Perhaps, it had to surprise Bill Clinton, hadn't it? Obviously, some big guy in NATO had it decided, perhaps the Secretary General gave the orders and pushed the button?
Now, I have understood that the other mighty world power - Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia, so it was not the Soviet Union with the old man Brezhnev...
the USSR is well and alive and residing in the USA these days
yeah, you are a bit slow, that's why
Days after his disastrous White House press briefing in which he admitted President Donald Trump was seeking out a quid pro quo with Ukraine before saying never mind, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney struggled to walk back his comments under the intense and relentless grilling of Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace.
Almost immediately during the Sunday morning broadcast, Wallace pressed Mulvaney on his remarks, asking why he said during the press conference that military aid to Ukraine depended on investigating the actions of Democrats during the 2016 election, prompting Mulvaney to assert that he never actually said that.
“Again, that’s not what I said, that's what people said I said,” he replied before saying there were “two reasons” why the United States would have held up aid: corruption and whether other European nations were helping with aid.
Wallace, meanwhile, didn’t let Mulvaney’s spin go unchecked, telling the chief of staff that anyone listening to the briefing could “come to only one conclusion” before playing clips Mulvaney confirming that Trump withheld aid unless the Ukrainians investigated the Democrats.
Mulvaney continued to insist that he had been misinterpreted and that aid was only contingent on corruption and additional European assistance, causing the Fox News anchor to fire back.
“I hate to go through this but you said what you said,” Wallace stated. “And the fact is, after that exchange with [ABC News correspondent] Jonathan Karl, you were asked another time why the aid was held up. What was the condition for the aid? And you didn’t mention two conditions, you mentioned three conditions.”
Wallace, once again, threw Mulvaney’s own remarks back in his face, playing yet another clip from the press briefing of Mulvaney claiming military aid to Ukraine was contingent upon them cooperating with the Trump administration and investigating the Democrats.
The Trump aide, however, attempted to brush off his previous remarks by saying he didn’t actually use the words “quid pro quo,” prompting Wallace to point out that when Karl pressed him on whether or not there was a quid pro quo, Mulvaney said that “happens all the time.”
The two would go back and forth over this issue for a few more minutes, with Wallace repeatedly cornering Mulvaney over his previous comments and the chief of staff flailing away and struggling to present even a laughable defense.
At one point, Wallace asked Mulvaney whether he had offered his resignation to Trump in the wake of the blowback and criticism he received over the press briefing. Mulvaney said the topic was “absolutely not” discussed with the president, adding that he is “very happy working there.”
CNN, meanwhile, reported Sunday that prior to the impeachment crisis that Trump finds himself currently embroiled in, there were internal efforts to push Mulvaney out as acting chief of staff. Those efforts subsided, however, when the push for impeachment heated up in the wake of the Ukraine scandal late last month.
Besides the issues surrounding the Ukraine scandal and impeachment, Wallace also grilled Mulvaney on the president’s sudden reversal on next year’s G7 summit, which Mulvaney announced last week would be held at Trump’s personal property.
Asked by Wallace why the president “caved” to the bipartisan backlash, Mulvaney said Trump was “honestly surprised at the level of pushback,” adding that the president “still considers himself to be in the hospitality business.”
Wallace seized on the “hospitality business” comment and pressed Mulvaney if the president understood why it “looked lousy.” The acting chief of staff's retort: “I think he thinks people think it looks lousy.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps...litics&via=rss
Mick Mulvaney’s week went from bad to worse on Sunday, as he again tried to explain why President Donald Trump and the administration had withheld aid to Ukraine for weeks — one of Democrats’ central questions in their impeachment inquiry.
Mulvaney fumbled during an interview on “Fox News Sunday” when he cited two reasons for the delay, whereas he had listed three during his Thursday news briefing at the White House. He continued to blame reporters for any misunderstanding, a feat that can be tough to pull off when his answers were all delivered on camera and when the host, Chris Wallace, let the tape keep rolling.
And he threw red meat to liberals and Democratic presidential candidates who have long questioned the appropriateness of the Trump family continuing to profit from their business holdings while Trump serves as president.
“At the end of the day, he still considers himself to be in the hospitality business,” Mulvaney told Wallace about Trump’s original decision to hold the next G-7 summit at his resort in Doral, Fla. — a decision he reversed late Saturday.
“I just have to pick up: You say he considers himself in the hospitality business?” Wallace asked. “He’s the president of the United States.”
Mulvaney’s interview did not play well among Trump allies and advisers, with one calling it a “self-immolation.”
More broadly, it was the latest sign of turbulence during the acting chief of staff’s roughly 10-month tenure. It was also a symbol of the struggle within this White House to manage and fight back against Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, all while facing deep criticism from fellow Republicans over the administration’s handling of Syria and the G-7 venue. During the past week, White House aides have felt under siege. One former administration official called it one of the White House’s worst weeks during Trump’s presidency, and aides and allies started to contemplate the length of Mulvaney’s tenure in the West Wing.
In recent months, Jared Kushner, the president’s senior adviser and son-in-law, has grown fed up with Mulvaney at various points and has spoken poorly of his laissez-faire management style, one Republican close to the White House said. At first, Kushner was quite pleased with Mulvaney’s hands-off approach because of its departure from the tense reign of Gen. John Kelly, Mulvaney’s immediate predecessor, and because it allowed Kushner to operate freely. Yet that sentiment has waned in recent months, the Republican said, as the White House has started to feel more chaotic.
A senior administration official said Kushner is supportive of Mulvaney as the acting chief of staff and that when there have been complications in the White House, Mulvaney and Kushner have a close enough relationship to “hash it out.”
The White House press office declined to comment on the record Sunday. Later, it did not respond when asked whether White House aides or allies were drawing up lists for Mulvaney’s replacement.
On ABC News’ “This Week With George Stephanopoulos," former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a longtime friend of the president’s, called Trump’s since-reversed decision to hold the G-7 at Doral an “unforced error” and Mulvaney’s Thursday briefing “a mistake.”
Rahm Emanuel, a former chief of staff to President Barack Obama and a former mayor of Chicago, had his own advice for Mulvaney on the same program: “Get yourself a lawyer, and do it fast.”
Christie added: “I’ve said this to the president as recently as this week. We have to be in friend-making mode. OK? There’s a time to be combative and there’s a time to be in friend-making mode, vis-ŕ-vis your own party.
And right now, when you’re facing impeachment — which by the way, is predetermined, as I’ve said before.”
Mulvaney tried to help on that front by hosting Republican lawmakers at Camp David over the weekend.
He appeared on TV twice this past week to publicly defend the president at a time when few other top officials are willing to go on-air, and he agreed on Thursday to go on camera to deliver the news that the president was intending to hold the G-7 at one of his resorts, even though several White House officials, from lawyers to advance staff to operations aides, were looped in on the decision.
“It’s not lost on me that if we had made the decision [on Doral] on Thursday, we would not have had the press conference on Thursday regarding everything else. That is fine,” Mulvaney told Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”
Another senior administration official said some White House aides had been frustrated by the media’s reaction to Mulvaney’s appearances, but that Mulvaney himself was still focused on his job and fighting for the president.
Several White House aides and Trump allies presume Mulvaney’s job is safe during the impeachment proceedings. That’s in part, they say, because no one else would want the chief of staff job right now and partly because Mulvaney is too much at the center of the Ukraine scandal for Trump to unceremoniously dump him as he has done with other senior aides like John Bolton, his former national security adviser.
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/1...e-house-052708
The bald orange cunto thinks the Emoluments clause is made up.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile...itution-phony/
^
Playing the victim again. Standard operating procedure for this assclown.
best POTUS, at least he is transparent and doesn't provide any big surprises, unlike the other 2 face POTUS of the past
and Trump is delivering,
Obama being guilty on all fronts,
You're just dialing-in the Trumptard turd polishing stuff at this point.
Little conviction and even less convincing.
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect,"
he is letting Russia running the show in Syria, that's fooking progress right there
and he is going to destroy any credibility that NATO had left,
time to rethink NATO and the new rule of the EU Army with the help of Russia, like we used to in the early 19th century
Just can’t help myself.
So fmr US ambassador to the Ukraine Bill Taylor has testified to the congressional committee and to the surprise of absolutely nobody has confirmed that Trump withheld aid and made "everything", including security assistance, conditional upon the Ukraine publicly announcing investigations into the Biden's and 2016 election (i.e. Clinton).
So in other words he has confirmed what Trump and his cast of morons have already publicly admitted during Stupid Watergate: that Trump abuses his power to go after political rivals.
that won't be enough for an impeachment and the public won't understand why with the complexity of Ukraine
without public support, it's not going to fly
and Trump will be re-elected, and you Anti-Trump snowflakes will be in tears again
He abused his office to go after political opponents in a quid pro quo with a foreign government...Originally Posted by Dragonfly
That's about as straight-forward and easy to understand as it gets. It's only difficult for those who put the 'stupid' in Stupid Watergate.
Exactly, it's Stupid Watergate.Originally Posted by Dragonfly
Originally Posted by Dragonfly
Fuck me you don't half post some utter bollocks!
Making up unsubstantiated allegations and throwing mud to obfuscate isn't a defense: even if someone had done it that doesn't make it any less corrupt.
And check the news Butters, it's literally in the news so it is, in fact, news.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/u...t-ukraine.htmlUkraine Envoy Testifies Trump Linked Military Aid to Investigations
In closed-door testimony, William B. Taylor Jr., implicated President Trump personally in an effort to withhold security aid until Ukraine’s leader agreed to publicly announce investigations of his rivals.
William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, leaving Capitol Hill on Tuesday.
CreditErin Schaff/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The top American diplomat in Ukraine on Tuesday gave impeachment investigators a vivid and impassioned account of how multiple senior administration officials told him that President Trump blocked security aid to Ukraine and refused to meet the country’s leader until he agreed to publicly pledge to investigate Mr. Trump’s political rivals.
In testimony to impeachment investigators delivered in defiance of State Department orders, the diplomat, William B. Taylor Jr., sketched out in remarkable detail a quid pro quo pressure campaign on Ukraine that Mr. Trump and his allies have long denied. He said the president sought to condition the entire United States relationship with Ukraine — including a $391 million aid package whose delay put Ukrainian lives in danger — on a promise that the country would publicly investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his family.
His account implicated Mr. Trump, citing multiple sources inside the government. Those include a budget official who said during a secure National Security Council conference call in July that she had been instructed not to approve the security assistance for Ukraine, and that, Mr. Taylor said, “the directive had come from the president.”
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