NPR certainly doesn’t help either. After they played that clip by the Republican congressman, they didn’t refute it in any way, they emphasized that corruption is a political process so each side will be trying to present their side to appeal to the public.
KevinC
3208
The most important part of news reporting to be “fair and balanced”, not accurate!
Banzai
3210
Sounds like exactly the right kind of experience to question anything involving trump.
antlers
3211
The Democrats should agree that Hunter will testify if they can call Jared, Ivanka and Don Jr. I’d like to know why Trump hasn’t demanded that Xi or bin Salman launch investigations to address the appearance of corruption there.
I would think they also hammer the timeline of frozen Ukrainian aid. Frozen before the July “perfect” call. Unfrozen (19 days before they would have been lost forever) after the whistle blower files complaint, but before public knowledge of it.
Timex
3213
They are having an actual lawyer do the questioning in the house?
They are smarter than i thought.
From what I heard (from Preet’s podcast?) the two main members of the house (schiff and whoever is his republican counterpart) get 90 minutes each of questioning, and they will have professional staff (lawyers, I guess Schiff’s worked with Preet so he’s kinda excited) able to take up as much of the time as desired. Then it devolves into the 5 minute go-round nonsense we’re used to.
So it’s 90 minutes of good questioning, 90 minutes of professional obfuscation/obstruction, then a clown fiesta for the remaining part of the day (note: I’m not sure if I misheard the podcast on the time for the lawyer’s questioning, or if politico halved it. They are probably right.)
https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/11/trump-impeachment-explainer-069321
Timex
3216
It’s Devin Nunes lololololol.
That doesn’t look like anything to me.
Nunes is so infuriating whenever he opens his mouth that I feel revulsion, to the point I want to forget he exists. On top of that, he’s so incompetent that I can’t believe he’s moved beyond dog catcher.
So yeah, I purge his name from my memory pretty quick, or my head would explode. You feel free to think about him though. Ick.
I thought the were swapping out grapefruit-fucker for ol’ shirt-sleeves, Gym Jordan.
Enidigm
3220
That’s exactly what people need to do - air these ads on Fox and AM radio.
SlyFrog
3221
Yes, it’s very clear that is the direction they are taking. Also very clear it is attorneys who came up with it, as it is essentially a basic defense in criminal law. Crimes (usually) require two parts - the actual action, and the mental intent.
What they are trying to do, in glorified terms, is to say if it is impeachable, that it must be shown that he did it for the specific intent of attacking a political opponent (i.e. abusing power for the purpose of going after a political opponent). If instead, it could be that he simply intended to investigate corruption, and the source of that corruption just happened to be a political opponent, well, that’s just fine.
Of course it is utter bullshit - the reason they are doing it is because it sets up a nearly impossible burden of showing what was in Trump’s head as a reasoning for doing it.
It would be nice if Republicans extended this mental benefit of the doubt to all of the various minorities who get pulled over/shot for being in the wrong area even though they had no bad intent, but well, we’ve long since passed the point where hypocrisy is recognized with regard to these people.
Ideally, these asshole Republicans will be able to show us the giant log of telephone calls to foreign leaders where Trump was supremely concerned about corruption investigations into people who weren’t his political opponents. Maybe even some where the corruption investigations were into Democrats. Because Trump is so concerned with corruption. Oh wait, those don’t fucking exist.
In other words, the “Trump thinks like a mobster, so he just naturally acts like a mobster” defense.
nKoan
3223
It’s not his fault, the deep state has all these rules. How is anyone supposed to follow them all?
To be honest, it’s the same defense that’s been working for them in other ways for decades.
- “He’s not really racist, he just grew up in a different era.”
- “She didn’t mean it in an anti-Semitic way, it’s just an expression people use sometimes.”
- “He’s not homophobic, he just believes marriage should be between a man and a woman, as God intended.”
The full headline is " In private speech, Bolton suggests some of Trump’s foreign policy decisions are guided by personal interest"
Menzo
3226
This won’t happen, but it’s fun to think about.
