Trump 44: Finally on Trial

[fraurosena]

This makes you wonder how many and what kind of meetings are held with foreign and domestic entities that we don't know about -- and the kinds of deals that are made --  because the other party chooses not to talk about it...

[JMarie]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

I initially misread this as Matt Gaetz and thought, whoa, he's come to the dark side.

[GreyhoundFan]

"New York’s highest court can hear sexual misconduct lawsuit against Trump, judges rule"

Spoiler

A lawsuit alleging that Donald Trump sexually assaulted a former “Apprentice” contestant more than a decade ago can be heard by New York’s highest state court, a panel of judges ruled Tuesday.

The decision by an appellate division of the New York Supreme Court granted Trump’s legal team’s request to have the case heard by the New York Court of Appeals. Trump’s team has argued that he should not be subject to actions in state courts while he is in the White House.

Trump had been scheduled to give a deposition by Jan. 31, but that is now on hold.

A statement from the firm of Trump’s lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, said “we are pleased” about the decision.

“We believe that the Court of Appeals will agree that the U.S. Constitution bars state court actions while the President is in office,” the statement read.

The defamation lawsuit was brought by Summer Zervos, a former “Apprentice” contestant who claimed that Trump groped her and kissed her against her will on various occasions in 2007 in New York and Los Angeles.

Zervos is one of about a dozen women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct before the 2016 election. Her case has been moving slowly through the New York courts and could potentially be decided before the 2020 election.

Trump has denied accusations of sexual impropriety. He has said he never met Zervos at a Los Angeles hotel where she claims he groped her in his room. “To be clear, I never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago,” Trump said after she made her accusation.

Trump called Zervos and other women who have made accusations against him “liars,” prompting Zervos to sue him for defamation.

Trump’s lawyers have tried to block Zervos’s suit, arguing that the president is immune from such state court lawsuits. But last March, a New York appellate court ruled that Trump had to face the defamation lawsuit. Then Trump’s team appealed to the higher court.

The case has already brought to light excerpts from Trump’s personal calendar and cellphone records that show he had communicated with Zervos and that he was in Los Angeles around the same time that she claims she was sexually assaulted by him.

Zervos’s lawyer, Beth Wilkinson, said in a statement on Tuesday that “we look forward to presenting our arguments before the Court of Appeals and continuing to advocate on Ms. Zervos’s behalf.”

“We remain confident that we will prove her defamation claim in court and that Mr. Trump will face responsibility for his actions,” Wilkinson’s statement said.

 

[WiseGirl]

[fraurosena]

He's doing that thing with his mouth again too. If he isn't drugged up every time he has to make speeches like this, I'll eat my hat. 

 

[47of74]

I initially misread this as Matt Gaetz and thought, whoa, he's come to the dark side.

Yeah I did too until I went to his twitter feed and realized the guy’s name is Gertz. I get the feeling Gertz comes across that a lot cause he says he’s not that fuck stick on his Twitter page.

[JMarie]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

He's doing that thing with his mouth again too. If he isn't drugged up every time he has to make speeches like this, I'll eat my hat. 

 

I watched the beginning of the speech.  He was out of breath. Not out of breath because he had rushed to the podium (God forbid he rush to anything), but because of a medical condition.

[GreyhoundFan]

A great op-ed by Dana Milbank: "Trump to America: Impeachment and war are none of your business"

Spoiler

In these first days of 2020, Americans grapple simultaneously with two of the most consequential issues any state can face: a possible war and the potential removal of the head of government.

Naturally, the public turns to the president and his administration with questions about these two grave matters. And the answer to both comes back loud and clear: None of your business.

Reporters pressed top officials Tuesday for an explanation of the “imminent” threat that President Trump claimed in ordering the assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, which sent the region into chaos and the United States to the cusp of war. One official after another replied with a variation of the same response: We won’t tell you.

Democrats in the Senate, meanwhile, demanded that witnesses be allowed to testify in Trump’s Senate trial, particularly former Trump national security adviser John Bolton, who just offered to appear. But Trump made it clear he’d quash such testimony, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Tuesday afternoon that he had enough Republican votes to proceed to a trial without promising witness testimony.

In war, as in impeachment: Move along. Nothing to see here.

The secrecy wouldn’t be quite so alarming, perhaps, if the administration exhibited some measure of competence. Instead, Trump and his aides are contradicting each other on whether they’ll target Iranian cultural sites (a war crime), whether they’re suspending the fight against Islamic State and whether they’re pulling troops out of Iraq.

In a symbol of the bumbling, on Monday officials released a draft of a letter from Marine Brig. Gen. William Seely to the Iraqi defense ministry announcing a U.S. troop pullout.

“I don’t know what that letter is,” Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper told reporters, minutes before acknowledging that he had, in fact, read it.

“It’s not signed,” contributed Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.

Eventually, Milley chalked the whole thing up to an “honest mistake.”

Esper was still mired in the letter fiasco Tuesday afternoon. “There is no signed letter, to the best of my knowledge,” he told reporters, scolding unnamed villains for “trying to create confusion.”

And these are the people telling us to trust them, no questions asked, to run a war?

During impeachment proceedings in the House, Trump ordered officials not to testify or to provide documents. Bolton was one of the many who obeyed. Now he says he’s willing to testify to the Senate under subpoena. But Trump retweeted a message saying, “The White House can assert executive privilege. It’s not Bolton’s privilege.”

McConnell, meanwhile, announced that Republicans had the votes to proceed to a trial without committing to witnesses. He said his resolution would be “essentially the same” as the unanimously approved Clinton impeachment resolution in 1999. When a reporter pointed out that the Clinton resolution had a provision dealing with witnesses, McConnell replied, “It may not be word-for-word the same.”

Bolton’s offer has a self-promotional smell; if Bolton, who is writing a book about his White House experience, wanted to say something, he could just say it rather than offering testimony the White House would likely block.

It’s also possible, as Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) speculated to Fox News, “that his testimony would be helpful to the president.”

So why not let the chips fall where they may? “I’d like to hear what he has to say,” claimed Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) — but not so much that Romney’s willing to defy the Trump fog machine.

In fairness to Romney, that fog is a formidable foe. Just try finding out about the “imminent” threat that led to the Soleimani assassination and now the precipice of war.

“I’m not going to go into the details of that,” said Milley.

“Sorry, I can’t get into intelligence,” said Esper.

Asked by Fox News on Tuesday about “new threats” from Iran, national security adviser Robert O’Brien twice referred to the Iranian hostage crisis — of 1979.

O’Brien, returning to the White House from his Fox News interview, was asked again about the imminence. He “unfortunately” couldn’t elaborate. He then again invoked the 1979 hostage crisis.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham, also on the Fox News circuit, was likewise asked to “specify the threats that Soleimani posed.”

“No,” she replied. “That’s — that’s something — it was an intel-based decision.”

Next came Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. In a rare State Department news conference, he, too, was asked for specifics about “how imminent this was.”

He responded with fuzz about “continuing efforts … to build out a network.”

That doesn’t sound imminent. But don’t worry. “It was the right decision — we got it right,” Pompeo said.

Just take his word for it.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Great analysis: "Five takeaways from Trump’s garbled speech on Iran"

Quote

Having prepared carefully to deliver inspiring words that would bring all Americans together as they worry about the possibility of another war in the Middle East, President Trump stepped to the podium Wednesday morning and instead gave a brief speech that was vintage Trump: lacking in even the barest eloquence, replete with lies, delivered with garbled pronunciation and weirdly somnolent affect, and unintentionally revealing.

Let’s examine what we learned from Trump’s speech and how it illuminated the events of the past few days:

Trump’s Iran policy has been a catastrophic failure. “The civilized world must send a clear and unified message to the Iranian regime: Your campaign of terror, murder, mayhem will not be tolerated any longer,” Trump said. But that in itself is an acknowledgment of his own failure.

When the president came into office, we had a painstakingly negotiated agreement that by the consensus of the entire international community was successfully restraining Iran’s nuclear program. Trump not only abandoned that deal, he instituted a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, arguing that if we crippled their economy, they’d become less aggressive in the region and crawl back to the negotiating table, whereupon they’d give us whatever concessions we asked for.

The very fact that we’re in the position we are now demonstrates that this policy has failed.

Rather than ceasing provocative operations, Iran has continued and even increased them. Indeed, they’ve become so aggressive that the Trump administration decided to assassinate their most important military official, a step that surely would have been unnecessary if “maximum pressure” was working the way it was supposed to. Trump himself implicitly acknowledged this by ticking off a list of recent Iranian actions to show how nefarious they are.

Trump desperately wanted to find a way to declare victory and back off. The great concern of the moment is that by assassinating Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, Trump set off a cycle of retaliation between the two countries that could spin out of control. Iran seems to be cautious about that, which could be why they aimed missiles at a largely empty area of an Iraqi base housing U.S. troops and informed the Iraqi government beforehand that the missiles were on their way.

Trump could nevertheless have thundered against the missile attack and promised to hit back, under the long-standing American principle that says we can do what we like to other countries but they can’t do the same to us (try to imagine how we would have responded if another country had assassinated, say, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs).

But Trump did not vow revenge. Instead, he said, “Iran appears to be standing down.” This is despite the fact that there’s no particular evidence that Iran is actually standing down; far more likely, they’re planning other forms of less conventional retaliation that could play out over months or even years.

Trump is still obsessed with Barack Obama. For whatever combination of reasons, Trump has long been obsessed with President Barack Obama and comparisons anyone might make between the two men. Perhaps this is because Obama embodies just about every personal virtue in which Trump is lacking; more likely it’s the fact that Obama enjoys a level of respect and admiration at home and around the world that Trump knows he will never come close to achieving.

While other, less petty presidents would refrain at moments like this from taking bogus potshots at their predecessors, Trump simply cannot resist the opportunity to blame what happens on his watch on Obama. “The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration,” he said. “The very defective [Iran nuclear agreement] expires shortly anyway, and gives Iran a clear and quick path to nuclear breakout.” None of those things is true.

Trump is comically insecure about his manhood. “Our missiles are big, powerful, accurate, lethal, and fast,” Trump said. Sometimes a missile is just a missile, but sometimes it’s an expression of your desperate fear that people will point and laugh at you.

Trump still has no idea what he wants to accomplish with regard to Iran or how to do it. Much of Trump’s speech — the parts that weren’t devoted to how great the U.S. economy is or how we’ve now reached energy independence, neither of which have anything to do with the current crisis — was about Iran’s misdeeds and how we’re now going to be hitting them with sanctions to punish them and change their behavior. Which is something you could have heard a U.S. president say at any time in the past couple of decades.

So why is that going to work now? What is the ultimate goal Trump is pursuing? Does he even know? Does he have any idea how to get from where we are now to there?

Apparently not. But if nothing else, at least we know that Trump doesn’t seem to want to escalate the military conflict further. Not for the first time, his tendency to beat his chest fiercely and then back down may put a limit on how much damage he does.

 

[fraurosena]

Oh dear, what happened now?

 

Oh, ok. The impeachment's bothering him again.

He's so effing incompetent, he even undermines his own created impeachment-distraction of an imminent war with Iran because he can't stop himself from going after Nancy Pelosi again.

[GreyhoundFan]

Great thread from Rick Wilson. I love the nickname he used (Sniffles the Clown):
 

Spoiler

 

[47of74]

Fucking idiot. 
 

What da fuck is a 409K Donnie? 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Gobsmacked]

I'm sorry if this is the wrong thread but Trump has murdered the folk on the plane shot down by the Iranians. Iran may have not realised the plane wasn't American/ was a civilian plane BUT the fact is Fuckface started this. He is directly responsible for the deaths of all on the plane. 

Just watched Justin Trudeou on the news making the announcement about the plane.

Trump was shown blithering, he looks awful. Blue bags underneath White sunbed goggle marks, veins all over his face. He doesn't drink ( so he says) but looks like he does. His ugly is shining right through his rotten orange skin.  The Devil was prowling Earth the night of his conception. A truly revolting inhuman human creature. 

[Xan]

21 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

On another board, there was a discussion of the rumor of Trump's use of Adderall.   Apparently, he dislikes swallowing pills.  (Is there anything that he isn't a big baby about?)   Thus, the pills get crushed and sniffed.

[apple1]

2 minutes ago, Gobsmacked said:

Trump was shown blithering, he looks awful. Blue bags underneath White sunbed goggle marks, veins all over his face. He doesn't drink ( so he says) but looks like he does. His ugly is shining right through his rotten orange skin.  

I am definitely not making even the slightest excuse for Trump - and he does look incredibly unhealthy.

I believe I have read that he has rosacea - which is often mistaken as alcoholism. (WC Fields had rosacea, and was often mistaken as an alcoholic). That said, rosacea is characterized by redness, often acne of a particular form, swelling of the nose especially in advanced forms.

Rosacea, however, is not characteristized by yellow or orange tint nor by jaundice. Jaundice is quite characteristic of liver issues.

In Trump's case, I have no idea how much of his jaundiced appearance is tanning beds or fake tanning or bad make up. He currently seems to look worse than what I would think could be explained by these things.

[GreyhoundFan]

5 minutes ago, apple1 said:

I am definitely not making even the slightest excuse for Trump - and he does look incredibly unhealthy.

I believe I have read that he has rosacea - which is often mistaken as alcoholism. (WC Fields had rosacea, and was often mistaken as an alcoholic). That said, rosacea is characterized by redness, often acne of a particular form, swelling of the nose especially in advanced forms.

Rosacea, however, is not characteristized by yellow or orange tint nor by jaundice. Jaundice is quite characteristic of liver issues.

In Trump's case, I have no idea how much of his jaundiced appearance is tanning beds or fake tanning or bad make up. He currently seems to look worse than what I would think could be explained by these things.

I have Rosacea. There are gels that help with the redness, burning, swelling, acne, and broken blood vessels. The meds aren't cheap, but considering that he wouldn't be paying for them himself, that shouldn't be an issue. He likely has Rosacea, but I'm guessing part of the spray tan routine is to try and cover it up. I'm also guessing that his diet, lack of exercise, and stress level contribute to the unhealthy look.

[apple1]

25 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I have Rosacea. There are gels that help with the redness, burning, swelling, acne, and broken blood vessels. The meds aren't cheap, but considering that he wouldn't be paying for them himself, that shouldn't be an issue. He likely has Rosacea, but I'm guessing part of the spray tan routine is to try and cover it up. I'm also guessing that his diet, lack of exercise, and stress level contribute to the unhealthy look.

My husband also has rosacea - that's how I know about it. It certainly can be a challenging thing to deal with. My husband's got much better over time, thankfully.

ETA: As for Trump, we never found out what his unexpected "partial physical" trip to Walter Reed on a Saturday was about - but it sure had to be for something believed to be emergent. No telling what possibly serious medical condition(s) he has.

Edited January 10, 2020 by apple1

[fraurosena]

Apart from medical issues, an impending impeachment trial, potential war with Iran, a looming re-election defeat, state investigations into his finances, Trump will also be facing this...

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

8 hours ago, Gobsmacked said:

the plane shot down by the Iranians.

This is far from a certainty at the moment.

[Flossie]

Not a certainty, but increasingly more likely.  There's video of one of the missiles hitting something in the sky.  Minutes later and three miles away a plane crashes with no word from the pilots of a problem, no one on the plane sending out last minute texts to loved ones, and no survivors.  

I'm on board with the intelligence reports that the plane was hit by a missile.  I suppose it's possible that the hit was an accident, but it's more likely that the plane was shot down deliberately.  It seems so unlikely that the plane was hit accidentally, as a plane is a pretty small thing in a big sky, but I only have my own feelings to go on.  The last I've heard was that Iran has said that they won't turn over the black boxes, which makes it appear that they know or suspect that they are responsible for what happened.

My opinion:  Trump wanted to distract from the impeachment.  Someone gave him the idea to take out Soleimani, a man who's name he can't pronounce and didn't seem to know existed until recently.  He jumped on the chance to distract and blame Obama somehow, because Trump is weirdly obsessed with tearing down everything Obama has done.  

Iran retaliated by sending missiles to US airbases in the area and the plane got caught in the middle.  Probably a lot of hot headed people on both sides weren't thinking clearly right then.  

It took the destruction of a plane carrying 176 innocent people to shake people up enough to stop further escalation of hostilities.  Now everyone is backing down, but no one wants to come out and admit any wrongdoing on their parts.  I'm grateful that things are calming down, but I'm furious that it happened in the first place.  

I can't do anything to affect things in Iran, but I can do my part to work against those in our government who took part in this disgusting event.  I'll never trust anyone who has enabled or actively supported Trump, and will work against them in any way that I can.

[fraurosena]

Dutch news sites are reporting that the Dutch military intelligence and safety services (MIVD) have independent information that show the plane was most likely shot down by a missile. Their information correlates closely with the information the Canadian intelligence services have. According to defense minister Bijleveld the MIVD found that it's plausible that Iranian air defense missiles were deployed.

Of course this doesn't mean that it's definitively known what happened, or who's to blame if blame should be accorded, but the likelihood it wasn't a missile that caused the downing of the plane seems exceedingly small.

[smittykins]

16 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Props to the person who compiled those.

[fraurosena]

The blackmailer blackmailed by blackmailed blackmailers.

This is the article linked in the tweet:

Trump Admits He Killed Soleimani To Keep GOP Senators With Him On Impeachment

Quote

Trump told associates that he authorized the strike on Soleimani because he was being pressured by Republican Senators who will decide his impeachment fate.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

The way the strike was handled has drawn scrutiny from Democrats and some Republicans. Critics say the decision was hasty, considering the risk of all-out war. They also question whether the intelligence that prompted the action was as clear-cut and alarming as the White House has said, and see the move as doing little to further U.S. interests in the region.

Mr. Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate, associates said.

The Soleimani strike was a political move that was motivated by impeachment, but it wasn’t done to move public opinion. Trump tried to buy off of some Republican impeachment trial jurors by caving to their pressure to carry out the Iran strike. 

The imminent attack excuse by the administration looks to be total BS. 

The White House won’t show Congress or the American people their evidence to justify the strike because it doesn’t exist. 

Trump killed Soleimani to save himself from losing Republican votes at his impeachment trial. 

America is less safe today because Donald Trump used foreign policy to save himself on impeachment.

 

[Ozlsn]

6 hours ago, Flossie said:

 I suppose it's possible that the hit was an accident, but it's more likely that the plane was shot down deliberately.  It seems so unlikely that the plane was hit accidentally, as a plane is a pretty small thing in a big sky, but I only have my own feelings to go on.

For me I would say it was an accident in the sense of misidentified target. Despite what happened with MH17 (also a misidentified target) I don't think that Russia is deliberately targeting passenger planes by proxy. I think it was a screw up - whether human error or bad programming (so... human error) who knows, but I doubt Iran's leaders wanted a passenger plane shot down. 

I don't know if other airlines have announced anything but Qantas are now avoiding flying over Iran as well as Iraq and the war zone part of Ukraine.  At this rate flying Australia to Europe is going to become... tricky.

6 hours ago, Flossie said:

It took the destruction of a plane carrying 176 innocent people to shake people up enough to stop further escalation of hostilities.

 This is what makes me so sad. I hope it does in fact de-escalate the situation but I fear it will just side track it for a bit until Trump tweets/does something else and other leaders react.