Thread: President Donald Trump

It took Devin Nunes all of about seven minutes to get to....

"OBAMA!".

Originally Posted by Klondyke

Why not to help them a bit when Hunter is no longer available with his expert advice? After push from Rick Perry, his backers got huge gas deal in Ukraine The contract was awarded a little more than a month after the U.S. energy secretary attended President Zelenskiy's May inauguration. KYIV, Ukraine — Two political supporters of U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry secured a potentially lucrative oil and gas exploration deal from the Ukrainian government soon after Perry proposed one of the men as an adviser to the country's new president. Perry's efforts to influence Ukraine's energy policy came earlier this year, just as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's new government was seeking military aid from the United States to defend against Russian aggression and allies of President Donald Trump were ramping up efforts to get the Ukrainians to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden. Ukraine awarded the contract to Perry's supporters little more than a month after the U.S. energy secretary attended Zelenskiy's May inauguration. In a meeting during that trip, Perry handed the new president a list of people he recommended as energy advisers. One of the four names was his longtime political backer Michael Bleyzer. A week later, Bleyzer and his partner Alex Cranberg submitted a bid to drill for oil and gas at a sprawling government-controlled site called Varvynska. They offered millions of dollars less to the Ukrainian government than their only competitor for the drilling rights, according to internal Ukrainian government documents obtained by The Associated Press. But their newly created joint venture, Ukrainian Energy, was awarded the 50-year contract because a government-appointed commission determined they had greater technical expertise and stronger financial backing, the documents show. Read more https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/nat...-deal-n1079896

Draining the swamp..... The corruption in this Trump govt is akin to Prayut's military govt this end.

"Trump Jr’s book tour is also a reminder of the right’s limitless hypocrisy. One of the big themes of Triggered is, to quote Trump Jr: “A victimhood complex has taken root in the American left”. But let’s recap the situation shall we? Trump Jr (who describes himself as “hyper-rational” and “stoic”) has just published a book complaining that he is being silenced by the left. He is touring the US talking about how he is being silenced. He has been invited on primetime TV to talk about being silenced. And he is complaining about being silenced to his 4 million followers on Twitter. Maybe I am missing something, but that doesn’t exactly sound like being silenced to me.

And it is not just Trump Jr who loves to play the victim. A delusional victimhood complex is at the very heart of rightwing ideology. Immigrants are invading and stealing all the jobs. Jews are taking over the world. #MeToo is intent on destroying innocent men’s lives. Gays are destroying family values. The right never see themselves as racists or bigots; they see themselves as victims who are fighting back against the imminent extinction of western civilisation. Forget being stoic or silenced; they are constantly triggered and they never shut up."

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...7cQQx3tXFV5580


Snowflakes be snowflaking.

So Trump has said he is "too busy" and won't be watching the impeachment hearings...























...

^So, why not to listen to the interesting chapters from the lives of the honorable members reading their stories - prepared by a gang of lawyers - how their whole life they had worked so hard for the well-being and security of the American people.

And not only them but also their fathers in Vietnam and other liberation wars.

That all will surely give more weight to their testimony about impeachment and other atrocities in the Oral Office...

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

So Eric Baldy Orange Cunto Jr. and his big titted bimbo girlfriend were doing an event to promote his book about how "the left are trying to silence them" and got booed off stage by trumpanzees because he refused to answer any questions.

Kimberly Guilfoyle

The bald orange turd will be very stressed today I fancy....

Donald Trump must obey Congress by releasing eight years' worth of tax returns, a federal appeals court has ruled.

Judges on Wednesday denied for the second time the US president's attempt to stop his accounting firm from releasing the financial records to the House oversight committee.

Jay Sekulow, Mr Trump's lawyer, said the president would appeal to the US Supreme Court.

The 8-3 vote by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, declining Mr Trump's request to rehear arguments that the subpoena to Mazars LLP was illegitimate, brings Democrats closer to shedding light on his business interests and how he built his fortune.

It seems little baldy orange cunto Jr.'s book is top of the NYT Best sellers list.

But it also seems it's because someone did some bulk buying.

In other news, donors to the baldy orange cunto campaign can get a free signed book. Can you guess which one?

Take your time now...

is incompetence a valid defence ?

Good old Bob. Can't wait to see the unedited Mueller Report.

Trump is right, it's easy to plead guilty to fabricated charges when the balance of power is only one side, that is the Federal side

a bit like NK or Thailand,

I can understand the baldy orange cunto believing it but are his lawyers that fucking dumb as well?

President Donald Trump late Thursday asked the right-wing Supreme Court to block the Manhattan district attorney's subpoena for his tax returns, arguing that he is "absolutely immune from all stages of state criminal process while in office."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/20...olutely-immune

Originally Posted by bsnub

You once again prove that you have no idea how the US government works you moron.

Seems that you and the rest of the anti Trump nutters have got everything wrong from day one.
Not a betting man, but if you people are anything to go by, your predictions, Trump is a shoe in for 2020.

Just saying, if you get it wrong so often, how would anyone believe what you say.

Originally Posted by jamescollister

how would anyone believe what you say

Good point.

You should definitely continue to take your cues on what is true and false from someone who has told over 13,500 false or misleading statements since taking office.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

Good point.

You should definitely continue to take your cues on what is true and false from someone who has told over 13,500 false or misleading statements since taking office.

When did I say I believe Trump, or any other politician, the anti trumpers have got it wrong every time on this forum

So why would I believe they have it right this time around, Trump, good or bad, is kicking goals and has won each time.
Just like a horse race, horse keeps winning, you don't back the losers in the next race.

Originally Posted by jamescollister

the anti trumpers have got it wrong every time on this forum

That's not even remotely close to being true.

Originally Posted by jamescollister

When did I say I believe Trump [...] ]Trump, good or bad, is kicking goals and has won each time.

So much winning! Oh yeah, and that's also not even remotely close to being true.

Maybe the question should be why would anyone believe someone who just makes stuff up and / or obviously only sees what he wants to.

Originally Posted by jamescollister

When did I say I believe Trump, or any other politician, the anti trumpers have got it wrong every time on this forum

What is "it"?

Can you give an example of "it"?

Better make that 13,501 Ant.

The release of the transcript of President Donald Trump’s first call in April with Ukrainain 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 Zelenskyy 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 the new Ukrainian president, and recounting the large number of Ukrainaian women who participated in Trump’s Miss Universe competitions.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/transcript-shows-wh-made-up-details-of-trumps-zelensky-call

FFS

Roger Stone guilty on four counts so far.

Another baldy orange cunto ally in the Russia scandal about to get locked up.

Is that "it" Jim?


Correction: Guilty on ALL counts. including witness tampering, lying to Congress and obstruction.

Meanwhile baldy orange cunto has been tweeting about witnesses giving testimony in front of Congress today.

I am wondering if anyone here can give me an explanation as to why Trump is so against having his tax records released?
I try to keep an open mind about the man but from what is said in the media he makes it very difficult for me to believe he is anything but a narcissistic, lying, bully.
Maybe the media is all fake news as he keeps saying but I doubt all of it is false though I'm sure some is, especially the reports that tell us he is a genius.
Unfortunately he is the truly elected President of the US and as such the people of the US and the world just have to suck it up until the next election.

Over 80 members of the House of Representatives have now called on White House senior adviser Stephen Miller to resign after leaked emails published this week showed his affinity for white nationalism.

HuffPost contacted the office of every House member and asked whether Miller should resign. All told, 76 representatives, all Democrats, have said he should.

“Hell yes,” responded Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.).

“I feel pretty secure in my belief that flaming white nationalists should have no place in the White House, the halls of Congress or anywhere, for that matter,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.).

“A person with his hateful beliefs should not be making decisions at the highest levels of our government,” said Mark Takano (D-Calif.). “He should resign, and if he doesn’t, he should be fired.”

The widespread calls for Miller’s resignation echoed demands Thursday by leaders of the Black Congressional Progressive Caucus, Black Caucus, Hispanic Caucus, and the Asian Pacific American Caucus.

“As documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Stephen Miller has embedded himself in white nationalist doctrine for years, including promoting racist propaganda from fringe sites like VDARE and InfoWars,” the Democratic caucus leaders said in a joint statement calling for Miller’s resignation.

“And as the chief architect of the Muslim Ban and cruel family separation policies, Stephen Miller has spent the last three years turning his bigotry into policy – with President Trump’s blessing.”


On Tuesday, the civil rights advocacy organization Southern Poverty Law Center published the first of a series of bombshell reports analyzing 900 emails Miller sent to former Breitbart writer Katie McHugh in 2015 and 2016. They show Miller, working at the time for then-Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), attempting to shape Breitbart’s political coverage, namely regarding stories related to race and immigration.

In some emails, Miller informed Breitbart of stories published by white supremacist website VDARE and racist conspiracy theory website InfoWars — and then suggested how Breitbart might promote them.

In another email, Miller recommended that Breitbart write about the deeply racist 1970s French novel “Camp of Saints,” which depicts brown immigrants — including Indians who “eat feces” — descending upon Europe like a plague, killing people and raping women. The novel is a favorite among neo-Nazis and other assorted fascists.

In all 900 emails, SPLC reporter Michael Hayden noted he was “unable to find any examples of Miller writing sympathetically or even in neutral tones about any person who is nonwhite or foreign-born.”

Miller went on to work for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign before being selected as a senior adviser in the White House, where he’s often credited with crafting the administration’s cruel immigration policies.

“Stephen Miller, Trump’s architect of mass human rights abuses at the border (including child separation & detention camps w/ child fatalities) has been exposed as a bonafide white nationalist,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted on Tuesday. “He’s still at the White House shaping US immigration policy. Miller must resign. Now.”

“Each day we allow a white nationalist to be in charge of US immigration policy is a day where thousands of children & families lives are in danger,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in another tweet. “This year alone, under Miller’s direction, the US has put almost 70,000 children in custody.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) tweeted: “As I said earlier this year: Stephen Miller is a white nationalist. And now we have the emails to prove it. This type of racism and hatred has no place in our government. Miller needs to step down. Now.”

The White House did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment on the calls for Miller to resign or whether the president might fire Miller.

“Unfortunately, we know that President Trump, who said that there were ‘very fine people on both sides’ when white supremacists marched in Charlottesville, welcomes his racist views to help sow hate and division in America,” Takano told HuffPost.

In a statement to Axios, White House spokesperson Stephanie Grisham called the Southern Poverty Law Center “an utterly-discredited, long-debunked far-left smear organization.”

“They libel, slander, and defame conservatives for a living,” said Grisham, providing no evidence that the SPLC’s story about Miller is false.

Another White House official anonymously attempted to accuse the SPLC of anti-Semitism.

“This is clearly a form of anti-Semitism to levy these attacks against Jewish staffer,” the unnamed official told Axios.

Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), who thinks Miller should resign, noted in a statement to HuffPost that the White House adviser “is damn lucky that there wasn’t someone like him in charge at Ellis Island when his great-grandfather sought refuge in this country after fleeing Eastern Europe to escape persecution by the Nazis.”

“Having someone like him in a powerful position at the White House sends a very bad message to Americans and the world,” Wilson said.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/steph...=NEWSSTAND0001

Originally Posted by ootai

I am wondering if anyone here can give me an explanation as to why Trump is so against having his tax records released?
I try to keep an open mind about the man but from what is said in the media he makes it very difficult for me to believe he is anything but a narcissistic, lying, bully.
Maybe the media is all fake news as he keeps saying but I doubt all of it is false though I'm sure some is, especially the reports that tell us he is a genius.
Unfortunately he is the truly elected President of the US and as such the people of the US and the world just have to suck it up until the next election.

Baldy probably inflated his asset values to borrow money, and deflated them to minimise his taxes. Both of those are crimes.

A fateful convergence of events Friday reflected a culture of corruption and intimidation endemic to the circle of a President who vowed to drain the swamp but instead became its incarnation.First, a US ambassador told how her reputation was shredded and she was hounded out of her job by President Donald Trump's rogue associates after a faultless 30-year career advancing America's interests.

"Ukrainians who prefer to play by the old corrupt rules sought to remove me," former US envoy to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch said at the House impeachment hearings. "What continues to amaze me is that they found Americans willing to partner with them."

Incredibly, her testimony was interrupted by a Trump attack tweet that visibly exacerbated her anguish over his bullying tactics, lent credibility to her testimony and could now be folded into articles of impeachment.

As she spoke, and less than a mile away across Washington's mall, Roger Stone became the latest associate who will pay for his loyalty to the President.

The Nixon-era political trickster was found guilty of lying to Congress and witness tampering, apparently motivated by a desire to protect Trump from embarrassment over the Russia scandal.

"Truth matters. Truth still matters, OK?" prosecutor Michael Marando had told the jury on Wednesday. "In our institutions of self-governance, committee hearings, courts of law ... truth still matters."

All this came during a week in which the President made a new last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court to shield his tax returns from public scrutiny.

And on Friday evening, things took another turn for the worse for Trump.

Diplomatic aide David Holmes testified that he had heard Trump on a telephone call ask US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland whether the Ukrainians were going to open investigations he had asked for into former Vice President Joe Biden and a conspiracy theory surrounding the 2016 election.

Sondland told Trump on the call in July that Ukranian President Vlodymyr Zelensky was ready to do "anything you ask him to," according to a transcript of an opening statement delivered by Holmes to a closed-door session of the impeachment investigation.

The revelation significantly raised the stakes for Sondland's testimony in a televised hearing next week and suggests that Trump was intimately involved in his lawyer Rudy Giuliani's scheme to pressure the Ukrainians.

Whether Americans ultimately come to believe that the President's alleged misconduct merits the terrible sanction of removal or come to believe the Democratic impeachment attempt is narrowly political and unjustified, this was a clarifying day.

At a time of swirling misinformation, propagandistic pro-Trump news coverage and conspiracy theories, it showed that while facts may be under assault, they can ultimately still emerge in a way that will allow history to render a judgment even if the fractured political climate makes that it impossible in the moment.

Friday piled more testimony on the mountain of evidence suggesting that the US is in the grip of not just the most unorthodox, but the most corrupt presidency of the modern era.

The Stone and Yovanovitch dramas did not take place in isolation. They fit into a pattern of questionable behavior clouding Trump's entire political career. The sheer weight of such evidence confounds his supporters' claims that the real problem is that Democrats and the media are caught up in some kind of "Never Trump" mania that amounts to a coup.

This, after all, is a President who demanded misplaced personal loyalty from FBI chief James Comey, then fired him and said he did it because of the Russia investigation. Trump also repeatedly berated his first Attorney General Jeff Sessions for honoring an obligation to recuse himself from the Russia probe.

While special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish cooperation between Trump's campaign and Russia, he said the President's team expected to benefit from his election meddling.
And he pointedly did not exonerate Trump of obstruction.

This is a President who tried to get the US government to cut him a check to host next year's G7 summit before backing off because of the political outrage. As if to underscore conflicts of interests posed by his financial entanglements, Trump filed suit with the Supreme Court Friday to stop prosecutors pulling his tax returns, setting up a landmark separation of powers showdown.

For sure, there are legal questions about immunity and the extent to which individual in that job should expect financial privacy at play here.

But Trump's move still raised the question about what he has to hide from the people for whom he holds a public trust.


The human toll of the Ukraine scandal


Yovanovitch's only offense may have been that she got in the way of a plan by Giuliani, working at Trump's direction, to get the Ukrainian government to investigate one of the President's domestic political opponents -- Biden.

It was notable that while Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee protested the process and highlighted that Yovanovitch was gone before Trump's alleged scheme to get dirt on Biden came to fruition, they did little to counter her story of a back door diplomatic scheme led by Giuliani.

Democrats scheduled the former ambassador in their second televised impeachment hearing to suggest the human cost of the President's Ukraine scheme.

She also helped them flesh out an argument that Giuliani, acting at the direction of the President, and with associates in Ukraine like now indicted Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, had trampled over America's foreign policy interests in pursuit of their own personal and political enrichment.

Yovanovitch also found herself the target of a fierce campaign by conservative pundits that including the President's son, Donald Trump Jr.

Far from working to drain corruption as Yovanovitch was in Ukraine, she testified that Giuliani's team was working with corrupt figures in Kiev and importing their methods to the US.

Like her colleagues, George Kent and Bill Taylor who testified Wednesday, she seemed like an envoy to a country she no longer understood -- her own -- where governance is beginning to share characteristics of corruption-laced nations where they served.

"How could our system fail like this?" Yovanovitch asked.

"How is it that foreign corrupt interests could manipulate our government? Which country's interests are served when the very corrupt behavior we have been criticizing is allowed to prevail?" Yovanovitch said.

Like other witnesses from the foreign service bureaucracy, Yovanovitch also warned that current turmoil will damage America's reputation.

"Such conduct undermines the US, exposes our friends and widens the playing failed for autocrats like President Putin," she said. "Our leadership depends on the power of our example."

Trump's tweet in which he accused Yovanovitch of making each country that she served in -- for instance Somalia -- worse, only lent credibility to her account of feeling intimidated by the commander-in-chief's smears and threats.

Several Republicans decried Trump's attack as counterproductive.

"It was idiotic to tweet today about her," one Trump campaign source told CNN's Jim Acosta. "She seems legitimately worried."

The President's intervention could be a sign that he understood the damage the ambassador's testimony was doing. But he insisted later that he had every right to go after her.

"You know what? I have the right to speak. I have freedom of speech just as other people do, but they've taken away the Republicans rights," the President said.

It's unclear whether the tweets reach a standard of witness tampering that might stand up in court. Democrats suggested they could become part of eventual articles of the political process of impeachment in any case.

But the attack couldn't have been a clearer sign of the intimidation that characterizes Trump orbit.

And the assault by the most powerful man in the world will surely be on the mind of witnesses called to testify in next week's frenetic week of impeachment theater.

Trump rails at 'double standard'


Stone's conviction stems directly from the Mueller investigation. He was accused of lying about his efforts to contact Wikileaks to get information that could helped Trump during his 2016 election campaign against Hillary Clinton.

Prosecutors argued that his crimes were partly motivated by a desire to save the President from political embarrassment.

Stone became the sixth Trump associate to be convicted -- a list that includes former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, the campaign's ex-deputy chairman Rick Gates, short-lived national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos.

So far, the President has largely avoid such legal consequences. But each of these men now has cause to regret their decision to jump aboard the Trump train. If a man is judged by the company he keeps, their convictions reflect poorly on the President.

Trump reacted furiously to Stone's conviction, claiming his fate at the hand of a jury of his peers was another example of an establishment plot against him.

"So they now convict Roger Stone of lying and want to jail him for many years to come," Trump tweeted, before raging at his usual punching bags including Clinton, Comey and Obama administration intelligence community officials.

"A double standard like never seen before in the history of our Country?" the President wrote.

Speculation is already running high that the President could use his power to pardon Stone -- a move -- at the time of an impeachment drama that would be politically radioactive.

The President has exceedingly broad power to pardon offenders, but saving Stone would suggest that people around him are above the law. And it would further color in a portrait of rampant corruption already threatening to dominate his legacy.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/16/polit...ent/index.html

Whether Americans ultimately come to believe that the President's alleged misconduct merits the terrible sanction of removal or come to believe the Democratic impeachment attempt is narrowly political and unjustified, this was a clarifying day.

What it really boils down to is whether or not, when it comes to the crunch, the Republicans will do the right thing.

If the polls say Americans don't care, they will vote it down.

If it looks like they do, and there will be a price to pay at the polls, they will still not impeach him. They will take the Nixonian coward's way out and get him to resign.

Fortunately even a Pence pardon can't shield him from the District charges.