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katherineharron

Trump vents fury at impeachment probe with key witness due to testify - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

trump

shared by katherineharron on 22 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • An agitated President Donald Trump on Tuesday branded the Democratic impeachment process a "lynching" shortly before a crucial new witness is scheduled to give a deposition that could potentially unpeel new layers of the Ukraine scandal that is threatening his presidency.
  • Trump, who on Monday called on Republicans to be tougher in his defense, warned in a tweet that Democrats were setting a precedent that a president of their own party could be impeached in future without due process.Read More"All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here -- a lynching. But we will WIN!" Trump wrote.
  • A torrent of disclosures could dash hopes for a swift House vote on articles of impeachment before the Thanksgiving break as members follow fresh paths of inquiry beyond the original scope of questioning. That could in turn also hinder their effort to offer the public a crisp, easily understandable case against a President who habitually defies limits on his power.CNN reported Monday on growing expectations that historic votes on impeachment may now slip towards the end of the year -- even as Democrats also move to begin doing weekend work with a scheduled Saturday deposition for another State Department official. Such a scenario would make it more likely that a subsequent Senate trial of the President could overshadow and infect the Democratic Party's presidential primary votes early next year, a time when party leaders hope voters will focus instead on considering their own candidates for President.
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  • It now seems all but inevitable that at the time when Democrats hoped to focus voters on plans for health care reform, lowering student debt and a fairer economy in the run up to the Iowa caucuses in February, the nation's attention will still be fixated on Washington.
  • Given that Democrats appear far from wrapping up private depositions, may want to call new witnesses from multiple agencies, hope to publish transcripts of hours-long depositions and also want to hold public hearings, it is tough to see them advancing Articles of Impeachment in the committee next month.As a case in point, the top US diplomat currently in Ukraine Bill Taylor is scheduled to deliver a deposition to three House committees on Tuesday. The US charge d'affaires in Kiev was depicted in text message exchanges with the President's men as saying it would be "crazy" to withhold military aid to the former Soviet state to coerce it into offer political favors. So he's potentially a critical witness for impeachment managers.
  • If the increasingly complicated case against Trump makes a swift denouement impractical, Democrats may begin to doubt Pelosi's decision to hold off on impeachment months ago -- after the special counsel provided what some scholars see as strong evidence of obstruction of justice. Trump's defenders could soon begin to make the case soon that a decision to overturn an election should best be left to voters due to weigh in months, rather than lawmakers on Capitol Hill.But Democrats will not be alone in facing dangerously shifting political currents should impeachment drag on longer than expected. After all, every week that has passed since Pelosi fired the starting gun a month ago has weakened Trump's position.It's possible that day after day of damaging disclosures about Trump's off-the-books dealings with Ukraine to get dirt on Biden could significantly weaken the President's position.
  • Events of the last few days -- over Trump's aborted plan for a G7 summit at his Florida resort and his Syria withdrawal -- have exposed increasing GOP impatience with the President.While there is no suggestion that his Senate firewall is in danger of collapsing, it appears that Trump will continue to fray tempers in the months before a Senate trial."We have to get tougher and fight," Trump warned his party on Monday in a wild hour-long photo-op before a cabinet meeting.
  • "(There is) growing frustration in the Republican Party, growing disenchantment in the Republican Party, but we haven't seen a real breakout and we may not see one through this process," David Gergen, an adviser to GOP and Democratic presidents who is now a senior CNN political analyst, told CNN International on Monday.
anniina03

An Envoy's Damning Account of Trump's Ukraine Pressure and Its Consequences - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...mp-ukraine-william-taylor.html

politics trump policy economics

shared by anniina03 on 23 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, laid out in visceral terms the stakes of what he saw as an illegitimate scheme to pressure the Kiev government for political help by suspending American security aid.
  • Mr. Taylor described a president holding up $391 million in assistance for the clear purpose of forcing Ukraine to help incriminate Mr. Trump’s domestic rivals.
  • the Ukraine scandal also extends to matters of life and death, as well as geopolitics on a grand scale.
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  • “If Ukraine succeeds in breaking free of Russian influence, it is possible for Europe to be whole, free, democratic and at peace,”
  • Yet in the publicly released portion of his testimony, Mr. Taylor neither described any direct conversation with Mr. Trump himself nor made any reference to documents or recordings that would explicitly implicate the president. Instead, he provided a road map for investigators by quoting others around Mr. Trump describing his actions and statements.
  • “We must support Ukraine in its fight against its bullying neighbor,” he told House investigators. “Russian aggression cannot stand.”
  • He recalled being stunned to learn during a secure video conference call on July 18 that the aid to Ukraine had been delayed with no explanation other than that “the directive had come from the president to the chief of staff to” the Office of Management and Budget.
  • “I and others sat in astonishment,” he testified. “The Ukrainians were fighting the Russians and counted on not only the training and weapons, but also the assurance of U.S. support.”
  • 13,000 Ukrainians had been killed in the war, one or two a week. More Ukrainians would undoubtedly die without the U.S. military assistance.”
  • Mr. Sondland explained that Mr. Trump saw it through a transactional lens. “When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check,” Mr. Taylor said, quoting Mr. Sondland. Mr. Volker “used the same terms several days later.”
dytonka

Lest We Forget the Horrors: A Catalog of Trump's Worst Cruelties, Collusions, Corruptions, and Crimes: The Complete Listing (So Far): Atrocities 1- 963 - McSweeney's Internet Tendency - 0 views

www.mcsweeneys.net/...isting-so-far-atrocities-1-963

Trump Biden Politics

shared by dytonka on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Trump’s cruelties, collusions, and crimes, and it felt urgent then to track them, to ensure these horrors — happening almost daily — would not be forgotten. This election year, amid a harrowing global health, civil rights, humanitarian, and economic crisis, we know it’s never been more critical to note these horrors, to remember them, and to do all in our power to reverse them.
  • In more than 50 cases nationwide, children were heard bullying classmates with calls for deportation, references to Donald Trump’s name, and blatantly racist language.
  • At a rally with supporters, Donald Trump asserted that a law should exist which requires all immigrants to support themselves financially for five years before receiving welfare aid.
Javier E

Ukraine Is the West's War Now - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...-is-the-wests-war-now-5d468bdb

ukraine war history west crisis policy us europe

shared by Javier E on 27 Feb 23 - No Cached
  • A year later, the war in Ukraine has become, to a large extent, the West’s own. True, no American or NATO soldiers are fighting and dying on Ukrainian soil. But the U.S., its European allies and Canada have now sent some $120 billion in weapons and other aid to Ukraine, with new, more advanced military supplies on the way. If this monumental effort fails to thwart President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions, the setback would not only undermine American credibility on the world stage but also raise difficult questions about the future of the Western alliance.
  • “In many ways, we’re all-in, and we’re all-in because the realization has dawned in Europe that showing weakness to President Putin, showing no response to his atrocities, only invites him to go further and further,” said Sjoerd Sjoerdsma, a Dutch politician and member of parliament. “We have also realized that it is not only the safety and security of Ukraine that is at stake but also our own.”
  • The Russian military’s mixture of unexpected ineptitude and shocking cruelty has pulled the U.S. and allies deeper and deeper into the conflict. With one self-imposed constraint falling after another, Western goals have gradually moved from preventing the obliteration of Ukraine to supporting its military victory over Russia.
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  • It’s a more ambitious commitment that carries much higher risks—but also strategic rewards—for the Western alliance.
  • “Nobody thought the Russians would start a medieval war in the 21st century,” said Sen. James Risch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “This conflict is going to change the face of Europe as much as World War II did.”
  • In Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere, the West’s geopolitical adversaries are calculating whether the U.S. and its allies have the stamina and cohesion to defend the rules-based international order that has benefited the West for decades.
  • In particular, the future of Taiwan and the South China Sea is closely linked to the West’s record in Ukraine.
  • “If Putin wins in Ukraine, the message to him and other authoritarian leaders will be that they can use force to get what they want. This will make the world more dangerous and us more vulnerable.”
  • The Munich conference capped several weeks in which the U.S. and its allies have dramatically expanded the scope of their military aid, an indication that Mr. Putin’s expectation that the West will eventually tire of helping Ukraine hasn’t materialized just yet
  • Both sides believe they can win on the battlefield, and little room exists for peace negotiations. Ukraine is preparing offensives to regain the roughly 18% of its territory still occupied by Moscow, including the Crimea peninsula and parts of the eastern Donbas region that Mr. Putin seized in 2014. Russia has declared four Ukrainian regions, none of which it fully controls, to be its own sovereign territory and seeks, at the very least, to conquer those lands. Mr. Putin, in a speech on Tuesday, indicated that his aspirations remain much broader, referring to Russia’s “historical territories that are now called Ukraine.”
  • A year into Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II, Ukraine’s own military industries have been shattered by Russian missile strikes, and its reserves of Soviet-vintage weapons are running out. By now, Kyiv can keep fighting only as long as Western assistance continues apace
  • “The next months will be very critical. If, say, another Ukrainian offensive fails, if it becomes the public narrative that it’s going to be a stalemate, support in the West might drop—perhaps not substantially, but some of the politicians will see the writing on the wall,
  • “In diplomacy, morality is part of the public narrative, but rarely part of the real decision-making process. But Ukraine’s case was one of the examples in history when you can argue that sympathy based on moral arguments was a game changer,”
  • “Some governments acted the way they did not merely based on their practical considerations but under enormous pressure of their public opinion. And that public opinion was based on moral compassion for the victim of the aggression.”
  • Mr. Putin has tried to counter the Ukrainian message by appealing to fear. On the first morning of the war, he alluded to nuclear weapons to deter the West from helping Ukraine.
  • “Putin is threatening Armageddon, and the Russians are doing it all the time, sometimes in oblique ways and sometimes in a more direct way,
  • “But when you actually poke at that and provide weapons gradually over time, there hasn’t been the catastrophic response that Putin promised.”
  • “boiling the frog.” As the U.S. began to introduce new weapons systems, it did so slowly and, initially, in limited numbers. None of these individual decisions were of sufficient scope to provoke a dramatic escalation by Moscow. But over the past 12 months, the cumulative effect of these new weapons has transformed the balance of power on the battlefield and enabled a string of strategic Ukrainian victories.
  • “If you look at the arc of Western involvement, no one would have predicted where we are now six months ago, and the same goes for six months before that. It’s a crisis response that has evolved into a policy—a policy that, probably, no one would have prescribed at the outset,” said Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at Rand Corp. who has urged caution on arming Ukraine
  • “The West is also the frog that is boiling itself. With each incremental increase in assistance, qualitative or quantitative, we become accustomed to that being normal, and the next one doesn’t seem so extreme,”
  • “There is a dynamic here where we become desensitized to what is going on. We are in a bit of a slow-moving spiral that shows no signs of letting up.”
  • In 2014, after Mr. Putin annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and triggered a bloody war in the eastern Donbas region, covertly sending troops and heavy weapons across the border, the American and European response was limited to sanctions that only marginally affected Russia’s economy.
  • Back in 1991, President George H.W. Bush viewed Ukraine’s desire for freedom as a dangerous nuisance. That year, just months before the Soviet Union’s collapse, he delivered to the Ukrainian parliament his infamous “Chicken Kiev” speech, urging Ukrainians to abandon “suicidal nationalism” and permanently remain under the Kremlin’s rule.
  • Other analysts and policy makers argue that the true danger lies in excessive caution over accelerating Western military involvement. “We have been slow in delivering certain capabilities. We keep climbing the stairs, but it goes through a tortuous process, and in the meantime Ukrainians are dying,” said ret. Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. “It has taken the Pentagon a long time to come to the realization that Ukraine can win, and will win, especially if we give them what they need. There has been all too much defeatist hand-wringing.”
  • At the time, President Barack Obama resisted calls to help Ukraine militarily as he sought Mr. Putin’s cooperation on his presidency’s main foreign-policy priority, the nuclear deal with Iran
  • Ukraine, Mr. Obama said in an interview with the Atlantic in 2016, “is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do.” All the evidence of the past 50 years, he added, suggested that Russian (and Chinese) decision-making wouldn’t be influenced by “talking tough or engaging in some military action.”
  • Mr. Biden, speaking in front of U.S., Polish and Ukrainian flags to a cheering crowd in Warsaw on Tuesday, had a different message. “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia,” he pledged. “Appetites of the autocrat cannot be appeased. They must be opposed.”
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