1. John Cassidy: Trump’s Ukraine Defense Is the Same One He’s Used for Years: I Did It. So What?

To the charge that he used the power of his office to try to get dirt on a domestic political opponent, Trump’s response is the same as it was when he was accused of demolishing the friezes: Yes, I did it. So what? To charges that he dangled U.S. aid as part of a squeeze play, he says the money was indeed linked to the corruption issue, which, to him and Giuliani, meant trying to pin some discredited corruption charges on Biden.

Again, none of this should be shocking. Trump adopted the same unapologetic and defiant stance after he urged Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, after he fired an F.B.I. director who refused to give him a pledge of loyalty, and after he publicly backed Vladimir Putin over the entire U.S. intelligence community. The effort to turn the Ukraine scandal into a story about Biden is also entirely familiar. During the Russia investigation, Trump and his Republican lackeys did the same thing with their attacks on John Brennan, Robert Mueller, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Peter Strzok. Any evidence that suggested that Trump’s campaign courted Russian help, or that he attempted to obstruct the subsequent investigation, was all part of a “witch hunt” by the “deep state”—terms that have rolled out again in recent days.

Trump certainly won’t change. Right now, he’s banking on Republican cowardice and general scandal fatigue to get him through the whistle-blower story. If he manages to ride it out, he’ll go into next year’s campaign even more convinced that he can get away with anything, and even more likely to set new precedents for Presidential wrongdoing. That’s who he is. https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-ukraine-defense-is-the-same-one-hes-used-for-years-i-did-it-so-what

2. Gil Cisneros, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, Elaine Luria, Mikie Sherrill, Elissa Slotkin and Abigail Spanberger: These allegations are a threat to all we have sworn to protect

The president of the United States may have used his position to pressure a foreign country into investigating a political opponent, and he sought to use U.S. taxpayer dollars as leverage to do it. He allegedly sought to use the very security assistance dollars appropriated by Congress to create stability in the world, to help root out corruption and to protect our national security interests, for his own personal gain. These allegations are stunning, both in the national security threat they pose and the potential corruption they represent. We also know that on Sept. 9, the inspector general for the intelligence community notified Congress of a “credible” and “urgent” whistleblower complaint related to national security and potentially involving these allegations. Despite federal law requiring the disclosure of this complaint to Congress, the administration has blocked its release to Congress.

This flagrant disregard for the law cannot stand. To uphold and defend our Constitution, Congress must determine whether the president was indeed willing to use his power and withhold security assistance funds to persuade a foreign country to assist him in an upcoming election.

If these allegations are true, we believe these actions represent an impeachable offense. We do not arrive at this conclusion lightly, and we call on our colleagues in Congress to consider the use of all congressional authorities available to us, including the power of “inherent contempt” and impeachment hearings, to address these new allegations, find the truth and protect our national security. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/24/seven-freshman-democrats-these-allegations-are-threat-all-we-have-sworn-protect/

3. Margaret Sullivan: Trump’s Ukraine-scandal strategy — counterpunch, confuse and con — depends on the media

We’ve been here before.

It’s “lock her up” all over again. It’s “no collusion, no obstruction” all over again.

It’s all the Trumpian greatest hits: witch hunt, corrupt media, deep state.

But will the media strategy that has proved so successful for President Trump — counterpunch, confuse and con — work again?

Will it be effective even now that he is under siege for what looks like a blatant abuse of power to go after a political rival?

The Washington Post broke the story last week of a government whistleblower sounding the alarm about an action of Trump’s: a phone call pressing the president of Ukraine, from which Trump is withholding aid, to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of Trump’s political rival, who held a company board position there.

Trump is counting on the media — both right-wing and mainstream — to do much of the work for him as he tries to manage another crisis.

And many are falling right in line.

Fox News, of course, is the easy part. On Monday night, both Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity blasted the blame-shifting into overdrive.

Rather than treat seriously the developing news story — designated Fox truth-teller Shep Smith had done that earlier — both hosts did a U-turn and went flying down the propaganda highway.

They made it all about Joe Biden’s supposed corruption, thus broadcasting their prime-time shows from the other side of Alice’s looking glass.

Instead of snuffing out false and misleading claims, news stories give them oxygen. Then pundits come along to fan the flames — while simultaneously bemoaning what’s happened to our democratic norms.

That’s what Trump is counting on.

And why shouldn’t he? It’s worked for him every time. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trumps-ukraine-scandal-strategy--counterpunch-confuse-and-con--depends-on-the-media/2019/09/24/f33433da-dec3-11e9-8dc8-498eabc129a0_story.html

4. Jonathan Chait: The Ukraine Scandal Is Not One Phone Call. It’s a Massive Plot.

On July 25, President Trump held a phone call in which he repeatedly leaned on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and Paul Manafort’s prosecutors. The episode is so blatantly inappropriate even Trump’s most fervent apologists are, with a few exceptions, having trouble defending it. What they are trying to do, instead, is define this phone call as the entire scandal. Trump emphasizes that he “didn’t specifically mention the explicit quid pro quo” of military aid in return for the investigation.

That is true, as far as it goes. The quid pro quo in the call, though perfectly apparent, is mostly implicit. But the real trick in Trump’s defense is framing the call as the entire scandal. The scandal is much more than that. The call is a snapshot, a moment in time in a months-long campaign that put American policy toward Ukraine at the disposal of Trump’s personal interests and reelection campaign.

When Trump ordered military aid to Ukraine to be frozen, he went through his chief of staff and budget director Mick Mulvaney. Congress had passed the aid, and Ukraine was under military attack from Russia, a fact that made the halting of the assistance worrisome to numerous officials in two branches of government. As the Times reported, lawmakers and State Department staffers were asking why the money hadn’t gone through.

They were given cover stories: Lawmakers “were first told the assistance was being reviewed to determine whether it was in the best interest of foreign policy,” the Times reported this week. “Other administration officials said, without detail, there was a review on corruption in Ukraine, according to current and former officials. Then, as August drew to a close, other officials told lawmakers they were trying to gauge the effectiveness of the aid, a claim that struck congressional aides as odd.”

Lots of officials were involved in disseminating these cover stories to hide the fact that Trump held back the aid to leverage Ukraine to investigate Biden. One of them was Mike Pence, who told some confused officials that the aid was being held up “based on concerns from the White House about ‘issues of corruption.’” Pence knew perfectly well what this really meant — asked point blank if the aid was being held up over Ukraine’s failure to investigate Biden, he replied “as President Trump had me make clear, we have great concerns about issues of corruption.” In other words, yes, Ukraine needed to investigate Biden if it wanted the money.. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/ukraine-scandal-trump-phone-call-giuiliani-pence-barr-mulvaney-impeachment.html

5. Max Boot: The rough transcript is devastating. How could Trump not know that?

At least Richard Nixon had the good sense to resist releasing the “smoking gun” tape until finally forced to do so by the Supreme Court. That is because Nixon, the worst criminal to occupy the Oval Office until now, at least had a modicum of moral sense and self-awareness. He knew what he had said was wrong — he was heard plotting to use the CIA to shut down the FBI investigation of Watergate — and he realized that the tape’s release would be devastating to him.

President Trump, by contrast, is so clueless — so lacking in even the most basic sense of right and wrong — that he could actually tweet this morning: “Will the Democrats apologize after seeing what was said on the call with the Ukrainian President? They should, a perfect call — got them by surprise!” Suffice it to say, there were no apologies after the release of the Memorandum of Telephone Conversation (TelCon) between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25. This isn’t a verbatim transcript, and it’s always possible that it was doctored in some way, but what is revealed in its five pages is deeply damaging to Trump.

“The United States has been very very good to Ukraine,” Trump tells Zelensky with an undertone of menace. “I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very.good to Ukraine.” Eager to placate Trump, Zelensky thanks him “for your great support in the area of defense.” “We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.” (The Javelin is an antitank missile.)

The very next words out of Trump’s mouth are: “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.” Quid, meet quo. Trump is explicitly tying U.S. military aid to Ukraine to Ukraine’s willingness “to do us a favor.” He then makes clear that the “us” he is referring to is not the United States of America. It is the Trump campaign. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/25/rough-transcript-is-devastating-how-could-trump-not-know-that/

6. Brian Klaas: Trump is pushing a fake scandal once again. Don’t buy it.

How is it possible that millions of Americans can believe in scandals that simply don’t exist?

Because of Donald Trump, Fox News, and the army of sycophants, bots, trolls and grifters that support Trump’s version of reality online, millions of Americans falsely believe that it was actually Joe Biden who did something dodgy in Ukraine. They can’t quite put their finger on it, perhaps, but something must have happened. After all, the president of the United States says so.

But there’s just one problem: That narrative is a lie. It’s not a false claim or misleading spin. It’s just a straight-up lie. The allegations against the former vice president are baseless. Nonetheless, Trump and his toadies have repeatedly and wrongly insinuated that Biden pressured a Ukrainian prosecutor to drop an investigation into Biden’s son, Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company at the time. Every aspect of that claim is not just wrong; it’s a total inversion of the truth.

First, there never was an investigation into Joe Biden or his son in Ukraine. It simply never happened. It’s a figment of Trump’s imagination, a fever dream that he hopes will distract from the reality of his all-too-real scandal — a scandal that threatens to destroy his presidency. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/25/trump-is-pushing-fake-scandal-once-again-dont-buy-it/.

7. Scott Martelle: Why is Trump so desperate to make California’s air more polluted?

President Trump huffed and puffed and now, finally, he’s getting on with his efforts to blow California’s house down.

Trump, who has a bizarre desire to increase air pollution in the United States, has for months threatened to withdraw California’s authority under the Clean Air Act to set its own limits for auto emissions.

And now word comes from Washington that he is indeed seeking to revoke the waiver that allows California to set its own tailpipe emissions standards for cars and light-duty trucks, as it has done for more than five decades.

His reason? He doesn’t really have one. It’s mostly out of pique. But since the president is in California today and Wednesday raising big bucks at political fundraisers, maybe he can try to explain this in person to people whose air quality has improved because of California’s use of that imperiled waiver.

Some of this is in keeping with Trump’s anti-regulatory impulse, but also with his animus to just about anything the Obama administration accomplished. Trump unveiled plans last year not to implement tougher national tailpipe standards the Obama administration had slated for 2025, but California — which has long worked to clean its smoggy skies — refused to go along. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-09-17/trump-california-auto-emissions-clean-air-act-waiver

8. Max Burns: Trump realized that on foreign policy, there are few constraints on his power — and it may be his undoing

Trump’s opportunistic, distraction-based foreign policy is more than just a national embarrassment. It threatens American national security. An explosive new whistleblower complaint alleges Trump made inappropriate promises to a foreign leader – accusations serious enough that the Intelligence Community Inspector General found them credible and of “urgent concern.”

Recent leaks suggest Trump attempted to use $400 million in military aid allocated by Congress to pressure the Ukrainian government into fabricating a scandal around Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. If true, this represents an unprecedented deployment of state power for personal gain. That Trump has filled his White House with acting and temporary officials willing to abandon their oath of office to protect the president should concern leaders from both parties.

Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire – a Trump loyalist – instigated a constitutional crisis by flatly refusing to provide any details on Trump’s conversation with the foreign leader. This destructive act bought Trump the distraction he craved, but at the cost of further weakening the institutional supports that keep American democracy in working order.

Matters of urgent national security concern should never be withheld from Congress, even if the individual involved is the President of the United States. Trump’s lumbering authoritarianism forced the Democrats to finally embrace their Constitutional powers this week. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had little choice after telling voters her caucus would be a bulwark between Trump and the subversion of our core national norms. https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-realized-that-on-foreign-policy-there-are-few-constraints-on-his-power-and-it-may-be-his-undoing/

9. Dan Balz: Pelosi’s impeachment decision sets up an epic constitutional battle — and a personal one

The impeachment inquiry launched by House Democrats on Tuesday can be cast as an epic battle between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and President Trump. More fundamentally, it is a constitutional clash that will help define the limits on presidential power, and the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches.

Pelosi and Trump have circled each other from the moment she retook the gavel after a surge of anti-Trump voters knocked House Republicans out of the majority in the 2018 midterms. The president learned almost immediately that the speaker was someone with a keen sense of strategy and the tenacity to go with it. He lost their first battle, over a government shutdown, and came out of it with a clearer understanding of his chief adversary.

That shutdown battle was child’s play compared with what Pelosi’s impeachment inquiry decision has touched off. After months of hesitation and after numerous House committees were stymied in their efforts to investigate the president, Pelosi took a step that barely a week ago seemed nearly unthinkable. That of course was before anyone knew much at all about the president’s effort to force Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

There is no turning back. So much now hinges on what happens with the inquiry, though given the makeup of the Senate and the requirement of a two-thirds majority, it remains highly unlikely that the president would ever be convicted in an impeachment trial. Nonetheless, as a result of the proceedings now beginning, Trump will either be out of office by January 2021 or he will have emerged victorious, reelected to a second term in large part because of what would then, predictably, be interpreted as a gamble by the speaker that went terribly wrong. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosis-impeachment-decision-sets-up-an-epic-constitutional-battle--and-a-personal-one/2019/09/25/97b38ea0-df88-11e9-be96-6adb81821e90_story.html

10. Renato Mariotti: Trump Didn’t Bribe Ukraine. It’s Actually Worse Than That.

What Trump is alleged to have done is not a garden variety crime; it’s worse. It involved misusing $250 million in aid appropriated by Congress for his benefit—the kind of gross misconduct that easily clears the bar of high crimes and misdemeanors set by the Constitution when impeaching a president. Which means the best way to hold Trump accountable for that misconduct isn’t a criminal trial; it’s for Congress to impeach him. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/21/trump-bribe-ukraine-228151

11. George T. Conway III and Neal Katyal: Trump has done plenty to warrant impeachment. But the Ukraine allegations are over the top

Among the most delicate choices the framers made in drafting the Constitution was how to deal with a president who puts himself above the law. To address that problem, they chose the mechanism of impeachment and removal from office. And they provided that this remedy could be used when a president commits “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

That last phrase — “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” — was a historical term of art, derived from impeachments in the British Parliament. When the framers put it into the Constitution, they didn’t discuss it much, because no doubt they knew what it meant. It meant, as Alexander Hamilton later phrased it, “the abuse or violation of some public trust.” 

Simply put, the framers viewed the president as a fiduciary, the government of the United States as a sacred trust and the people of the United States as the beneficiaries of that trust. Through the Constitution, the framers imposed upon the president the duty and obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” and made him swear an oath that he would fulfill that duty of faithful execution. They believed that a president would break his oath if he engaged in self-dealing — if he used his powers to put his own interests above the nation’s. That would be the paradigmatic case for impeachment.

That’s exactly what appears to be at issue today. A whistleblower in U.S. intelligence lodged a complaint with the intelligence community’s inspector general so alarming that he labeled it of “urgent concern” and alerted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Though the details remain secret, apparently this much can be gleaned: The complaint is against the president. It concerns a “promise” that the president made, in at least one phone call, with a foreign leader. And it involves Ukraine and possible interference with the next presidential election. The complaint is being brazenly suppressed by the Justice Department — in defiance of a whistleblower law that says, without exception, the complaint “shall” be turned over to Congress. 

It is high time for Congress to do its duty, in the manner the framers intended. Given how Trump seems ever bent on putting himself above the law, something like what might have happened between him and Ukraine — abusing presidential authority for personal benefit — was almost inevitable. Yet if that is what occurred, part of the responsibility lies with Congress, which has failed to act on the blatant obstruction that Mueller detailed months ago. 

Congressional procrastination has probably emboldened Trump, and it risks emboldening future presidents who might turn out to be of his sorry ilk. To borrow John Dean’s haunting Watergate-era metaphor once again, there is a cancer on the presidency, and cancers, if not removed, only grow. Congress bears the duty to use the tools provided by the Constitution to remove that cancer now, before it’s too late. As Elbridge Gerry put it at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, “A good magistrate will not fear [impeachments]. A bad one ought to be kept in fear of them.” By now, Congress should know which one Trump is. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-has-done-plenty-to-warrant-impeachment-but-the-ukraine-allegations-are-over-the-top/2019/09/20/51eff90c-dbf1-11e9-bfb1-849887369476_story.html

12. Robert F. Worth: The End of Saudi Arabia’s Illusion

The missiles that struck last weekend in Saudi Arabia did not just destroy oil tanks. They also dealt the final blow to a doctrine that has been fading for years: the belief that the United States maintains a security umbrella able to protect the oil-rich Persian Gulf states from their enemies — and, especially, from Iran.

President Trump’s miscalculations helped get us here. But the current Gulf crisis is not just about this administration and the pitfalls of its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. The United States has been disengaging from the Middle East since the catastrophe of the 2003 Iraq invasion. Now that shale has made America so much less dependent on the Middle East’s oil, it is hard to imagine any American president risking significant blood and treasure to defend Saudi Arabia.

For decades, the leaders of the Gulf seemed to believe their close ties with the United States (and the billions of dollars spent on American weapons) made them almost invulnerable. They regularly urged American diplomats and generals to get tougher with their Iranian neighbor or even to “cut off the head of the snake,” as Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah put it in 2008 in encouraging the United States to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. Saudi confidence was bolstered by memories of the 1991 Gulf war, when an American-led military coalition reversed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.

But the faith in American power always blinked away some inconvenient facts. Iran’s population and military strength dwarf those of the Gulf countries, and the United States is nearly 10,000 miles away. In any conceivable war, the Gulf’s cities would be among the first targets. And unlike Iran, those cities are intensely vulnerable: A single bomb could shatter the status of Dubai as a safe hub for trade, transport and tourism.

Now the nightmare appears to be coming true. On Saturday, several volleys of Iranian missiles eluded the Saudis’ expensive American-supplied defenses, neatly puncturing oil storage tanks and facilities at two of the kingdom’s most important sites and causing global oil prices to spike. The damage was limited, but its message was not: Iran could strike the Gulf’s economic lifeline at any time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/opinion/saudi-arabia-attack.html

13. Eric Lutz: “Ice Cold”: Trump Distances Himself From Netanyahu After Election

Benjamin Netanyahu is learning the hard way that Donald Trump is a fair-weather friend. The right-wing Israeli prime minister had been among the president’s few steadfast friends on the world stage; Trump, in turn, has long stood strong with Netanyahu. But after Bibi appeared to suffer a stinging loss in the Israeli elections this week, Trump did what he always does when his buds fall on tough times and can no longer benefit him personally: He distanced himself from his embattled friend, appearing to downplay a relationship that Netanyahu made central to his reelection pitch to voters.

Netanyahu, who may soon face corruption charges, is now looking at perhaps the greatest threat to his long-held power. And where is his good friend, Donald Trump, throughout all this? Watching the election closely, he said, but not exactly seeming like he’s rushing to Bibi’s corner. “Ice cold,” the Brookings Institution’s Tamara Cofman Wittes quipped of Trump’s comments. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/trump-distances-himself-from-netanyahu-after-election

14. Kenzie Bryant: Terrible News: Stephen Miller Reportedly Has a Human Girlfriend

No. No, no, no, no, no. Will these horrors never cease? Will we ever know a quiet night again, a time when we can slip away thoughtlessly into mild dreams? Or will we always be plagued by rumors, unknowable things that dance around the truth? Will we ever be free from the rumor that Stephen Miller has a girlfriend, that he’s sitting in the tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g someone who will kiss him back for reasons, surely? Surely there must be reasons.

Please, here, take my brain, the place where I store memories, like the time I learned that Stephen Miller has maybe had carnal relations once. I don’t want it anymore.

Miller is the forehead behind some of the Trump administration’s most cruel and unusual immigration policies to date. And so it’s a match made in hell: As spox for the DHS, Waldman ran interference on behalf of the department’s choice to engage in family separation. Miroff tweeted about the two dating on Thursday morning, and now it’s Thursday afternoon and the scourge of knowledge has not yet relented.

I suppose this is good news ultimately. It means Miller’s heart can feel something besides antipathy for other people. Though maybe that’s a big assumption too. We don’t know what their supposed relationship is like. https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/09/stephen-miller-dating-rumors

15. Washington Post Editorial: Trump’s outsourcing of the asylum process sets an un-American example to the world

IN ITS multipronged efforts to deter migrants from seeking asylum in the United States, the Trump administration has devised policies designed to outsource the problem, mainly to Mexico. Judging strictly by the numbers, that strategy has been effective in stanching the flow of refugees attempting to cross the southern border in flight from violence, oppression and economic hardship in Central America and elsewhere. But that apparent gain has come at a cost — to the safety and welfare of the migrants, who are preyed on in lawless Mexican border towns, and to the United States’ moral standing.

Collateral damage from the administration’s determination to turn back the northward flow of desperate people has fallen heavily on migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador forced to remain in Mexico under an administration policy adopted in January, and since expanded, as they await adjudication of their asylum claims. The program bears the antiseptic-sounding name “Migrant Protection Protocols.” In fact, it affords asylum seekers precious little protection.

President Trump, who has proclaimed this country “full,” wants out of the United States’ traditional role as a haven for asylum seekers and refugees. In doing so, he might satisfy a political agenda, but he shifts a burden to neighbors far less capable of handling it; sets a dispiriting and — we would say — un-American example for other nations in the world; and, perhaps most harmfully, deprives the United States of the sort of people who have contributed enormously to the nation throughout its history. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-outsourcing-of-the-asylum-process-sets-an-un-american-example-to-the-world/2019/09/19/35e63124-d97e-11e9-ac63-3016711543fe_story.html

16. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt: Why Republicans Play Dirty

The greatest threat to our democracy today is a Republican Party that plays dirty to win.

The party’s abandonment of fair play was showcased spectacularly in 2016, when the United States Senate refused to allow President Barack Obama to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February. While technically constitutional, the act — in effect, stealing a court seat — hadn’t been tried since the 19th century. It would be bad enough on its own, but the Merrick Garland affair is part of a broader pattern.

Republicans across the country seem to have embraced an “any means necessary” strategy to preserve their power. After losing the governorship in North Carolina in 2016 and Wisconsin in 2018, Republicans used lame duck legislative sessions to push through a flurry of bills stripping power from incoming Democratic governors. Last year, when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down a Republican gerrymandering initiative, conservative legislators attempted to impeach the justices. And back in North Carolina, Republican legislators used a surprise vote last week on Sept. 11 to ram through an override of Gov. Roy Cooper’s budget veto — while most Democrats had been told no vote would be held. This is classic “constitutional hardball,” behavior that, while technically legal, uses the letter of the law to subvert its spirit.

Constitutional hardball has accelerated under the Trump administration. President Trump’s declaration of a “national emergency” to divert public money toward a border wall — openly flouting Congress, which voted against building a wall — is a clear example. And the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, manufactured by an earlier act of hardball, may uphold the constitutionality of the president’s autocratic behavior. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/opinion/republicans-democracy-play-dirty.html

17. Bess Levin: Trump: My Crimes Can’t Be Investigated While I’m President

As you may or may not have heard, Donald Trump refused to release his tax returns while running for president, claiming, falsely, that an audit prevented him from doing so but that the public would see them just as soon as he got the green light. Two years and 242 days after moving into the White House that, of course, has not happened. Instead, Trump has sicced his Treasury secretary, attorney general, and various personal lawyers on anyone attempting to get their hands on the information, in a manner suggesting the details within could make a person look quite bad. Typically, Trump’s attorneys have argued that such requests, like the ones from various House committees, constitute “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT” or supposedly lack “a legitimate legislative purpose.” On Thursday, though, they came up with a novel new argument: It’s illegal to investigate a sitting president for any crimes he may have committed.

Thursday’s lawsuit is just one of a handful of attempts by the president to keep his totally legit finances secret. He’s also sued to block House Democrats’ demands for his tax returns and is seeking a court order to stop Congress from obtaining his New York state returns, which a recently passed law allows them to do.

Additionally, his legal team is challenging California’s new requirement that any presidential candidate must release their tax returns to get on the primary ballot. And he’s appealing orders by federal judges in Washington and New York that would let three House committees receive his records from Mazars, Capital One Financial, and Deutsche Bank, the latter of which reportedly has seen at least some of his taxes.

It’s almost as though someone has got something to hide! https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/donald-trump-tax-returns-lawsuit

18. Bess Levin: Rudy Giuliani Is Like A Bomb That Won’t Stop Exploding

Former New York City mayor__Rudy Giuliani__ should have been sent to a farm upstate where ex-mayors have room to run around in the fresh air a long time ago. Instead, he freelances as a lawyer to President Donald Trump, a gig that isn’t going too well if the events of last night—wherein he admitted to asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden hours after it was reported that the president had allegedly made an alarming “promise” to that same country’s leader—are any indication.

Appearing on CNN Thursday night, Giuliani initially insisted to Chris Cuomo that he’d never asked Ukrainian officials to investigate the former vice president (and current Democratic presidential front-runner). Then, 30 seconds later, he said that “of course” he did such a thing, like it was no big deal. “You just said you didn’t!” an astonished Cuomo replied, as Giuliani attempted to explain that there is apparently a difference between Ukraine investigating Biden and “look[ing] into allegations that related to my client, which tangentially involved Joe Biden in a massive bribery scheme.”

Rudy denying he asked Ukraine to investigate Biden followed by Rudy admitting he asked Ukraine to investigate Biden within 30 seconds of each other in this clip is just incredible to watch — Aaron Rupar@atrupar

After the clip went viral, Giuliani took to twitter in an attempt to clear things up, effectively stating that it’s completely fine and not a total abuse of power for a president to pressure a foreign leader to investigate a political rival:

A President telling a Pres-elect of a well known corrupt country he better investigate corruption that affects US is doing his job. Maybe if Obama did that the Biden Family wouldn’t have bilked millions from Ukraine and billions from China; being covered up by a Corrupt Media. — Rudy Giuliani @RudyGiuliani

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Giuliani has gone on TV and effectively admitted the president is guilty of something in a five-car pileup of an attempt to defend him. In January, in the heat of the Mueller investigation, the former mayor said on Meet the Press that discussions about Trump Tower Moscow were “active” throughout the 2016 election. That same month, he told CNN that if there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia “it happened a long time ago,” later stating that Trump himself never colluded with Russia but perhaps campaign aides did. And who could forget the time he insisted it was totally standard practice for a lawyer to take it upon himself to secretly pay off a porn star to keep quiet about an alleged affair with a client, which (1) turned out not to be the case when it came to Trump, who was fully apprised of the Stormy Daniels payments made by Michael Cohen and (2) may have contributed to Giuliani’s then-law firm deciding it was time to part ways. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/rudy-giuliani-trump-biden-ukraine

19. Jason Easley: GOP Hypocrites Go Silent As Trump’s Trade War Bailout Costs Twice As Much As Obama Auto Bailout

The Trump farmer bailout is now twice as big as the Obama auto bailout and the same Republicans who criticized Obama are saying nothing to Trump.

Bloomberg reported: China hawks in Trump’s administration want Beijing to quit subsidizing strategic industries, yet that hasn’t deterred the White House from doling out billions in aid to American farmers, who have become more dependent on government money than they’ve been in years. At $28 billion so far, the farm rescue is more than twice as expensive as the 2009 bailout of Detroit’s Big Three automakers, which cost taxpayers $12 billion. And farmers expect the money to keep flowing: In an August survey by Purdue University and the CME Group, 58% said they anticipate another round of trade aid next year.

Republicans howled that the auto bailout was a government takeover of the auto industry and socialism, but the auto bailout turned a profit, created an additional 341,000 jobs on top of the jobs saved during the Great Recession, and led to a boom in auto sales that lasted until Trump.

Donald Trump’s trade war is a violation of conservative free-market principles, but the very hypocrites who howled socialist at Obama haven’t said a peep about Trump.

Obama’s auto bailout saved an industry during the Great Recession, while Trump’s farmer bailout is causing a farming depression. https://www.politicususa.com/2019/09/20/cost-trump-farmer-bailout.html

20.  Viola Gienger: Trump and Giuliani’s Quest for Fake Ukraine “Dirt” on Biden: An Explainer

Trump and Giuliani allege, contrary to evidence, that Biden improperly pressured the Ukrainian government in 2016 to fire then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in the midst of a corruption investigation of one of Ukraine’s biggest gas companies, Burisma Group. Biden’s youngest son, Hunter, was serving on the company’s board at the time.

But the prosecutor, in fact, was the target of pressure by Ukrainian anti-corruption advocates and a host of international supporters of Ukraine, who argued he should be fired for failing to pursue major cases of corruption. And it was the widely known and publicly espoused position of the U.S. government, across a half dozen agencies, that the prosecutor’s ouster was among crucial anti-corruption measures that the Ukrainian government needed to take to move forward economically and politically. As President Barack Obama’s point man on Ukraine, Biden dutifully relayed those messages at every opportunity.

Yet Trump and Giuliani have turned that real-life scenario on its head, falsely alleging that Biden sought to corruptly influence a Ukrainian prosecutor’s decisions in his son’s favor. The Trump camp’s steady volley of tweets, interviews and supportive articles by pro-Trump authors echoes the persistent Republican accusations against Hillary Clinton related to the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on Benghazi, Libya, when she was Secretary of State.

At the very least, because of the complexity of the issue and the again-distant locale, the hammering on the Bidens’ roles in Ukraine could at least serve up enough disinformation to confuse American voters about what really is true. The anti-Biden campaign may be designed in no small part to make voters believe that, as disinformation expert Peter Pomerantsev has said of current-day Russian propaganda, “nothing is true and everything is possible.”

So, after years of U.S. support to strengthen Ukraine as a potential democratic example in the former Soviet Union, that country finally has a president and a majority of members in Parliament who seem serious about tackling corruption. Is the U.S. president really sending a signal now that he will turn his back on Ukraine because its new leaders refuse an American invitation to corruption? https://www.justsecurity.org/66101/trump-and-giulianis-quest-for-fake-ukraine-dirt-on-biden-an-explainer/

21. Nicholas Kristof: Trump and Election Interference, Whistle-Blower Edition

Trump has been credibly accused of using the presidency to enrich himself (summits at Trump properties!), to protect himself from law enforcement (appeals to James Comey, offers of pardons!) and to punish perceived adversaries (Amazon, CNN, Andrew McCabe). Now he may have harnessed the power of the presidency to gain political advantage.

This is bombshell layered upon bombshell. On top of the initial accusation by the whistle-blower is the refusal of the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, to obey federal law and relay the matter to Congress within one week.

When historians review Trump’s term, I think they will see combat between an out-of-control president and various U.S. institutions, such as the courts, the Civil Service, law enforcement, the intelligence community, the House and the news media, which generally have done a credible job of standing up for laws and norms and against one-man rule. The only institution Trump has co-opted completely is the Republican Party in Congress.

Today’s struggle over the whistle-blower may be remembered as a central battle in that epic confrontation. The core question is whether our president can get away with weaponizing the federal government to punish political opponents, or whether legal constraints and congressional oversight can keep him in line.

This is a test of our political system, and the next few months will determine whether we pass. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/21/opinion/sunday/whistle-blower-trump-ukraine.html

22. Ashley Parker: Ukraine, if you’re listening . . . How Trump tries to quell controversies by saying the quiet part out loud

“Much as he did three years ago — when he asked Ukraine, if you’re listening . . .

Much as he did three years ago — when he asked Russia to hack the emails of his Democratic rival — President Trump on Friday seemed to make a similar request of Ukraine, all but urging the Eastern European nation to investigate Joe Biden, his potential Democratic opponent.

“It doesn’t matter what I discussed, but I will say this — somebody ought to look into Joe Biden,” Trump said Friday in the Oval Office, swatting away questions about whether he had improperly attempted to pressure Ukraine to dig up dirt on the former vice president.

It was 2016 all over again, when Trump looked directly into the camera and exhorted a geopolitical foe to steal the emails of Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, and release them to the public. 

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said in July of that year, referring to the trove of messages that Clinton deleted from a private email server. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” 

 So yes, if Ukraine happened to be listening Friday, the president’s desired outcome could not have been more clear. 

For Trump, controversial public disclosures have became almost routine, with the president saying the potentially scandalous part aloud. It is a form of shamelessness worn as a badge of protection — on the implicit theory that the president’s alleged offenses can’t be that serious if he commits them in full public view.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ukraine-if-youre-listening--how-trump-tries-to-quell-controversies-by-saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud/2019/09/20/8e68aad0-dbc1-11e9-adff-79254db7f766_story.html

23. Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Rachael Bade: Trump’s Ukraine call reveals a president convinced of his own invincibility

The push by Trump and his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to influence the newly elected Ukrainian leader reveals a president convinced of his own invincibility — apparently willing and even eager to wield the vast powers of the United States to taint a political foe and confident that no one could hold him back.

“We haven’t seen anything like this in my lifetime,” said William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution who graduated from college just before Watergate. “He appears to be daring the rest of the political system to stop him — and if it doesn’t, he’ll go further.”

The effort — which came as the Trump administration was withholding financial and military support from Ukraine to help the small democracy protect itself against Russian aggression — illustrates Trump’s expansive view of executive power and what appears to be a cavalier attitude about legal limits on his conduct.

While Mueller’s investigation did not place Trump directly in the Russian conspiracy to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and boost Trump’s candidacy, the president was an active participant in the Ukrainian episode, which was brought to light by an intelligence official’s whistleblower complaint.

Trump has said he did nothing improper in his calls with Zelensky or any other foreign leader, and on Saturday he derided Democrats and the media for what he dubbed “the Ukraine Witch Hunt.”

But the scrutiny surrounding the phone call has brought fresh peril to Trump’s presidency and could turbocharge the drive by some House Democrats to open impeachment proceedings. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-ukraine-call-reveals-a-president-convinced-of-his-own-invincibility/2019/09/21/1a56466c-dc6a-11e9-ac63-3016711543fe_story.html

24. Daniel Drezner: The strategic case for impeaching President Trump

“What to do? Zero-sum game theory offers some useful advice.

In zero-sum games, one actor’s gain is always the other actor’s loss. The optimal strategy to pursue in this instance is called “minimax.” A minimax strategy anticipates that the other actor will adopt the most punishing strategy possible — and, in response to that strategy, takes the course of action that minimizes the damage.

What does this have to do with Trump and the Democrats in Congress? It is safe to assume that Trump will continue to abuse the powers of the presidency as long as he is in office. The Ukraine example shows that he is not above using presidential authority for partisan gain. Furthermore, when he is not doing those things, he is pursuing other policies that harm the U.S. economy and the national interest.

Would impeachment stop any of that? No, not directly. What it would do, however, is distract the heck out of him. To say that Trump can be easily distracted would be an understatement — his short attention span occupies a healthy portion of the #ToddlerinChief thread. Sharpigate exemplified how Trump obsessed about a small thing so much that it became a more scandalous thing.

Let me be very clear: I am suggesting that the House impeach Trump for two reasons: 1. He has committed high crimes and misdemeanors; and 2. Impeachment will distract Trump from further harming the national interest.

Still, Trump is not going to stop doing what he is doing, unless he gets distracted by something else. In a zero-sum world, it is far better to have him obsess about his political survival rather than, say, nuking a hurricane. In the zero-sum political world that Trump has made, impeaching him is the best possible response strategy to his abuses of power. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/09/23/strategic-case-impeaching-donald-trump/

25. Maureen Dowd: Trump Walks a Crooked Mile

Everyone here is keyed up for the Big One.

The One that’s going to finally bring Donald Trump down.

As soon as the news broke Wednesday night in The Washington Post that a whistle-blower had accused the president of making some sort of nefarious “promise” during a call to a foreign leader, the hive erupted.

Democrats haven’t been able to get Trump on paying off a porn star to protect his campaign. They haven’t been able to get him on being a Russian agent. They haven’t been able to get him on obstruction of justice.

But maybe this time. Maybe this was the One where all would decide that they wanted impeachment, that the president’s behavior was so outrageous that they couldn’t imagine this sleazy business guy sitting in the Oval Office playing a tinpot dictator in a tinfoil hat for another second.

So is this the Big One? We don’t know because so much has come before. But if it is? Now that would be Big. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/21/opinion/sunday/trump-whistle-blower-corruption.html

26.  Charles M. Blow: Trump, Unrestrained

Donald Trump has discovered that the pillars of this temple we call the American democracy are weak. He’s growing ever more confident that he has the strength to topple them.

The phone call Donald Trump is reported to have had with the president of Ukraine in which he demanded that Ukraine investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter, if true, is a shocking example of a president who feels invincible and unrestrained.

There is no evidence that then-Vice President Biden or his son did anything illegal. There is, however, clear evidence that Trump has broken the law — both in the conspiracies to pay off women who allege sexual affairs with him and in obstructing justice over Robert

But that doesn’t matter to this man. For him, “real” is relative. The only truth, the only thing that matters, is what you can make people believe. Facts are not absolute; they have alternatives.

This is the chief executive officer of the country, and he is single-handedly mutilating it.

The Constitution is not sufficient restraint on a lawless president, in part, I assume, because it was inconceivable that such a dishonest man would rise to the office.

Trump has tested the slim guard rails erected to constrain presidential power and behavior, and he has shown them wanting, frail and assailable. He can thwart, resist and make a mockery of attempts to hold him accountable and to coerce acceptable behavior because Washington is filled with more survivalist politicians than with selfless patriots. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/22/opinion/trump-ukraine.html

27. Tim Miller: Truth, Lies, and the Nonsense Trump-Biden-Ukraine False Equivalency

Donald Trump’s great innovation as a political actor is that he discovered how to weaponize the media against the country. He realized that the media’s traditional attempt to present balance in its political coverage meant that he could do just about anything, and reporters would feel compelled to contact some source to explain how, if you squint, it might be normal and bookers would put someone on air to defend him. The idea of “balance” required the media to always present a dissenting view of Trump, no matter how egregiously wrong his actions might be.

He also realized that the media’s imperative to run down every story meant that he could always distract them from one scandal by creating another. It’s the political version of chaff: One scandal can end your presidency. A hundred of them is just white noise.

But we don’t have to continue living this cycle. We can stop playing along with it. What happened in  Ukraine, after-all, is not a game. Sometimes things are cut and dry. Sometimes one man is fighting corruption and the other guy is corrupting all of us, on purpose.

This is one of those times. https://thebulwark.com/truth-lies-and-the-nonsense-trump-biden-ukraine-false-equivalency/