I'm working my way through the transcript now, and the way Trump talks reminds me why I can't listen to any of his speeches.
He's like a giant child, and Zelansky has to keep speaking to him at his level and kissing ass about how they're surrounded by good people who are friends of Trump, and learned a lot from Trump and etcetera.
And then there's the bad people who ruined the good prosecuter. And Giuliani is a good man. He was a mayor, you know.
The trick is, someone will have to walk low-education, low-information people through that transcript memo for them to understand what the deal is. I like to think my reading level is pretty good, but what with all the meanderings and innuendo, even I had trouble following it.
There are just two sentences that are important.
Zelensky:"...we want to buy military hardware."
Trump:"Well you will have to do me a favor then..."
That is what you need to point out.
Exactly. The two statements follow each other in what is an absolutely obvious quid pro quo.
The problem isn’t that people can’t get it. It’s that they don’t want to. Yes, any idiot could talk a jury through this as a quid pro quo successfully. But that jury is, in theory, impartial. What we have is about 30% of the country who is personally invested in defending Trump as an individual and another 10% or more invested in his party. Those numbers will be higher in some states, and those states will often have similarly invested Senators.
These are people who do not want to believe it. And who will, even if they know damn well what they’re looking at, deny seeing it. Could you convince a jury this was a quid pro quo? Sure. Could you convince a jury consisting of the accused’s immediate and supportive family, a couple of his friends, and a few of the people also involved in his alleged crimes? Yeah, that’s gonna be harder.
Yeah, they're going to go "what's wrong with that? He's making a deal, that's all. Trump's a businessman, he makes the best deals, that's why we elected him. Since when is any of that a crime?"
And when you tell them, they'll frown and pout, and say (or just think) "well, it shouldn't be."
Commander Zoom on
+7
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
It's very slow until it's fast, indeed. I can't believe how quickly this has picked up steam.
I guess Trump and Co. flailing their way into admitting even more crimes would do that. And dragging Pence into it?
Every time I open the thread it's like Christmas.
main thing though is don't get too excited about the rapid pace right now, it doesn't mean the real results and implications will happen this fast
Watergate took months and months and months to see through, and while our media and ease of sharing news and updates has become near instant, the wheels of justice have not, and in many ways may have got slower as people are more willing to outright obstruct them.
it's going to be 2020 before anything real happens here.
It's very slow until it's fast, indeed. I can't believe how quickly this has picked up steam.
I guess Trump and Co. flailing their way into admitting even more crimes would do that. And dragging Pence into it?
Every time I open the thread it's like Christmas.
main thing though is don't get too excited about the rapid pace right now, it doesn't mean the real results and implications will happen this fast
Watergate took months and months and months to see through, and while our media and ease of sharing news and updates has become near instant, the wheels of justice have not, and in many ways may have got slower as people are more willing to outright obstruct them.
it's going to be 2020 before anything real happens here.
True, I am fairly pessimistic about the Senate right now. But for the moment I have decided to enjoy watching them fall apart.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
And when you tell them, they'll frown and pout, and say (or just think) "well, it shouldn't be."
That’s basically it. Laws are just a convenient cudgel to beat down things you don’t like for the “patriotic” conservatives. Once they can’t use it anymore, well, laws should be changed. Otherwise, the law is the law! Sorry.
Reminds me of the time CNN held a round table about claiming asylum at the border. This Republican woman was like well they should come in the right way. When informed that seeking asylum IS the legal way, she says, “well it shouldn’t be”.
The trick is, someone will have to walk low-education, low-information people through that transcript memo for them to understand what the deal is. I like to think my reading level is pretty good, but what with all the meanderings and innuendo, even I had trouble following it.
There are just two sentences that are important.
Zelensky:"...we want to buy military hardware."
Trump:"Well you will have to do me a favor then..."
That is what you need to point out.
Exactly. The two statements follow each other in what is an absolutely obvious quid pro quo.
The problem isn’t that people can’t get it. It’s that they don’t want to. Yes, any idiot could talk a jury through this as a quid pro quo successfully. But that jury is, in theory, impartial. What we have is about 30% of the country who is personally invested in defending Trump as an individual and another 10% or more invested in his party. Those numbers will be higher in some states, and those states will often have similarly invested Senators.
These are people who do not want to believe it. And who will, even if they know damn well what they’re looking at, deny seeing it. Could you convince a jury this was a quid pro quo? Sure. Could you convince a jury consisting of the accused’s immediate and supportive family, a couple of his friends, and a few of the people also involved in his alleged crimes? Yeah, that’s gonna be harder.
Until it changes. It was amazing how, in 1974, nobody you knew had voted for Nixon even though he had won every State but Massachusetts.
+4
augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
@moniker I stole this image off Twitter on the chance you may want to use it in the op:
A bit embarrassing for him since it portrays him as a sniveling bootlicker. Wonder how his voters feel about that.
"It" doesn't portray that, he, himself, portrays himself as a sniveling bootlicker. The people have every right to know.
Why?
Again, he's licking Trump's boots because that's the kind of thing you do when you are looking out for the interests of your country and you aren't a superpower. You get the job done.
I don't know, some of these posts have the tone of not getting what it's like to be Not-The-US.
Which is surely why Trump thought it was a "perfect" call, because the other guy spent the entire time flattering and kissing up to him. Exactly what he wants to hear.
But then Zelenskiy found out that it was all for nothing, because Trump has an "understanding" with the very person he was seeking protection against.
No... he thought it was a perfect call because he'd already had the memo altered and knew what he was releasing was going to be at least partially faked.
He was actually trying to set up Dems, by releasing The Transcript and claiming it proved nothing happened. That's why the talking points lean so hard on the memo being exoneration. It's because the whole thing is a fraud. Now they just have to try and
- Hide the reality, if any of it remains, under a cloak of executive privilege and classified documents
- Discredit the whistleblower
- Flip everything to be about Biden
and he gets away with it. The main target for Dems right now has to be ensuring that everyone knows the memo is doctored.
+3
ElJeffeRoaming the streets, waving his mod gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
I still can't get over how bad that phone call memo is for Trump and how he actually thought it would make him look better and not worse.
Like, I'm not gonna link to the story, because fuck the National Review, but I came across this quote today from David French, a conservative writer (albeit of the Never Trump variety):
I haven’t been a litigator since 2015. I haven’t conducted a proper cross-examination since 2014. But if I couldn’t walk a witness, judge, and jury through the transcript of Donald Trump’s call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and demonstrate that a quid pro quo was more likely than not, then I should just hang up my suit and retire in disgrace.
The Democrats should definitely keep digging and working to uncover more about all this, obviously, but really that memo combined with Trump's and Giuliani's recent admissions to the press should be enough to impeach tomorrow.
French isn't precisely a never Trumper. He's the sort who will happily say that something Trump did is probably bad and we should look into it, but then always decide that it wasn't THAT bad and Democrats should just get over it and we'll see how 2020 goes.
I expect that in this issue he'll eventually land on "well, Trump did bad things and he shouldn't have done them, but this doesn't rise to the level of impeachment."
He's a pretty prominent voice on NR, and I suspect he knows the audience would bail if he ever suggested Trump should be removed from office.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
A bit embarrassing for him since it portrays him as a sniveling bootlicker. Wonder how his voters feel about that.
"It" doesn't portray that, he, himself, portrays himself as a sniveling bootlicker. The people have every right to know.
Why?
Again, he's licking Trump's boots because that's the kind of thing you do when you are looking out for the interests of your country and you aren't a superpower. You get the job done.
I don't know, some of these posts have the tone of not getting what it's like to be Not-The-US.
Which is surely why Trump thought it was a "perfect" call, because the other guy spent the entire time flattering and kissing up to him. Exactly what he wants to hear.
But then Zelenskiy found out that it was all for nothing, because Trump has an "understanding" with the very person he was seeking protection against.
No... he thought it was a perfect call because he'd already had the memo altered and knew what he was releasing was going to be at least partially faked.
He was actually trying to set up Dems, by releasing The Transcript and claiming it proved nothing happened. That's why the talking points lean so hard on the memo being exoneration. It's because the whole thing is a fraud. Now they just have to try and
- Hide the reality, if any of it remains, under a cloak of executive privilege and classified documents
- Discredit the whistleblower
- Flip everything to be about Biden
and he gets away with it. The main target for Dems right now has to be ensuring that everyone knows the memo is doctored.
And even with it doctored, it still looks like a quid pro quo.
A bit embarrassing for him since it portrays him as a sniveling bootlicker. Wonder how his voters feel about that.
"It" doesn't portray that, he, himself, portrays himself as a sniveling bootlicker. The people have every right to know.
Why?
Again, he's licking Trump's boots because that's the kind of thing you do when you are looking out for the interests of your country and you aren't a superpower. You get the job done.
I don't know, some of these posts have the tone of not getting what it's like to be Not-The-US.
Which is surely why Trump thought it was a "perfect" call, because the other guy spent the entire time flattering and kissing up to him. Exactly what he wants to hear.
But then Zelenskiy found out that it was all for nothing, because Trump has an "understanding" with the very person he was seeking protection against.
No... he thought it was a perfect call because he'd already had the memo altered and knew what he was releasing was going to be at least partially faked.
He was actually trying to set up Dems, by releasing The Transcript and claiming it proved nothing happened. That's why the talking points lean so hard on the memo being exoneration. It's because the whole thing is a fraud. Now they just have to try and
- Hide the reality, if any of it remains, under a cloak of executive privilege and classified documents
- Discredit the whistleblower
- Flip everything to be about Biden
and he gets away with it. The main target for Dems right now has to be ensuring that everyone knows the memo is doctored.
This was the plan, but they're idiots and the memo demonstrates he did the thing he's accused of doing.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
Earlier this week, President Trump cited concerns about corruption as his rationale for blocking security assistance to Ukraine. But in a letter sent to four congressional committees in May of this year and obtained by NPR, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood informed lawmakers that he "certified that the Government of Ukraine has taken substantial actions to make defense institutional reforms for the purposes of decreasing corruption [and] increasing accountability."
This certification from Rood was what was needed to release those funds to Ukraine, and Trump got it in May.
moniker I stole this image off Twitter on the chance you may want to use it in the op:
Appreciated, but I'm planning on going for the overly severe gravity of this as foretold in the founding. Probably have some extra e's on words and things. This is only the 4th time drafting Articles of Impeachment have been seriously considered by the House in our nation's history, and over massively consequential betrayals of our principles of self government.
Also, remember to be mindful of quoted @'s
+12
Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
Woah holy cow yeah the gravity of this whole thing kinda sank in for me there. Sheesh! I was just so stoked it was finally happening that I didn't really, like, think about the whole big picture.
I'm taking a wait and see approach for now. As others have pointed out, this could just end up another checkbox on the administrations litany of failures. Or it could be real.
Things will get interesting if/when the proceedings reach the Senate.
I'm working my way through the transcript now, and the way Trump talks reminds me why I can't listen to any of his speeches.
He's like a giant child, and Zelansky has to keep speaking to him at his level and kissing ass about how they're surrounded by good people who are friends of Trump, and learned a lot from Trump and etcetera.
And then there's the bad people who ruined the good prosecuter. And Giuliani is a good man. He was a mayor, you know.
I think the Republican congresscritters are pushing for the release of this stuff, because they think they can make hay against Biden and the Dems with it.
You have to remember, their base of support does not engage with the same news. Their information ecosystem is entirely separate. It's the concrete bubble, at least for most of them.
The Republican machine can and will lie to their voters about what's in the whistleblower report, the memo, etc. And that lie can easily support bullshitting about Biden, like they're already trying to do. Which will, as the media gets outspoken about Trump's obvious criminality, likely push their base deeper into the concrete bubble.
Do not assume a reality-based message will penetrate to the people it needs to, in this process.
The thing is the average trump true believer will not win him the presidency or keep the gop in control of the senate. So yeah this won't do shit with someone who already buys into trumps bullshit but literally nothing could.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I think the Republican congresscritters are pushing for the release of this stuff, because they think they can make hay against Biden and the Dems with it.
You have to remember, their base of support does not engage with the same news. Their information ecosystem is entirely separate. It's the concrete bubble, at least for most of them.
The Republican machine can and will lie to their voters about what's in the whistleblower report, the memo, etc. And that lie can easily support bullshitting about Biden, like they're already trying to do. Which will, as the media gets outspoken about Trump's obvious criminality, likely push their base deeper into the concrete bubble.
Do not assume a reality-based message will penetrate to the people it needs to, in this process.
Well honestly the people it needs to penetrate to are the "Independents."
The Republican party relies on picking up a fair share of their votes to have any real power. So if this news starts impacting those numbers, watch Republicans start to get real nervous.
The whistleblower complaint has been declassified, but is not expected to be available to the public before tomorrow. Per CNN:
Washington (CNN) — A whistleblower's complaint about President Donald Trump's communications with Ukraine was hand delivered Wednesday afternoon to Capitol Hill, giving lawmakers their first chance to see the classified account that spurred Democrats to launch a formal impeachment inquiry.
Democrats reading the document, which is available to lawmakers in two secure facilities, one in each chamber, say it backs up their commitment to their investigation. Rep. Chris Stewart, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Twitter late Wednesday night that the complaint had been declassified but the document was not immediately available publicly.
I'm working my way through the transcript now, and the way Trump talks reminds me why I can't listen to any of his speeches.
He's like a giant child, and Zelansky has to keep speaking to him at his level and kissing ass about how they're surrounded by good people who are friends of Trump, and learned a lot from Trump and etcetera.
And then there's the bad people who ruined the good prosecuter. And Giuliani is a good man. He was a mayor, you know.
not a transcript
Geth, ban the word transcript until it's actually accurate thx
The Atlantic walks us through just how fucking stupid Stupid Watergate can get...
When Donald Trump stepped to the dais at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, he had a speech full of sharp lines: swipes at socialism, assertions of nationalism versus globalism, harsh words for Iran. Though Trump doesn’t enjoy delivering scripted remarks, he sounded listless, tired, and bored even by his own standards, struggling through the speech.
The president had a good reason to be distracted. The same morning, he had spoken on the phone with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, trying to stem a growing tide of Democratic demands for his impeachment. According to NBC’s Heidi Przybyla, Trump asked Pelosi whether there was some way they could make a deal. Pelosi said the White House had to release the whistle-blower complaint to Congress, as required by statute. “Tell your people to obey the law,” she said.
After weeks of defiance, Trump seemed to change course. Yesterday afternoon, he announced that the White House would release a transcript of his July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Later in the day, Politico’s Nancy Cook reported that the White House would release the whistle-blower complaint to Congress.
It was not enough to satisfy Pelosi. At 5 p.m. yesterday, she stepped before microphones in Washington and announced an “official impeachment inquiry,” with her support, into the president. It’s still unclear what this means materially, but it rattled Trump. At home in Trump Tower, he was stunned, believing that he’d managed to put Pelosi off in their morning conversation, according to CNN.
sorry if this was already posted and I missed it
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
More doctored than it should be, not nearly as doctored as it needed to be
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I'm working my way through the transcript now, and the way Trump talks reminds me why I can't listen to any of his speeches.
He's like a giant child, and Zelansky has to keep speaking to him at his level and kissing ass about how they're surrounded by good people who are friends of Trump, and learned a lot from Trump and etcetera.
And then there's the bad people who ruined the good prosecuter. And Giuliani is a good man. He was a mayor, you know.
not a transcript
Geth, ban the word transcript until it's actually accurate thx
One thing i do not understand, Clinton got impeached but then served out the rest of his term. What am i missing here?
short version: Impeachment is just the house deciding to bring charges, the Senate still needs to vote (with a 2/3s majority) to find the president guilty.
Both then and now the President's party controlled enough votes for that to not happen.
Mr. Atkinson also found reason to believe that the whistle-blower may not support the re-election of Mr. Trump
What in the fuck does this have anything to do with anything
Isn't saying that someone "may not support the re-election of Mr. Trump" saying that we don't know their political leanings? If it clarifies things, opposite of it is "we know whether they support the re-election of president Trump."
Mr. Atkinson also found reason to believe that the whistle-blower may not support the re-election of Mr. Trump
What in the fuck does this have anything to do with anything
Isn't saying that someone "may not support the re-election of Mr. Trump" saying that we don't know their political leanings? If it clarifies things, opposite of it is "we know whether they support the re-election of president Trump."
Also the Hatch act is a thing that people in the actual federal government take seriously.
It would be illegal if the whistleblower was publicly politically active.
fuck gendered marketing
+7
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Posts
Explosive ordinance disposal
I guess Trump and Co. flailing their way into admitting even more crimes would do that. And dragging Pence into it?
Every time I open the thread it's like Christmas.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
He's like a giant child, and Zelansky has to keep speaking to him at his level and kissing ass about how they're surrounded by good people who are friends of Trump, and learned a lot from Trump and etcetera.
And then there's the bad people who ruined the good prosecuter. And Giuliani is a good man. He was a mayor, you know.
Yeah, they're going to go "what's wrong with that? He's making a deal, that's all. Trump's a businessman, he makes the best deals, that's why we elected him. Since when is any of that a crime?"
And when you tell them, they'll frown and pout, and say (or just think) "well, it shouldn't be."
main thing though is don't get too excited about the rapid pace right now, it doesn't mean the real results and implications will happen this fast
Watergate took months and months and months to see through, and while our media and ease of sharing news and updates has become near instant, the wheels of justice have not, and in many ways may have got slower as people are more willing to outright obstruct them.
it's going to be 2020 before anything real happens here.
True, I am fairly pessimistic about the Senate right now. But for the moment I have decided to enjoy watching them fall apart.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
That’s basically it. Laws are just a convenient cudgel to beat down things you don’t like for the “patriotic” conservatives. Once they can’t use it anymore, well, laws should be changed. Otherwise, the law is the law! Sorry.
Reminds me of the time CNN held a round table about claiming asylum at the border. This Republican woman was like well they should come in the right way. When informed that seeking asylum IS the legal way, she says, “well it shouldn’t be”.
* "if"
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
Until it changes. It was amazing how, in 1974, nobody you knew had voted for Nixon even though he had won every State but Massachusetts.
No... he thought it was a perfect call because he'd already had the memo altered and knew what he was releasing was going to be at least partially faked.
He was actually trying to set up Dems, by releasing The Transcript and claiming it proved nothing happened. That's why the talking points lean so hard on the memo being exoneration. It's because the whole thing is a fraud. Now they just have to try and
- Hide the reality, if any of it remains, under a cloak of executive privilege and classified documents
- Discredit the whistleblower
- Flip everything to be about Biden
and he gets away with it. The main target for Dems right now has to be ensuring that everyone knows the memo is doctored.
French isn't precisely a never Trumper. He's the sort who will happily say that something Trump did is probably bad and we should look into it, but then always decide that it wasn't THAT bad and Democrats should just get over it and we'll see how 2020 goes.
I expect that in this issue he'll eventually land on "well, Trump did bad things and he shouldn't have done them, but this doesn't rise to the level of impeachment."
He's a pretty prominent voice on NR, and I suspect he knows the audience would bail if he ever suggested Trump should be removed from office.
And even with it doctored, it still looks like a quid pro quo.
How dumb are these people?
This was the plan, but they're idiots and the memo demonstrates he did the thing he's accused of doing.
Treason* on a half shell!
* Yes, I know. Don't buzzkill my singing!
I prefer
orangesicle under neck hair, treason power!
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/25/764453663/pentagon-letter-undercuts-trump-assertion-on-delaying-aid-to-ukraine-over-corrup
This certification from Rood was what was needed to release those funds to Ukraine, and Trump got it in May.
Appreciated, but I'm planning on going for the overly severe gravity of this as foretold in the founding. Probably have some extra e's on words and things. This is only the 4th time drafting Articles of Impeachment have been seriously considered by the House in our nation's history, and over massively consequential betrayals of our principles of self government.
Also, remember to be mindful of quoted @'s
Things will get interesting if/when the proceedings reach the Senate.
You have to remember, their base of support does not engage with the same news. Their information ecosystem is entirely separate. It's the concrete bubble, at least for most of them.
The Republican machine can and will lie to their voters about what's in the whistleblower report, the memo, etc. And that lie can easily support bullshitting about Biden, like they're already trying to do. Which will, as the media gets outspoken about Trump's obvious criminality, likely push their base deeper into the concrete bubble.
Do not assume a reality-based message will penetrate to the people it needs to, in this process.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Well honestly the people it needs to penetrate to are the "Independents."
The Republican party relies on picking up a fair share of their votes to have any real power. So if this news starts impacting those numbers, watch Republicans start to get real nervous.
Rep. Stewart is R - Utah (2nd District)
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/09/25/politics/whistleblower-complaint/index.html?r=https://www.cnn.com/
Though I guess odds are it's no less sensitive than whatever the hell trump tweets at random
Geth, ban the word transcript until it's actually accurate thx
PSN / Xbox / NNID: Fodder185
sorry if this was already posted and I missed it
More doctored than it should be, not nearly as doctored as it needed to be
2:13 is more relevant than ever
not a transcript
The new Explosive Ordinance Disposal
This was not helpful.
Both of those were very helpful.
Thank you.
Isn't saying that someone "may not support the re-election of Mr. Trump" saying that we don't know their political leanings? If it clarifies things, opposite of it is "we know whether they support the re-election of president Trump."
which is, of course, The Worst Thing in this admin.
Also the Hatch act is a thing that people in the actual federal government take seriously.
It would be illegal if the whistleblower was publicly politically active.
You know, I've never seen All The President's Men. It's streaming on Netflix, I think now is the perfect time for my first watch.
On my sleeve, let the runway start