For critics, this was the week when Trump finally destroyed America’s reputation abroad, committed the most flagrant ethics violation yet to benefit his own business, lost another cabinet member, got outplayed by his old foe Nancy Pelosi yet again and wrote the most embarrassingly puerile letter to a foreign leader in living memory.
The context was two self-inflicted wounds of conflict in the Middle East and the impeachment inquiry at home. The situation in northern Syria was rapidly deteriorating after Trump ordered the withdrawal of the US military, widely seen as a callous abandonment of Kurdish allies and the worst foreign policy blunder since the Iraq war. Washington remained gripped by House Democrats’ investigation, sparked by Trump pressuring Ukraine to investigate a political rival.
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Fiona Hill, former top Russia adviser at the White House, [...] reportedly told the inquiry her boss, the then national security adviser, John Bolton, compared efforts to strong-arm Ukraine to a “drug deal” and described Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as “a hand grenade who’s going to blow everyone up”.
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[Trump] continued to defend his treatment of the Kurds, who sought help from Russia-backed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
“Syria may have some help with Russia, and that’s fine,” Trump insisted. “It’s a lot of sand. They’ve got a lot of sand over there. So there’s a lot of sand that they can play with.”
The Kurds, he said several times, were “not angels”.
Trump also wrote a letter for the ages to the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “Let’s work out a good deal!” it said. “You don’t want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don’t want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy – and I will … Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool! I will call you later.”
At first, no one could quite believe it was real. But it was. Commentators likened it to the writing of a juvenile and suggesting Trump’s grasp of foreign policy was barely more sophisticated.
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Trump sat with congressional leaders in the cabinet room and derided his former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, as “the world’s most overrated general”. [...] But it was a photograph of [Nancy Pelosi], a lone woman, standing and rebuking him that will endure.
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On Thursday, the nightmarish torrent continued as the vice-president, Mike Pence, and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, brokered a five-day ceasefire in Turkey which was criticised for giving Erdoğan everything he wanted. Trump, meanwhile, cut the ribbon at the opening of a new Louis Vuitton factory in Alvarado, describing the French luxury brand as “a name I know very well. It cost me a lot of money over the years.”
Later, speaking at a campaign rally in Dallas, he likened Turkey and the Kurds to children scrapping on a playground.
“It was unconventional what I did,” he boasted, using a word that defines his political career. “Sometimes you have to let them fight a little while. Sometimes you have to let them fight like two kids. Then you pull them apart.”
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At the White House, there was a rare press briefing. Astonishingly, the acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney confessed there was indeed a quid pro quo with Ukraine, telling reporters the administration held up aid to pressure the country to investigate whether it had helped Democrats in 2016. “I have news for everybody: get over it,” he said, brazenly driving a coach and horses through Trump’s own denials.
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Mulvaney retracted his statement a couple of hours later and tried to blame the media. But his sincerity seemed doubtful when the Trump re-election campaign began selling t-shirts emblazoned with the legend: “Get over it.” The “o” even had Trump’s peculiar blond hair.
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Mulvaney had another surprise. He announced that Trump would host next year’s G7 summit at his own Doral resort in Florida. Following widespread anger and disbelief, the president made a rare and humiliating climbdown on Saturday night, tweeting that the decision had been reversed.
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All this … and Rick Perry too. The energy secretary, who had been drawn into the Ukraine scandal, told Trump that he would quit the cabinet – crowning a thousand days of turmoil that have seen record White House turnover.
By then, Fiona Hill’s testimony felt like a lifetime ago and Washington was crying for mercy and a rest. But there were reports from Syria of Turkish mortar fire breaking the ceasefire. Trump said he had just spoken to Erdoğan and “there’s a ceasefire, or a pause, or whatever you want to call it”.
The coming weeks are likely to bring only more turmoil on the road to impeachment, to be followed by a trial in the Senate as Trump tests his conception of absolute authority to destruction.
Guardian
North Dakota, I hope you're listening.Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his staff held a tutorial of sorts for the Senate Republican caucus to prepare for a potential Trump impeachment trial. A senator at the meeting said they predicted the trial could occur between the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.
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McConnell and his staff walked the Republican caucus through the mechanics of a possible trial during their weekly luncheon on Wednesday, complete with a slideshow and a slew of questions from the senators in attendance.
The talk focused on how the senators could become jurors in the coming months.
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Many lawmakers have indicated they would like to conclude the impeachment process before voters start casting ballots in the presidential primary process, which starts in Iowa on Feb. 3.
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Under rule requirements, Chief Justice John Roberts would chair the proceedings, which would convene six days out every week — excluding Sundays — at around 12:30 p.m. each day. McConnell and his staff told the caucus the trial could last as long as six to eight weeks, a senator in attendance said.
There will also be other limitations that need to be met, McConnell noted with reporters.
"Senators will not be allowed to speak, which will be good therapy for a number of them," he joked.
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It could also bring productivity on other legislation virtually to a halt, [Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.] noted. There are hopes that major legislation, like efforts to fund the government before a Nov. 21 shutdown threat, will be resolved before the trial potentially arrives at the Senate.
However, the Senate could do nonimpeachment work under a consent vote.
"There was probably as much talk as anything about what our lives could be like through that trial," Cramer said.
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Cramer doesn't see the current evidence as sufficient grounds for an impeachable offense for a high crime or misdemeanor.
"We are talking about removal of a president; the bar should to be high," Cramer said. "It's got to look more calculating ... it's got to be a lot more egregious than what they are talking about — this phone call. That was just a couple of guys having a conversation."
KVCR News
Give him all the rope he needs to hang himself.House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not making any promises on her end.
“I have no idea,” Pelosi flatly told reporters at her weekly press conference Thursday. “The timeline will depend on the truth-line, and that’s what we’re looking for.”
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“That would be my hope,” Pelosi’s No. 2 deputy, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, told reporters on Wednesday when asked if he sees the inquiry being wrapped up before the new year.
“Sooner rather than later. I hope no longer than months, and not a lot of months,” Hoyer said, adding, “I want to emphasize, this is no rush to judgment.”
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Other Democrats have pushed a timeline that would have lawmakers draft articles of impeachment by Thanksgiving and sending them to the full House by December for an end-of-year vote. For now, though, Democrats are holding the line. The official stance coming from leadership and the committees of jurisdiction on the impeachment inquiry is they are still in fact-finding mode.
“We’re just not there yet,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the House Oversight Committee, told reporters on Wednesday. “We really are still in the throes of the fact investigation.”
Vox
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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