Only the beginning
Paul Waldman on Rudy’s junket:
There are some news stories so jaw-dropping that you have to read them two or three times to make sure you’re not hallucinating. So it is with a story in the New York Times in which Rudolph W. Giuliani announces to the world that he is going to Ukraine to pressure that country’s government to use its official resources to assist in President Trump’s reelection effort — by mounting an investigation he hopes will produce dirt on Joe Biden.
Yes, Trump is trying to collude with a foreign government in an attempt to aid his campaign by creating negative stories about a potential opponent. Again.
Well, it worked the first time, so why wouldn’t they do it again? Apart from laws, rules, norms, customs, ethics, morality, scruples, conscience, what possible reason could there be?
This is like a crew of bank robbers stopping on their way into the bank to hold a news conference to announce that they’re going to hold the customers at gunpoint, tie up the tellers, blow the door to the safe, grab the money, then escape through the back entrance where their getaway car is waiting. Any questions?
It’s like that but with the addition that the majority of the cops belong to the political party that is pro-bank robbers.
I’ve argued that Trump is going to mobilize the resources of the federal government to destroy his eventual opponent. Trump has already told Sean Hannity that Attorney General William P. Barr is looking into what he called “incredible” charges involving Ukraine and Hillary Clinton, no doubt at his suggestion. This is only the beginning of what Trump is going to pull, and there’s every reason to think that he feels utterly unrestrained by law or ethics.
Like the fact that he tells us so every day, often in a raucous shout.
Mueller’s report refrained from concluding that the Trump-Russia cooperation rose to the level of a criminal conspiracy chiefly because there was no actual agreement between them; rather, it was a tacit acceptance that each had complementary goals and so worked to aid each other’s success. Trump, via Giuliani, is now taking that final incriminating step.
Also, I found this interview with Napolitano interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzyEi4TtIrA
Rudy’s trip is off.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/11/rudy-giuliani-trump-ukraine
I saw a headline to that effect. Too much hostile attention, Roods?
But at least he accidentally acknowledged that a person can be an enemy of Trump without necessarily being an enemy of the nation.
Holms, that was a rather ironic statement by Rudy, considering that the natural state of affairs is for the friends of Trump to be the nation’s enemies.