I mean what.the.actual.fuck? The transcript is very clear that Trump committed crimes. Not only that, but he’s since tried to obstruct justice and lied about it, of course.
I guess his whole theory is that asking Ukraine to look into Biden is NOT a crime, because he’s the President and he can do whatever he wants?
Is there any legal ambiguity about this?
Yeah, that Trump thinks this exonerates him is baffling. Maybe because he doesn’t bring up investigating Biden until AFTER he talks about aid? Dunno. Don’t think the order of that should matter, as the call notes make the implication clear.
I mean the transcript reads like a mob shakedown. The context of him having frozen $400 million in aid is important. Trump comes in and says that nobody is as good to Ukraine as the US. The Ukrainian President of course agrees and then says they’re ready to buy more Javelin missiles. Then Trump says…oh yeah, I’d like you to do us a “favor”…
A favor that the Ukraine of course can NOT refuse given the money being withheld.
They’re going to focus on figuring out how to suggest that this is all totally fine and normal. There’s no escaping the facts now. It’s like the pussy grabbing tapes, but worse.
When the POTUS is on a call with you and he mentions foreign aid in one sentence and then “can you do me a favor” in another . . . I don’t know what to tell ya. Oh wait, I do know what to tell ya. He just did a quid pro quo. Scumbag.
I do not think the reaction to this MEMCON release are quite what the White House was hoping for.
Out of all of this what bothers me is how rudimentary the communication is. The transcript reads like two Orz trying to talk to each other in English.
Pretty much. Giuliani has said this:
“We’re not meddling in an electionan election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do. … There’s nothing illegal about it. Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy — I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government."
… and he said this in an interview back in May. They’re literally going with the theory that, “If I say it’s not illegal, it isn’t.”
Sometimes, the White House being full of imbeciles and incompetents works in our favor.
I think it’s funny that we were all nervous last night that Trump allowing the transcript to be released meant it showed nothing. But the reality is that he’s just too stupid to understand that it 100% implicates him.
Actually the last time I travelled to the United States, I stayed in New York near Central Park and I stayed at the Trump Tower.
I’m curious: is this how diplomatic conversations usually go? A bunch of mutual sycophancy?
Forget the joker. We need Dustin Hoffman to read this as Rainman
When one side is holding back $400 million that was promised to the other, probably.
“No (explicit) Quid Pro Quo” is going to be the next “No Collusion,” as Trump tries to frame what constitutes wrongdoing.
I don’t think he can win legally with that defense, but that’s how they’re trying to spin it. They just move the goalposts as far as necessary until finding something Trump didn’t do, then declare that’s the key issue. It’s the “… but I did not shoot the deputy” defense.
This is what does seem analogous to Watergate to me. So many times in Watergate, the President would tell congress “I’m releasing this tape, and it exonerates me.” And then he’d release it, and it was 5-alarm fires all over the media.
The only difference: Nixon’s lawyers would review those tapes and tell him in the days or hours before they released them that they tapes were utterly and completely damning, and what the hell was he thinking in the first place, much less that the tapes exonerated him.
Maybe I’m jaded but I think they’ll just spin it as Trump asking some innocent questions. He wasn’t implying anything, he never mentions aid, blah blah. Remember that other fucking guy, I forget his name, his scumbag fixer, he said Trump speaks in codes. Never asks for what he wants, just makes suggestions and expects you to understand the ask. Exactly like a mafia guy.
So their defense will be, “He never said he was withholding aid, just asking for him to talk to some guys.” The dirtbag GOP will run with that and Trump will survive this because Americans are stupid, stupid people.
The cherry on top of all this is we don’t even know if the whistleblower complaint has anything to do with this, or if it’s a separate crime entirely.
Betcha a million internet points that it’s crimes, not crime ;)
Though, yeah, there is a separate crime we know about already. There’s a process crime here in refusing to turn over the complaint, despite a clear statutory obligation to do so. The process crime isn’t as sexy as the bribery/ extortion stuff, but it’s really easy to prove.
This will absolutely be the strategy they’ll go with. These are people that think the “meddlesome priest” defense is valid.