Tag: GOP congress

Are Trump and his ilk manipulating the markets for personal gain? Investigative business reporter William Cohan lays out the evidence

AlterNet logoDonald Trump has been impeached by the House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstructing a congressional investigation into his attempt to blackmail a foreign country into aiding him in the 2020 presidential election. He is now the third president in American history to have earned that ignominious distinction.

Trump will not be convicted by the Republicans in the Senate for his crimes.

The public evidence is damning. There is no evidence that could possibly exonerate him. Trump is publicly bragging about committing crimes against the Constitution and the American people. The Republican Party and its propaganda news media have decided to ignore reality and fully immerse themselves in TrumpWorld. They have pledged total loyalty to him and no evidence will move them. The Republicans and their news media and public are authoritarian lemmings. Continue reading.

The impeachment evidence will catch up to Republicans and Trump — whether they ignore it or not

Washington Post logoDONALD TRUMP’S presidency has been, among other things, a war against truth. So it’s fitting that in making the case for his removal from office this week, House impeachment managers showered the Senate with facts. Over and over again, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and his co-managers laid out the hard evidence that Mr. Trump used presidential powers to pressure Ukraine into announcing investigations that would aid his reelection campaign, and that he engaged in unprecedented obstruction of Congress’s subsequent investigation.

Videos of testimony and damning statements by Mr. Trump, as well as images of revealing text messages among administration officials, were exhibited repeatedly on the Senate floor, prompting some Republicans to complain that they were being forced to rehear the same pieces of evidence. So be it: GOP senators intent on exonerating the president without bothering to fairly consider the case against him should at least be forced to face the reality of his abuses. Meanwhile, busy Americans who took the time to tune in to the proceedings for even an hour or two between Wednesday and Friday likely heard a substantial version of the case.

Several strands of the managers’ argument struck us as particularly on point. One presentation laid out a 10-point proof that in pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr. Trump was pursuing not U.S. foreign policy but his private interests. The campaign was orchestrated by his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who said publicly that he was seeking to benefit Mr. Trump, not the country. Mr. Giuliani convinced Mr. Trump that there was dirt to be found in Ukraine on Joe Biden; but a presentation by Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Tex.) demolished the claim that Mr. Biden acted improperly when, as vice president, he sought the ouster of a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor. Continue reading.

Trump Opens Door to Cuts to Medicare and Other Entitlement Programs

New York Times logoThe president signaled a willingness to scale back Medicare, a shift from his 2016 platform of protecting entitlement programs.

WASHINGTON — President Trump suggested on Wednesday that he would be willing to consider cuts to social safety-net programs like Medicare to reduce the federal deficit if he wins a second term, an apparent shift from his 2016 campaign promise to protect funding for such entitlements.

The president made the comments on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Despite promises to reduce the federal budget deficit, it has ballooned under Mr. Trump’s watch as a result of sweeping tax cuts and additional government spending.

Asked in an interview with CNBC if cuts to entitlements would ever be on his plate, Mr. Trump answered yes. Continue reading.

NOTE:  We noted back with the passage of the Trump/GOP tax cut for the rich, that we’d be seeing this happen “because of the national debt” which has ballooned due to less taxes on corporations (many pay nothing) and the richest of the rich.

Devin Nunes vows to sue fellow congressman after allegation he ‘conspired with Parnas’

AlterNet logoRep. Devin Nunes was outed by Rudy Giuliani’s associate Lev Parnas in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Wednesday.

In the conversation, Parnas explained that he and Nunes didn’t have much of a relationship until he was told to work with Nunes’ aide Derek Harvey.

“We met several times at the Trump Hotel, but our relationship started getting — basically where it expanded was when I was introduced to his aide, Derek Harvey, and the reason why Derek Harvey I was told because Devin Nunes had an ethics — something to do with the Ethics Committee, he couldn’t be in the spotlight. He was kind of shunned a little bit and that he was looking into this Ukraine stuff also, wanted to help out. And they gave me Derek Harvey to deal with,” said Parnas. Continue reading.

‘Russia Is Still Listening’ As White House Ignores Election Security

A new report for the New York Times about a Russian hack of the Ukrainian oil company Burisma is giving many a disturbing sense of history repeating itself.

The company, which is at the center of the impeachment of President Donald Trump, was reportedly targeted by Russian military hackers. The Times explained:

…experts say the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens — the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment.

For Trump’s Republican defenders, is there such thing as too much presidential power?

Washington Post logoPerhaps more than any other modern president, President Trump has been blatantly intent on expanding his power. And Republicans in Congress have been willing to let him, especially on the two biggest news stories of the week: impeachment and Iran.

All presidents test how far they can push away Congress, especially when it comes to war. Congress has let presidents take the lead when it comes to military conflict, despite lawmakers’ constitutional right to be the branch that declares war.

But legal experts The Fix spoke to also say Trump is rapidly expanding presidential power, and most of the Republican Party is cheering him on — even as it happens at the expense of their own power to hold future Democratic presidents accountable. Continue reading.

Congressional Republicans abandon constitutional heritage and Watergate precedents in defense of Trump

Once, not so long ago, congressional Republicans were impeachment’s constitutional stalwarts.

They stood up for the House of Representatives’ “sole power of impeachment,” a power granted in the Constitution, including the right to subpoena witnesses and evidence. Even when the president under investigation was a Republican. Even when the Republican political base threatened to turn against them.

But that was when the president was Richard Nixon, not Donald Trump. Continue reading.

For Trump, the Burden May Be Proving This Is Not the Moment His Critics Predicted

New York Times logoThe president and his allies dismiss the criticism about his Iran actions as partisan blowback from political adversaries too timid to take strong action against foreign enemies.

WASHINGTON — For three years, President Trump’s critics have expressed concern over how he would handle a genuine international crisis, warning that a commander in chief known for impulsive action might overreach with dangerous consequences.

In the angry and frenzied aftermath of the American drone strike that killed Iran’s top general, with vows of revenge hanging in the air, Mr. Trump confronts a decisive moment that will test whether those critics were right or whether they misjudged him.

“The moment we all feared is likely upon us,” Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut and vocal critic of Mr. Trump, wrote on Twitter over the weekend. “An unstable President in way over his head, panicking, with all his experienced advisers having quit, and only the sycophantic amateurs remaining. Assassinating foreign leaders, announcing plans to bomb civilians. A nightmare.” Continue  reading.

Republicans Attack House Democrats on Impeachment, and Democrats Change the Subject

New York Times logoOne party is running ads about what’s happening in Congress. The other is happy to stick to health care.

For the past two months, television ads across central Virginia have sounded a lot like President Trump’s Twitter feed.

“A rigged process. A sham impeachment. No quid pro quo. But Pelosi’s witch hunt continues,” an ad from the Republican nonprofit group America First Policies cried, as images of Abigail Spanberger, who represents the region in Congress, flickered onscreen.

Like many of her fellow freshmen Democratic colleagues, Ms. Spanberger has faced a barrage of attack ads from the Republican National Committee, nonprofit groups and super PACs aligned with President Trump. Continue reading

GOP congressman breaks ranks: Giuliani’s Ukraine involvement ‘disturbing’ — and Bolton and Mulvaney should ‘definitely’ testify

AlterNet logoOn Tuesday, Rep. Francis Rooney (R-FL) broke ranks with his party on several anti-impeachment narratives in conversation with CNN reporter Jim Sciutto.

Rooney, according to Sciutto, said that the ongoing efforts by President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani to interfere in Ukraine are “extremely disturbing” — and that Senate Republicans should “definitely” accept Democratic demands for testimony from White House officials like former National Security Adviser John Bolton and chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

He also pushed back on the insinuation by the president and his allies that Ukraine was working behind the scenes to try to block Trump from being elected, saying “No intel people … have corroborated any Ukraine influence in the 2016 election.” Continue reading