US Politics, November 2019: These people are truly sick.

No I think he means his base, the majority, is rightfully angered

tbf though almost everybody is pretty angry

I think there's gonna be a fight

an ultimate fight

there was a long ass NPR opinion piece yesterday kind of chiding him for goiing to UFC when there are lots of nice things to do in NYC this weekend that don't involve people beating the fuck out of each other, and noted that the audience for this was likely to be more welcoming to him than the baseball audience. Well, guess not.

“the angry majority” refers to the house imo

however he’s a huge dumbass whose meanings are not worth parsing

xpost

there are other clips from other spots in the audience where all you can hear are cheers, and the boos are drowned out. there were probably a ton of cheers and boos in the audience, from all sides. this is just another one of those "take a screen capture of trump or someone behind him at a particular moment and analyze it to death" scenarios

both sides

the screen capture that PROVES that president trump has lost his MARBLES and can't even find his own SHOES any more!!

He used the same phrase a few days ago to mean Republican voters.

“The American people are fed up with Democrat lies, hoaxes and extremism,” said Trump. The Democrats, he said, “have created an angry majority that will vote many do-nothing Democrats out of office in 2020.”

ahhh

horrible

It's weird, but you might be getting an anti-Nixon moment. That is, there might be a very large 'silent majority' who just want those angry idiots to shut the fuck up and not tweet and not yell and not do crimes. After Trump loses everything but West Virginia they will walk around bewildered and go 'but I don't know anybody who voted for Warren?'

After Trump loses everything but West Virginia

well, it's nice to dream

I bet he gets FL, OH and maybe (probably?) NC but picking up any other “swing” states seems unlikely as of today. Totally going off nothing other than my gut here.

He is def going to win FL and OH

Tinhat time:

That’s three whistleblowers. What about the other four? Cockburn’s source says that at least one is nothing to do with Ukraine but instead was reporting a call between Trump and the Saudi ruler, Mohammed bin Salman. Specifically, the whistleblower is said to have ‘concerns’ about what was said on the call about the president’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner. Kushner himself is known to have a very close relationship with MBS. Cockburn has previously written that Kushner may have been what Cosmo would call an ‘oversharer’ when it came to MBS. Unfortunately, it’s claimed that what he was sharing was American secrets: information Kushner had requested from the CIA would (allegedly) be echoed back in US intercepts of calls between members of the Saudi royal family. One source said this was why Kushner lost his intelligence clearances for a while.

According to Cockburn’s source about the seven whistleblowers, there’s more. It is that Kushner (allegedly) gave the green light to MBS to arrest the dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who was later murdered and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. A second source tells Cockburn that this is true and adds a crucial twist to the story. This source claims that Turkish intelligence obtained an intercept of the call between Kushner and MBS. And President Erdogan used it to get Trump to roll over and pull American troops out of northern Syria before the Turks invaded. Cockburn hears that investigators for the House Intelligence Committee know this whole tale and the identities of some of the people telling it. Whether any of is true is another matter but Adam Schiff certainly seems to be smiling a lot these days.

Well, if Adam Schiff is smiling then Trump is definitely going to be removed in a few days!

We got them! It’s over!!!!!

In this timeline a pee tape is like the least possible conspiracy.

speaking of cockburn

Always remove tape before peeing to prevent cockburn

good morning!

josh can you link that^

The two witnesses who had been subpoenaed to testify at 9am - NSC lawyer John Eisenberg and Mulvaney deputy Rob Blair - did not arrive. The other two who were subpoenaed - Eisenberg deputy Michael Ellis and OMB official/former Energy chief McCormack - also expected no-shows at 2p

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 4, 2019

Live updates: White House lawyer to defy House subpoena; Trump sees ‘no reason’ to summon witnesses on Ukraine call https://t.co/yVgEgtxuCn

— Ellen Nakashima (@nakashimae) November 4, 2019

weird they're doing this given the phone call was so perfect

Can I link it? Yes I can!

https://spectator.us/seven-whistleblowers-jared-kushner-bin-salman/

hrm this seems sketchy unless I guess someone at NYT/WP validates parts of this in the next day or two

sort of liberal definition of the term "whistleblower" here

"a source tells cockburn" says cockburn

weird they're doing this given the phone call was so perfect

It's the principle of the thing, they're protecting executive privilege for future presidents who might have less perfect phone calls.

did have a nice conversation over the weekend with a well-off dude who is not necessarily a Trump fan but votes for him anyway because he doesn't like "paying for other people's stuff"

basically he thinks 'impeachment' means the Dems are desperate because they know they can't beat him in 2020, that the phone call didn't say "if you do this I will do that" so it's actually fine

I tried to explain that there's a lot more to the story but then he was like "well you can't just reverse the results of the election"

fwiw this is probably the smartest Trump supporter I know

"well you can't just reverse the results of the election"

When Trump is removed, all of us who wrote-in Pence are going to be cackling with glee

Impeachment is not "reversing" or "short circuiting" an election, for fuck's sake. It's a legal, legitimate step that has fuck-all to do with an election.

well then why is it being called a witch hunt? I've totally heard that a lot, so it must be true.

“Jared did Khashoggi” is an even milder, less tinfoil conspiracy theory than “Epstein didn’t kill himself”

Impeachment is not "reversing" or "short circuiting" an election, for fuck's sake. It's a legal, legitimate step that has fuck-all to do with an election.

― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, November 4, 2019 11:28 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah this argument is so deeply headache inducing. no reason I guess to think then that Trump can't just start summarily executing Democratic leadership without fear of impeachment, because how dare we nullify the results of the 2016 election?!

fwiw this is probably the smartest Trump supporter I know

― frogbs, Monday, November 4, 2019 10:25 AM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Even a smart horse only seems to be doing arithmetic with its hooves.

yeah the whole conversation was basically a reminder that Trump's main political "skill" is attacking the media 24/7 for telling the truth, since it allows people like this who don't really follow things closely to think of the news media at large as a partisan body with their own goals and agendas. they see that Trump gets constant negative coverage and think "wow the media really does hate this guy" rather than "maybe Trump actually is bad"

at one point he was like "I'm not a conspiracy guy but I did think it was odd we got that whole caravan thing during the mid-terms, it's almost like it was set up by Democrats to make Trump look bad" to which I said "did you ever consider the opposite? Doesn't that sound much more likely?" and sure enough he hadn't, b/c in his mind the Dems are always the shady ones who control everything, while the Republicans are always well-meaning but maybe a little unpolished

body with their own goals and agendas

well this is kinda true, but the goal is "make money" and the agenda is "doing things that will help us make money"

fwiw this is probably the smartest Trump supporter I know

― frogbs, Monday, November 4, 2019 8:25 AM (eighteen minutes ago)

As someone who comes from a family of not particularly wealthy nor intelligent Fox News parrots, your buddy's opinions are not entirely original nor noteworthy.

right and I've made this argument many times, but ultimately it seems the right simultaneously believes that the media is out to silence them while simultaneously giving as much coverage as possible to Trump and his campaign

The counter to chuckleheads who complain the only reason the Democrats are pushing for impeachment is because they are afraid they can't win the election is that the GOP is pushing against impeachment because they don't think they can win an election.

I mean, all questions of critical reasoning and just like basic cognitive function aside, are the memories of these people really so goddamn short that they fail to recognize that the MSM doesn't just dogpile on presidents as a matter of course? Or even so goddamn short that they fail to recall that the MSM was pretty much all up on Trump's jock for the majority of the time he's been president? In short: fuck these stupid, stupid people.

you need to win stupid votes to win an election, unfortunately

my analogy was "do you think ESPN is biased against the Cincinnati Bengals because they always report negatively on them?"

Alternate reality is made possible by the mediation of experience and voters rarely know more about politics than what they are told by others. Both Trump and FOX understand that extremely simple talking points, endlessly hammered home, work best. Once they have captured your trust, all the rest follows along its natural course. Plausibility is not required because that trust, coupled with repetition, generates the same effect in the brain.

I used to wonder how those hypnotists managed to get a mall-full of people to lift their right arms simultaneously but I don't wonder about that anymore.

I’m pretty sure nobody expected those witnesses to show up fwiw

trust, coupled with repetition, generates the same effect

so otm imo.

gradual social pile moving is mostly how the monstrous becomes mundane. i guess another way is like, ginormous extrinsic event intervening, like a 911?

i assume steve bannons work these. xp

So GOP argument is now going to be "Biden was actually engaged in corrupt behavior in the Ukraine, and Trump just happened to be concerned about it":

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said on Monday that he didn't see an example of quid pro quo during the conversation between President Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, but argued that even if there was, it wouldn't warrant removing the president from office.

Cornyn, when asked if there was a quid pro quo, pointed to a rough transcript of the conversation between the two leaders, saying he didn't "see the quid pro quo."

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"Even if there was, I don't think it would be impeachable or illegal for the president to do so. So this is just an excuse, I think, to continue this campaign that's existed since the president was sworn in to remove him from office," Cornyn said during an interview with Texas radio station KFYO.

The Washington Post reported last week that some Senate Republicans were mulling a strategy that would acknowledge a quid pro quo, but also argue that the action was not illegal and it was not impeachable.

Cornyn argued on Monday there was a "double standard" being applied to Trump's actions.

"What never fails to amaze me is the double standard that is applied to this president as opposed to other presidents. It's always been the case that presidents have been able to leverage aid to other countries in order to advance U.S. policy. And here there was a corruption problem in Ukraine," Cornyn said.

Trump, during his conversation with Zelensky, asked the Ukrainian president to work with his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to "look into" former Vice President Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

In their ongoing impeachment investigation, Democrats have focused on that call, a related whistleblower complaint and whether Trump tied aid to the country to Ukraine opening up an investigation into the Bidens.

The House is expected to start holding public hearings as soon as this month as it continues its investigation.

Republicans view it as increasingly likely that the House will vote to impeach Trump, setting up a trial in the Senate.

Cornyn on Monday said there wasn't "any reasonable chance," based on current information, that the Senate would convict Trump, an action that requires the vote of 67 senators.

Instead, he argued that Trump should focus on policy, and let Senate Republicans handle the impeachment articles if they come over from the House.

"I would tell him, let us do our jobs, and if the House does vote on the impeachment articles, let the Senate do its job and focus on what's good for the American people. ... We'll take care of the impeachment articles if and when they come to the Senate," Cornyn said.

they've finally grasped that the weak point in the Democrats' argument is the assumption that the Bidens didn't actually do anything wrong. Because this is nebulous and hard to understand for most people and hinges on the classic "both sides do it" truism, it's their only point of defense.

I'm sure congressional aides are currently scrambling for past examples of Dem administration's asking foreign governments to investigate GOP rivals. Funny how nothing's turned up yet.

Cornyn argued on Monday there was a "double standard" being applied to Trump's actions.

i really do want to start a thread collecting all the times republicans unintentionally blurt out the truth, but we probably don't need another us politics thread