“Россия” (Russia) – a variant of the Russian presidential flag.
This morning, while Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch is testifying in Congress:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors. 9:01 AM · Nov 15, 2019
He really is that stupid.
Bad combover. Check. Too long red tie. Check. Orange spray tan. Check. Tiny hands. Check. Cluelessness. Check…
Uh, Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent in the Soviet Union.
He wants to take over the territory, resources, and people of Ukraine.
Ukraine is in a shooting war with Russia, which is lead by Vladimir Putin.
American economic and military support is essential to the survival of Ukraine.
Donald Trump withheld appropriated military support from Ukraine in order to extort the manufacture of political dirt from Ukraine directed at one of Donald Trump’s American political rivals.
“Россия” (Russia) – a variant of the Russian presidential flag.
Rep. Vicky Hartzler @RepHartzler
Nine weeks of this tainted, Soviet-style show trial and we’ve seen that @SpeakerPelosi and @RepAdamSchiff are more interested in impeaching @realDonaldTrump at all costs than working on the pressing issues that face our country today.
“Soviet-style show trial” doesn’t mean what you think it means. When were they ever publicized with the accused being able to question witnesses. You don’t refute these facts: Trump set up a back channel to Ukraine to get dirt on an opponent and extorted Ukraine to get the dirt
How many weeks of Benghazi hearings were there?
the sham is the republicans refusing to even listen to the testimony of non partisan ambassadors who are speaking plainly about the president’s bungled attempts to extort anther country for personal gain
Trump is free to testify under oath and clear it all up.
Vicky, Vicky, Vicky. Or whoever writes your Tweets. History will judge you harshly. This extraordinary refusal to see any fault in the supreme leader is not American in any way.
Funny. Says the Republican whose party has cozied up to the Russians.
Oh you like your candidates to sell us out to Russia, got it!!!
Who did you swear an oath to when taking your job? The people and our country or a habitual liar and white nationalist? Your party will be judged harshly for your inability to step away from your party and have some common sense.
Did you watch and listen? If you did, you wouldn’t have made such a red scare tweet. Stop being stoopid Vicky. Geez
Hard to believe this comes from someone supporting “soviet style” attempts to impede a democratic process; how else to describe the thugs break in to a secure facility. The soviet style has continued with suppression of witnesses, hiding of evidence and propaganda spewing.
Go to Hell you traitor.
“Make America Great Again” – in Russian.
Bad combover. Check. Too long red tie. Check. Orange spray tan. Check. Tiny hands. Check. Cluelessness. Check…
“…By publicly presenting this false narrative, the defendant deliberately shifted the timeline of what had occurred in the hopes of limiting the investigations into possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election—an issue of heightened national interest.
The defendant’s false statements obscured the fact that the Moscow Project was a lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance of the Russian government. If the project was completed, the Company could have received hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues. The fact that Cohen continued to work on the project and discuss it with Individual 1 well into the campaign was material to the ongoing congressional and SCO investigations, particularly because it occurred at a time of sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the U.S. presidential election. Similarly, it was material that Cohen, during the campaign, had a substantive telephone call about the project with an assistant to the press secretary for the President of Russia.
The defendant’s false statements to Congress began in approximately late August 2017, when he submitted his written statement about the Moscow Project to SSCI and HPSCI. His false statements continued through his oral testimony before the committees in October 2017. And when Cohen first met with the SCO in August 2018, he repeated many of his prior false statements about the circumstances of the Moscow Project.1 Only when the defendant met with the SCO a second time on September 12, 2018—after he had pled guilty in United States v. Cohen, 18-cr-602…”
Page 3, Case 1:18-cr-00850-WHP Document 15 Filed 12/07/18 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK – The Special Counsel’s Office
Individual 1 is Donald Trump (r).
“…the defendant provided a detailed account of his involvement and the involvement of others in the Moscow Project, and also corrected the record concerning his outreach to the Russian government during the week of the United Nations General Assembly. The defendant also provided information about attempts by other Russian nationals to reach the campaign. For example, in or around November 2015, Cohen received the contact information for, and spoke with, a Russian national who claimed to be a ‘trusted person’ in the Russian Federation who could offer the campaign ‘political synergy’ and ‘synergy on a government level.’ The defendant recalled that this person repeatedly proposed a meeting between Individual 1 and the President of Russia. The person told Cohen that such a meeting could have a “phenomenal” impact ‘not only in political but in a business dimension as well,’ referring to the Moscow Project, because there is ‘no bigger warranty in any project than consent of [the President of Russia]’…”
Page 5, Case 1:18-cr-00850-WHP Document 15 Filed 12/07/18 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK – The Special Counsel’s Office
Cheap grifters, all of them.
Bad combover. Check. Too long red tie. Check. Orange spray tan. Check. Tiny hands. Check. Cluelessness. Check…
McCaskill Statement on Report of Attempted Russian Hacking
Attempted hack of Senator’s official office was unsuccessful
Thursday, July 26, 2018
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill released the following statement in response to the report that Russian hackers attempted to target her Senate computer network:
“Russia continues to engage in cyber warfare against our democracy. I will continue to speak out and press to hold them accountable. While this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this. I will not be intimidated. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, Putin is a thug and a bully.”
How it looks in Missouri:
Tony Messenger @tonymess
This week in #MoSen: @clairecmc says ‘Putin is a thug’ after Russians try to hack her U.S. Senate email. @HawleyMO says the one word that describes @realDonaldTrump is ‘courage’ after the U.S. president sides with the thug over American intelligence agents. Advantage: McCaskill. 9:12 PM – 26 Jul 2018
Which side are you on, Josh, which side are you on?
Today Donald Trump kissed up to Putin and sold out the United States. His performance was so horrifying that a former CIA director, John Brennan, characterized it as exceeding “the threshold of high crimes & misdemeanors. It was nothing short of treasonous.” Former National Intelligence Director James Clapper added that, “on the world’s stage, in front of the entire globe, the President of the United States essentially capitulated and seems intimidated by Vladimir Putin. So it was amazing and very, very disturbing.”
All of which tends to confirm what we’ve all known all along: our president owes Putin big-time and is running scared as the extent of the debt is close to being exposed by the special prosecutor.
Even a few Republicans were outraged by the Trump’s craven performance (see here and here). But not all. Not even very many. As Paul Waldman noted in The Washington Post:
When it comes to Republicans, we’re faced with two related issues. First, there are members of their party who actively benefited from Russian manipulation of our election, and even sought out help that turned out to come from Russia, whether they fully understood it at the time. Second, much of the rest of their party is now arguing that it’s really no big deal if the Russians manipulate American elections, so long as the GOP is the one that benefits. […]
We all know how eager the Trump campaign was to work with the Russian government when the campaign believed the Russians had dirt on Clinton to share. But just as we’ve seen so many times before, Trump’s naked corruption is merely a more unapologetic version of what’s happening within the Republican Party. So the question now is: Is this still going on? Are any Republican candidates currently receiving information obtained through Russian hacking about their opponents?
Which leads me to ask: what does GOP Senator Roy Blunt have to say about how Donald Trump is putting the security of our country at risk? Or my 2nd district GOP representative, Ann Wagner? So far nothing but crickets. And that goes for the rest of the Missouri delegation.
But it’s early times yet – just a few hours after the press conference after all. I’ll be watching to see how our GOP delegation responds after they’ve had a chance to test the direction of the wind in order to decide where their convictions lay. Who knows, just because they didn’t condemn daddy right away doesn’t mean they won’t manage to summon up some mild distress as long as it doesn’t look like it’ll get the red-meat pitchfork brigade too fired up.
I’ll be getting back to you when/if I learn who has an incipient backbone and who doesn’t. It’s important. We’ve got vitally important midterms coming up – and Trump’s public stance, in terms of what he says and his policies amounts to a giant “so what?”. All of which leads one to really worry about what deals may have been made – or further elaborated – in the two hours when the dictator and the wannabe dictator conferred unattended.
U.S. intelligence officials now believe with “a high level of confidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.
Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said.
Putin’s objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a “vendetta” against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to “split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn’t depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore,” the official said….
Today I sent this text as an email to Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill:
During the recent election campaign, there were intimations that the Russian government was cooperating with the Trump campaign. Today that was confirmed in an interview given to the Washington Post by Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. Trump is also known to have financial relations with members of the Russian oligarchy who are close associates of Vladimir Putin. I doubt that I am alone in my concern that our naive and poorly informed President elect may have acted in ways that compromise the security of the United States by allowing a relatively unfriendly power the ability to meddle in our internal affairs. I worry that this Russian influence may extend into the future and further compromise our government.
I urge you to do whatever you can to see that President-elect Trump’s Russian ties are investigated and their nature and extent made public. Given the position that Mr. Trump will occupy, an investigation of this sort demands a non-partisan special prosecutor. At the very least, though, concerned members of Congress can make sure that the call for such action is heard, perhaps by holding shadow hearings if the Republican congressional majority refuses to act. President-elect Trump’s many and various conflicts of interest are important, and paramount among them are his Russian ties and the suggestion that he and his campaign allowed the Russian government to meddle in the recent election.
Thank you for entertaining my comments.
I sent a similar email to Republican Senator Blunt; for obvious reasons I omitted the phrase in the second paragraph suggesting shadow hearings if Republicans won’t act. Instead I urged Blunt to put the welfare of the country over partisan considerations.
I don’t expect action from Blunt – or, truth be told, from McCaskill – but I do want them to hear and be aware of this sentiment. If any of you share this concern, I urge you to join the call for investigation with similar letters to your congressmen, your local papers or whatever other venues you have access to.
SMP is meant to provide a place to deal with Missouri’s politics, but every once and awhile I just can’t resist writing a little something about stuff that isn’t specific to Missouri, to wit, Sarah Palin’s comments on President’s Obama sartorial style. Palin wants to paint the President as weak on foreign policy – in particular, the Ukrainian situation – and she seeks to emphasize this opinion by describing his jeans as “mom jeans.” Although I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the President in what I’d call mom jeans, Palin probably should know. After all, she’s not only a mom but such an astute fashionista that she managed to turn her disastrous vice-presidential run into an extended shopping spree, updating her and her family’s wardrobes with pricey designer duds paid for out of campaign funds.
Palin also thinks that Putin is a superior leader, evidently because he wrestles bears. In this opinion she echoes – admittedly in her own inimitably cartoonishly macho way – others of her conservative brethren who think that a pugnacious, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later, strongman ruler like Putin is just what the doctor ordered. Bear in mind that these folks also gushed over President Dick Cheney … er, George Bush, while he (they?) led us into an expensive and unnecessary war. I think this might be why we also call conservatives reactionary. In Europe I believe that people who swoon in the presence of strongmen leaders are often called fascists, but the term has been so abused by American Tea Partiers that it has lost all currency in the U.S. As Duane Graham of The Erstwhile Conservativeobserves about conservative Putin worship, ” the fact that a Russian thug is praised by a prominent Republican for acting like a thug, even a decisive one, is enough to turn one’s stomach.”
Personally, I would prefer a leader who outsmarts bears instead of wrestling them, and so far, I think that President Obama might be about to outsmart the Russian bear, Putin, whose bellicose actions may ultimately retain a Crimean sea port for Rusia, but who has imperiled Russia’s already fragile economy in the process, alienated Russians at home and Russian allies, while ensuring that the rest of the Ukraine will remain a stubbornly Westward leaning country on the Russian border. So who cares what kind of jeans President Obama wears as long as he and his foreign policy team are able to make a palatable hash out of the dog’s breakfast Putin seeks to serve up in the Ukraine?
