personally attacked by the president, Yovanovitch said, "the effect is intimidating."

Schiff replied: "I want to let you know that some of us here take witness intimidation very, very seriously."

Fox News host Bret Baier tweeted on the possible consequences for Trump of his reckless tweet: "She was already a sympathetic witness & the president's tweet ripping her allowed Schiff to point it out real time characterizing it as witness tampering or intimidation – adding an article of impeachment real-time."

3) The cowed Republicans
So persuasive a figure was Yovanovitch – so plain was her dedication to country and seriousness of purpose – that not only did Republicans not dare to attack her, they often took turns praising her service and thanking her for it.

The sharpest attack on Yovanovitch was leveled by Devin Nunes, the senior Republican on the committee, who wrote off Yovanovitch's dismissal as a mundane personnel matter.

"This seems more appropriate for the subcommittee for human resources of the foreign affairs committee if there's issues with employment," Nunes said.

But the visibly de-energized Republican side failed to mount a substantive rebuttal to Yovanovitch's testimony.

4) Enter Rudy
For the first time in the impeachment hearings, investigators shone a spotlight on the role of Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal emissary who pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden while leading a smear campaign against Yovanovitch. The ambassador said she became aware Giuliani was spreading lies about her, accusing her of being an enemy of the president, early this year.

Giuliani's motivations are under investigation by federal prosecutors. Two of his associates were trying to start a liquid natural gas export business in Ukraine, while a third associate, former general prosecutor Yuri Lutsenko, had previously clashed with Yovanovitch and wanted "revenge," according to testimony.

Last spring, Lutsenko gave Giuliani something he – and Trump – wanted: negative news lines in the US media about Joe Biden, from an official Ukrainian source: Lutsenko himself.

5) Danger ahead for Trump
As the public hearing drew to a close, a new witness, David Holmes, arrived for a closed-door deposition. Ambassador Bill Taylor testified that Holmes, his aide, overheard Trump in a phone call ask ambassador Gordon Sondland how the "investigations" in Ukraine were coming.

Holmes' arrival pointed to a potentially rocky week ahead for Trump. Holmes himself might testify in public. Sondland is scheduled to appear on Wednesday and could give damning first hand testimony about what Trump wanted in Ukraine, and why.

"While you are the beginning of this story, you are not the end of it," Schiff told Yovanovitch at the close of her testimony."

[SimonNZ]

Why does Devin Nunes think Democrats want to see naked pictures of Trump?

I could possibly search for the answer, but I don't want to put "Devin Nunes Naked Pictures" into Google.

[dissily Mordentroge]

Naked pictures of Trump? Please cease putting these horrifying ideas into our heads.
The man is repulsive enough fully clothed.

[Karl Henning]

Why does Devin Nunes think Democrats want to see naked pictures of Trump?

I could possibly search for the answer, but I don't want to put "Devin Nunes Naked Pictures" into Google.

All the President's buffoons.

[drogulus]

     Transcript Shows WH Made Up Details of Trump's Zelensky Call

     Trump releases a transcript of the first call with Zelensky.

The White House readout, a summary of the call released hours after it occurred, claimed Trump "underscored the unwavering support of the United States for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity—within its internationally recognized borders—and expressed his commitment to work together with President-elect Zelensky and the Ukrainian people to implement reforms that strengthen democracy, increase prosperity, and root out corruption."

     But according to the just released version, it's quite different.

Such statements are nowhere to be found in the transcript of the call released by the president on Friday. That transcript shows Trump congratulating Zelensky on his recent election win, promising to arrange a White House visit for him, and recounting the large number of Ukrainian women who participated in Trump's Miss Universe competitions.

Nowhere does Trump mention efforts to address Ukrainian corruption, economic prosperity, or democratic institutions. Nor does he even allude to its efforts to beat back the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.

     That's helpful, the WH lied about the substance of the first call, which didn't have any according to the latest super reliable version. I'm impressed.

[SimonNZ]

Trump Grants Pardons To Army Officers Charged With War Crimes
President Donald Trump called Major Matthew Golsteyn, who was accused of murder, a "hero"

[amw]

This is an interesting and definitely real new development