Impeachment Inquiry

[fraurosena]

Here's Nancy Pelosi's full statement:

 

Trump speaking on the impeachment inquiry. Of course it's all the Dems fault... they're out to get him! And she hasn't even seen the transcript of the perfect phone call! And the whistleblower is a very partisan person! 

 

[fraurosena]

10 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

I'd prefer to not worry but I think we're in a substantially different scenario than 1974.  I believe the corruption is deeper now, and it's international, and there's the Internet to help spin (in both directions) and distract.  People aren't just reading the same few articles and watching the same few TV stations.  The current situation seems as much like gang warfare to me as politics.  I'm not sure the Senate Republicans will lose a single vote - considering who votes for them - if they support Trump.  I am encouraged, though, by small indications of integrity by Republicans like Mitt Romney.

I don't know which way things will go.  I liked Nancy P's speech...she made clear what's patriotism and what isn't.  I hope the Senate abandons Trump and that he and his cronies fall like a house of cards.  I'm just not convinced that it's going to happen.

I may have sounded a bit flip and dismissive of any worries, but I do understand your reservations, and indeed share some of them. As you say, the circumstances now are not the same as in the 70's. And of course you can't really predict what is going to happen, certainly not with all the hacking and voter suppression going on. But I am the eternal optimist, and I'd like to interpret the Senate unanimously voting for handing over the whistleblower complaint to Congress as a good sign. A sign that the Repugs may be on the cusp of a change in attitude. And like you point out, Mitt Romney speaking out like he did (even if it was in very carefully couched words) is encouraging. True, they're baby steps. Does they mean that some -- or even a majority -- will vote for impeachment when the time comes? I don't know.

But the likelihood that they could has become just that little bit bigger today. 

[fraurosena]

This is just painful to watch. Does he even realize that his statements are immortalized for prosterity? Does he even care that this will be his lasting legacy?

 

[fraurosena]

Can’t argue with that logic.

 

[Dandruff]

I wonder what Bill Barr is up to right about now.

[GreyhoundFan]

4 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

I wonder what Bill Barr is up to right about now.

Probably frantically figuring out ways to protect his orange overlord.

[WiseGirl]

I knew FJ'rs would be all over this and you didn't disappoint.  I saw Pelosi's statement live. May this be the beginning of the end of this long nightmare. Get 45 out! 

 

[WiseGirl]

 

[Howl]

I'm talking myself down off the ledge and not getting too excited about the release of the whistle-blower complaint.   According to CNN: According to two sources familiar, the White House is preparing to release the whistleblower complaint to Congress as early as tomorrow. The complaint is under review and going through declassification, one source said.

That has Barr's fingerprints all over it; meaning my guess is that the unredacted whistle blower's report will not be given to House Intelligence Committee.  The truly damning stuff will be deleted at the DoJ.  Please remember that NO Democrat has seen the unredacted Mueller Report. 

Yes, I'm cynical.   McConnell and the Senate Republicans would not be behind a release of the whistle blower's complaint without knowing that they were risking zip.

Anyway, I think it's a Linus and the football situation. 

Dan Coats is now saying he feels sorry for Joseph Maguire, because Maguire landed in the middle of this with zero prep.  However, to my way of thinking,  there was a clearly defined legal requirement for the DNI to send the whistleblower complaint directly to the appropriate Congressional committee, and instead it ended up hijacked at DoJ.  This  isn't Maguire's first rodeo.  Either he was complicit or there is a rogue element at DNI. 

Interesting week ahead. 

Edited September 25, 2019 by Howl

[SPHASH]

Attack on Iran in 3, 2, 1

[Dandruff]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

That has Barr's fingerprints all over it; meaning my guess is that the unredacted whistle blower's report will not be given to House Intelligence Committee.  The truly damning stuff will be deleted at the DoJ.  Please remember that NO Democrat has seen the unredacted Mueller Report.

Let's hope a Democrat or two gets to see the actual whistle blower.  If I was that person, I'd be staying in a hotel room that somebody else paid for...at least until I was able to testify.

I agree that something about this seems to stink.  Jeffrey Epstein comes to mind.

[fraurosena]

Don’t forget the whistleblower’s counsel has contacted Adam Schiff about testifying in person to the committee. It won’t matter what the written complaint states, redacted, altered or falsified— or not. What they actually say is. Changing the written complaint will only serve as so much more evidence of egregious acts.

[fraurosena]

There's also this:

 

[fraurosena]

What Giuliani did in regards to Ukraine, and more importantly why and how (and when) he did it, will be crucial to the impeachment inquiry. 

Giuliani pursued shadow Ukraine agenda as key foreign policy officials were sidelined

Quote

President Trump’s attempt to pressure the leader of Ukraine followed a months-long fight inside the administration that sidelined national security officials and empowered political loyalists — including the president’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani — to exploit the U.S. relationship with Kiev, current and former U.S. officials said.

The sequence, which began early this year, involved the abrupt removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, the circumvention of senior officials on the National Security Council, and the suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars of aid administered by the Defense and State departments — all as key officials from these agencies struggled to piece together Giuliani’s activities from news reports.

Several officials described tense meetings on Ukraine among national security officials at the White House leading up to the president’s phone call on July 25, sessions that led some participants to fear that Trump and those close to him appeared prepared to use U.S. leverage with the new leader of Ukraine for Trump’s political gain.

As those worries intensified, some senior officials worked behind the scenes to hold off a Trump meeting or call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky out of concern that Trump would use the conversation to press Kiev for damaging information on Trump’s potential rival in the 2020 race, former vice president Joe Biden, and Biden’s son Hunter.

“An awful lot of people were trying to keep a meeting from happening for the reason that it would not be focused on Ukraine-U.S. relations,” one former official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

White House officials disputed these accounts, saying that no such concerns were raised in National Security Council meetings and that Trump’s focus was on urging Ukraine to root out corruption. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

But Trump admitted this week that he had done some of what his own advisers feared, using the call to raise the issue of Biden with Zelensky. And the wave of consternation triggered by that call led someone in the U.S. intelligence community to submit an extraordinary whistleblower complaint, setting in motion a sequence of events that now includes the start of an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives.

Though the whistleblower report focuses on the Trump-Zelensky call, officials familiar with its contents said that it includes references to other developments tied to the president, including efforts by Giuliani to insert himself into U.S.-Ukrainian relations.

Trump announced Tuesday that he would release a transcript of his call, insisting that it would show there was “NO quid pro quo!” and would reveal a conversation that was “friendly and totally appropriate.”

But even within Trump’s party, few have gone so far as to say they would consider it appropriate for the president to solicit foreign help in an American election. And his political fate may hinge on how lawmakers and the public assess not only his intentions on the call but also the actions of his subordinates in the events surrounding it.

U.S. officials described an atmosphere of intense pressure inside the NSC and other departments since the existence of the whistleblower complaint became known, with some officials facing suspicion that they had a hand either in the complaint or in relaying damaging information to the whistleblower, whose identity has not been revealed and who is entitled to legal protection.

One official — speaking, like others, on the condition of anonymity — described the climate as verging on “bloodletting.”

Trump has fanned this dynamic with his own denunciations of the whistleblower and thinly veiled suggestions that the person should be outed. “Is he on our Country’s side. Where does he come from,” Trump tweeted this week.

Trump’s closest advisers, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who was ordered by Trump to suspend the aid to Ukraine, are also increasingly targets of internal finger-pointing. Mulvaney has agitated for foreign aid to be cut universally but has also stayed away from meetings with Giuliani and Trump, officials said. But the person who appears to have been more directly involved at nearly every stage of the entanglement with Ukraine is Giuliani.

“Rudy — he did all of this,” one U.S. official said. “This s---show that we’re in — it’s him injecting himself into the process.”

Several officials traced their initial concerns about the path of U.S.-Ukrainian relations to news reports and interviews granted by Giuliani in which he began to espouse views and concerns that did not appear connected to U.S. priorities or policy.

The former New York mayor appears to have seen Zelensky, a political neophyte elected president of Ukraine in April and sworn in in May, as a potential ally on two political fronts: punishing those Giuliani suspected of playing a role in exposing the Ukraine-related corruption of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and delivering political ammunition against Biden.

After the conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russia’s role in the 2016 election, Giuliani turned his attention to Ukraine, officials said, and soon began pushing for personnel changes at the embassy while seeking meetings with Zelensky subordinates. He also had his own emissaries in Ukraine who were meeting with officials, setting up meetings for him and sending back information that he could circulate in the United States.

The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, became a primary Giuliani target.

Yovanovitch, a longtime State Department Foreign Service officer, arrived in Ukraine as ambassador at the end of the Obama administration, more than two years after an uprising centered on Kiev’s Independence Square ousted the Russian-leaning government.

Though she was widely respected in the national security community for her efforts to prod Ukraine to take on corruption, Giuliani targeted Yovanovitch with wild accusations including that she played a secret role in exposing Manafort and was part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the liberal financier George Soros.

“She should be part of the investigation as part of the collusion,” Giuliani said in a recent interview with The Washington Post, adding that “she is now working for Soros.” Yovanovitch is still employed by the State Department and is a fellow at Georgetown University. She declined to comment.

Giuliani also said the entire State Department was a problem, and officials familiar with his actions say he regularly briefed Trump on his Ukrainian endeavors. “The State Department is a bureaucracy that needs to change,” he told The Post.

Many of Giuliani’s charges were either recycled from, or subsequently echoed by, right-wing media outlets.

In late March, the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. amplified this campaign with a tweet calling for the removal of “Obama’s U.S. Ambassador.”

Yovanovitch, who was to depart in July after a three-year assignment, was prematurely ordered back to Washington, a move that both baffled and unnerved senior officials at the State Department and the White House, officials said.

Within days of her ouster on May 9, Giuliani seemed determined to seize an unsanctioned diplomatic role for himself, announcing plans to travel to Ukraine to push for investigations that would “be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

Giuliani canceled the trip amid an ensuing backlash over his purpose but later met with one of Zelensky’s senior aides in Madrid and pressed the issue of Ukraine’s helping against Biden.

In a May 19 interview on Fox News, Trump recited repeatedly disproved allegations that then-Vice President Biden had coerced Ukraine to drop an investigation into the owner of an energy company, Burisma, for which Biden’s son Hunter was a board member.

The allegations were baseless. Though Hunter Biden had served on the Burisma board for five years — a questionable decision given his father’s influential position — he was never accused of any wrongdoing by Ukrainian authorities. The probe had been shelved before any action by the vice president, and the elder Biden’s efforts involved removing a prosecutor widely criticized by the West as failing to tackle corruption.

Nevertheless, Trump is alleged to have used his July 25 call with Zelensky to get Ukraine to revive this dormant inquiry and widen it to include possible wrongdoing by Biden.

In Washington, officials outside Trump’s inner circle who were dismayed by Yovanovitch’s ouster reacted with growing alarm and confusion over Giuliani’s subsequent activities.

Then-national security adviser John Bolton was outraged by the outsourcing of a relationship with a country struggling to survive Russian aggression, officials said. But by then his standing with Trump was strained, and neither he nor his senior aides could get straight answers about Giuliani’s agenda or authority, officials said. Bolton declined to comment.

Giuliani told The Post that one of his calls with a top Ukrainian aide was partially arranged by Kurt Volker, a State Department official, and that he briefed the department afterward.

“We had the same visibility as anybody else — watching Giuliani on television,” a former senior official said. Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev were similarly deprived of information, even as they faced questions from Ukrainians about whether Giuliani was a designated representative.

“The embassy didn’t know what to do with the outreach,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who traveled to Ukraine this month.

In an interview Tuesday on Fox News, Giuliani said he had been enlisted by the State Department to intervene on the Ukraine matter. “You know who I did it at the request of? The State Department,” he said, holding up his cellphone to indicate that call records would back up his claim. He also said that he began pursuing the issue in late 2018 after a visit from an investigator whom he did not identify.

The perception of a parallel, hidden agenda intensified in the summer as officials at the NSC, Pentagon and State Department began reacting to rumors that hundreds of millions of dollars of military and intelligence aid to Ukraine was being mysteriously impeded.

“There were never any orders given, any formal guidance from the White House to any of the agencies,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter. “And the NSC was scratching their heads: How is this possible?”

NSC officials, including Tim Morrison, who had replaced Fiona Hill as the senior director for European and Russian affairs, began organizing meetings to try to understand these hidden forces affecting Ukraine policy, officials said.

But even then, clear answers proved elusive. Officials were told that the money was being blocked by the Office of Management and Budget, without any accompanying explanation.

“It was bizarre,” the official said.

A former official familiar with the meetings said participants began to file out raising troubling questions about what was driving the White House to withhold the aid as well as a meeting with Trump that had been all but promised to Zelensky.

Although the question of a linkage or leverage never came up in the formal NSC discussions, participants began to believe that Trump was “withholding the aid until [Ukraine] gave him something on Biden or Manafort.”

It was in this stretch, in July, that some officials began to question the wisdom of a Trump call with Zelensky. In part, there was a desire to hold off until after Ukraine’s parliamentary elections. But, mindful of Giuliani’s agitation and influence, some worried that even if Trump were coached before the call, the president would not be able to resist pressing Zelensky for dirt on Biden.

On July 24, Mueller testified before Congress on the outcome of the Russia investigation, a probe that had threatened Trump for much of his presidency and was focused on whether he had conspired with Moscow to influence the U.S. election.

The next day, Trump spoke with Zelensky on a call, and the vague misgivings that had risen over the preceding five months hardened into alarm. Among those who listened in on the call or were in a position to see a transcript, the president’s persistence with Zelensky on the corruption probe marked the crossing of a perilous threshold.

I wouldn't be surprised if the whistleblower is on the NSC itself.

[fraurosena]

In other words, that so-called transcript is going to be less than worthless.

Trump's ‘transcript’ of Ukraine call unlikely to be verbatim

Quote

Details from a phone call made by Donald Trump that has led the U.S. House of Representatives to launch a formal impeachment inquiry against the president isn’t likely to come from a recording or be verbatim, former White House and national security officials say.

Instead, because of standard White House protocol for handling phone calls between the president and other world leaders, a transcript is likely to be put together from written notes by U.S. officials who listen in.

Trump said on Tuesday a “complete, fully declassified and unredacted transcript” of the July 25 call would be released on Wednesday. In it, the Republican president is alleged to have pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Joe Biden, the U.S. Democratic presidential front-runner.

The transcript would show the call was “totally appropriate,” Trump said on Twitter.

However, standard practice when a president is talking to a foreign leader is not to make a recording but to have at least two and sometimes more note-takers from the National Security Council (NSC) on the call, a former senior NSC official told Reuters.

Those note-takers are themselves usually Central Intelligence Agency officers on assignment to the NSC, he said.

Their notes serve as the principal record of such calls, the former official said. He was not aware of any electronic recordings made by the U.S. government on calls between Trump and other world leaders.

Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Obama presidency, said not only would any so-called transcript be based on notes, but it would also likely be incomplete because the note-takers usually do not include issues that could be controversial if they became public.

“Typically a note-taker will write notes about what the principal says in a fashion that does not embarrass their principal,” said Farkas.

A former White House senior official concurred there was unlikely to be a recording.

“There’s no physical recording but there are a lot of people listening and taking contemporaneous notes of these calls,” the official said. “When you read it, it looks almost like a transcript.”

The White House had no comment.

I also think that the press stating that it was this phone call that prompted the Democrats to launch an impeachment inquiry is simply untrue.

The reasons for this impeachment inquiry is that there is ample evidence that Trump has abused the powers of his office to further his personal gain-- in all the various meanings of that phrase. This phone call is just a small part of it, and it's more about the whole policy towards Ukraine and purposely keeping the IC and NSC and others in the administration out of the loop. Then there are all the other infractions that are being investigated by the six committees: his bank fraud, insurance fraud, the nepotism, the emoluments, the election interference, the secret deals with Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other foreign entities, the corruption, and last but not least, the blatant, overt and constant obstruction of justice. Those are the real reason the Democrats have launched an official impeachment inquiry. 

[fraurosena]

Never in the history of the USA has there been a whiney-er person in the Oval Office. 

 

[Howl]

It's going to be one hell of an Infrastructure Week. 

5 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Don’t forget the whistleblower’s counsel has contacted Adam Schiff about testifying in person to the committee.

Yes, this is the one hope. 

[fraurosena]

Stamping feet, screaming fits and refusing to do anything anymore. Yep, sounds like the presidunce all right. 

And so, another government shutdown looms.

White House threatens to shut down legislative process during impeachment inquiry

Quote

Something might have finally ended Infrastructure Week: House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

Hours after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump after he admitted both discussing with Ukraine’s new president his desire for the country’s government to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden and holding up a military aid package to Kiev, his White House threatened to shut down work on major legislation.

Though it is the House and Senate that, under the Constitution, craft and pass bills, Trump holds ample sway because it is his call whether to sign them into law or kill them with a veto.

“House Democrats have destroyed any chances of legislative progress for the people of this country by continuing to focus all their energy on partisan political attacks. Their attacks on the President and his agenda are not only partisan and pathetic, they are in dereliction of their Constitutional duty,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.

“Americans deserve elected officials who focus on key issues to improve the lives of families, strengthen our communities, grow our economy, and keep our country safe. In President Donald J. Trump they have someone who has not only focused on those goals, but delivered results,” Grisham added.

That came after Pelosi, while announcing the impeachment inquiry, cited media reports about Trump’s late-July call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump has admitted discussing the Bidens. During the call, she said, “the president of the United States [was] calling upon a foreign power to intervene in his election.”

“This is a breach of his Constitutional responsibilities,” Pelosi said, adding the Trump administration is violating federal law by withholding information about an intelligence official’s formal complaint to an inspector general about a “promise” the whistleblower claims Trump made during the call.

The evening White House statement was more clear than Trump’s own comment to reporters on the sidelines of a UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

Trump called the impeachment process “bad for the country” and signaled it could end any long shot hopes for major legislation to move during the inquiry — which comes as the 2020 election cycle is heating up.

“Then they all wonder why they don't get gun legislation done, then they wonder why they don’t get drug prices lowered,” Trump said. “Because all they do is talk nonsense. No more infrastructure bills, no more anything.”

House Democrats on Tuesday explained Pelosi’s move as one rooted in the law. But, as always, Trump appeared largely focused on politics.

“If she does that they all say that’s a positive for me in the election,” Trump said about an hour before the speaker’s announcement. “You could also say, ‘Who needs it? It’s bad for the country.”

Trump still intends to sign the stopgap spending bill the House approved last week and the Senate is expected to send to his desk soon, according to a source with knowledge of his thinking. Action is needed by Sept. 30 to avert another government shutdown.

"After that, you should ask the speaker what else she wants to get done," the source said, not responding to a question about the fate of the annual Pentagon policy bill, which is still awaiting final action by lawmakers. 

And again, this article is repeating the misconception about the phone call being the single and only reason for the impeachment inquiry. 

[fraurosena]

Such a pity we couldn't see his face when they told him the news...  

 

[fraurosena]

Oh boy. Here it is! And yep, he's confirmed once again that he's a mango moron.

More later once I've read the whole thing.

First off, he's actually pitching Ukraine against Europe. I wonder why? ?

Quote

Well it 1 s·very nice of you .to say that. I will say that we do ·a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot . of effort and a lot.of time. Much more than the European countries are ·'doing and they should be helping.you more than.they are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it's something that you should ·really ask them about. When I.was· ·speaking to Angela Merkel she talks Ukraine, but she ·doesn't do· anything. A lot of the European countries are the. same way· so I think it's.something you want to look at but the United States has been very ·very good to Ukraine. I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very . good to Ukraine.

[copy pasting is putting weird dots in the text]

[nvmbr02]

I've only quickly scanned the "transcript" as I am in the process of getting kids off to school. But it is more damning that I thought it would be. I am surprised the WH released it to be honest. It that was what was typed/released then it makes me wonder even more how the rest of the conversation went.

[fraurosena]

Then there's this doozy:

Quote

I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole si�uation with Ukraine, they s_ay Crowdstrike ... I guess you have one of your weal thy people... The server, they say Ukraine has.it� There- are a lot. of things that went on, the· :whole situation .. I think you 1 re _surrounding yourse·lf with some of the same people. I . would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you t� ·get to the bottom of it�. As you sa� yest�rday, that whole nonsetise ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mue�le_r, an incompetent performance-, _but they. say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, ·it's very important that· you. do it

[more weird copy paste stuff, sorry]

Oh... I thought there were only two calls? Why is he saying "as you said yesterday"? 

And here it is, the confession, implicating himself, Giuliani and Bill Barr.

Quote

Good because I· heard you had a prosecutor who· was very·good and he was shut down and that's really unfair. _·A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your �ery good prosecutor down and you had some �ery bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the_ mayor bf New York Ci:ty, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call yoti along with the Attorney·_ ·· General.· :Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could _speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United $tates,· the woman., was bad news �nd th� people she was dealing with in .the Ukraine .were bad news so I jtist wan� to_let you know that� The ot�er thing, There's a lot 6f. talk about Biden's son,. that Eiden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you ·can look into it ... It sounds horrible to me.

[again, don't look at the weird copy paste stuff]

More damning statements, as if more were needed:

Quote

Well, ·she' s going tO go through some things. I will. have Mr. Giuliani.give you a call and I _ am. also going to have.Attorney General Barr call and we will get to· the bottom of it. I'm sure you will figure it o�t. I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly and he was a very fa�r prosecuto_r so good luck with everything. Your. economy is going-· to get better and bett.er I pre.diet. You have a lot· of a,ssets. It's a great country. I have many Ukrainian friends, their incredible ·people.

[OT: don't you hate the typist using their instead of they're?]

[GreyhoundFan]

7 minutes ago, nvmbr02 said:

I've only quickly scanned the "transcript" as I am in the process of getting kids off to school. But it is more damning that I thought it would be. I am surprised the WH released it to be honest. It that was what was typed/released then it makes me wonder even more how the rest of the conversation went.

I'm guessing it was released to distract because there is more crap that is way more damning.

[fraurosena]

Nice emoluments clause violation right there:

Quote

I would like to tell you that I also have.quite a few·Ukrain1an friends that live iri the United· States. ·Actually last time I traveled to the Unit'ed States, I stayed in New York n�ar Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower.

 

And that was it. It's beyond me how they could ever think this transcript would clear him of any wrongdoing. If anything, it's more damning than previously thought, as not only Giuliani is also implicated (which we already knew), but Bill Barr, the current Attorney General, has also been outed as an active participant in this illegal activity.

Although the Repugliklans will all be pointing out "See, he didn't bribe him by withholding military aid, there was no quid pro quo", don't be fooled. Trump clearly and unmistakably asks Zelenskyy for dirt on Joe Biden -- more than once. It's almost the only thing they talk about, other than congratulations at the beginning, and speaking of meeting in person at the end of the conversation. The whole point of the call was to ask for an investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden.

[fraurosena]

Adam Schiff sums it up so much better than I ever could:

 

Trump, on the other hand, thinks we still believe in that alternative universe he's been gaslighting the country into believing.