UPDATED: Mr. Trump Goes To War

Last night CTH ran with two Trump tweets that are clear signs that Trump is enraged at the attempts of Neocon backed GOPe senators (think: McConnell, Graham, Lee, Thune, Delecto, among others) to sabotage his program and to try to use Impeachment Theater to strongarm Trump into backing down. For reasons I've already gone over in recent days, I believe this is essentially a bluff. Last nights tweets, among other indicators, appear to signal that Trump believes so, too, and is prepared to call that bluff and go to war:

The WSJ this morning headlined a further indicator:

Trump Lifts Curbs on Turkey

President says Russia-brokered cease-fire in Syria will hold, defying bipartisan criticism.

As policy statements go, that's pretty in your face: Take your Senate resolutions and House resolutions and shove 'em!

Trump appears to understand full well that both the GOPe and the Dems are between a rock and a hard place. Impeachment Theater has not got either party where they wanted to be. Daniel Henninger covers this from the Dem perspective:

Anyone of any political stripe knows that the most psychologically distressed Democrats  have wanted to impeach this guy, somehow just get rid of him, from day one.

Ditto the GOPe.

Within a day of the Mueller report's release, dismissing the Russian-collusion story lines, the opposition pivoted to the obstruction--of-justice narrative. 

But it looks like they've pivoted in a full 360, as witness Pelosi's "all roads lead to Putin" meme. That's a strong indication that the weak Russia Hoax card is still the highest card in their hand.

NYT: The Deep State Exists ...

... and it really is trying to take President Trump out. So, we were right all along, after years of being disparaged as conspiracy theorists for even suggesting that the Deep State was a thing.

Steve Sailer picked this up: NYT: Well, Actually, the Deep State IS Trying to Overthrow the Elected President, But That's a Good Thing!

Trump’s War on the ‘Deep State’ Turns Against Him

The impeachment inquiry is in some ways the culmination of a battle between the president and the government institutions he distrusted and disparaged.

By Peter Baker, Lara Jakes, Julian E. Barnes, Sharon LaFraniere and Edward Wong
Oct. 23, 2019, 6:42 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — Nameless, faceless and voiceless, the C.I.A. officer who first triggered the greatest threat to President Trump’s tenure in office seemed to be practically the embodiment of the “deep state” that the president has long accused of trying to take him down.

But over the last three weeks, the deep state has emerged from the shadows in the form of real live government officials, past and present, who have defied a White House attempt to block cooperation with House impeachment investigators and provided evidence that largely backs up the still-anonymous whistle-blower.

Sailer adds:

And just wait until the public realizes that this brouhaha is about the President delaying foreign aid payments to Ukraine. There’s nothing more sacred in the eyes of American voters than our national duty to pay foreign aid.

UPDATED: Impeachment And 2020

Don Surber has an excellent blog today in which he reviews a WaPo article that reports on the rising anxiety among Dems over their lack of any viable candidates to run against Trump. Surber assesses the Dem field of candidates for president. His conclusion? He quotes a big Dem moneyman: 

"John Coale, a major donor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, was more blunt. 'They don’t have anybody who can win the general,' he said."

Surber then cites the "unease" of Dem party leaders and comments in terms that reflect the themes of recent posts here and comes up with his own unique take for why impeachment isn't a serious strategy:

The Post reported, "In conversations with 17 state and national party leaders, nearly all expressed some level of unease with where the field stands and a deepening concern that, even as Trump suffers through one of the darkest phases of his presidency, the leading presidential contenders would struggle mightily in a one-on-one contest with him. For all of his challenges, Trump commands a gigantic operation that has vacuumed up unprecedented sums of money, an unparalleled megaphone to lure in voters and a lock on most of the Republican Party. Democrats face the possibility of a long primary fight that could cleave the party along ideological and generational lines and leave the nominee campaigning against an incumbent whom Democrats see as simultaneously weak and hard to beat."

Dems 55, GOPers 69

Nope, not a college basketball score. Per today's WSJ, those are the percentages of respondents to a recent Rasmussen poll who agreed with the following statement:

It is time for us to get out of these ridiculous endless wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home.

While not identified as such by the pollster, those words were spoken by President Donald J. Trump. 55 per cent of identified Democrats can agree with Trump on a major and--if one were to judge from the MSM and Congressional resolutions--"controversial" component of his foreign policy. One which he has held to from the the early days of his campaign. In reality, judging from the polling results, this is not a controversial position at all. It reflects Mainstream American opinion.

Questions: Could results like this signify, as commenter Cassander has speculated, that a major political realignment in America could be on the horizon? How long can the DC political Establishment--Dem and GOP alike--continue to buck the growing popular consensus? How long can they kowtow to the Deep State status quo, without risking serious backlash? To what other issues does this divide extend? Trump appears to be the only candidate who has identified some of these divides in the American political landscape and has the wit to take advantage of them to forge a new and, seemingly, enduring coalition--again, judging from GOP respondents, Trump is wildly popular. Does the Establishment really dare impeach?

New Developments Re Papadopoulos And Mifsud?

Fox News is reporting tonight--Durham's probe into possible FBI misconduct expanded based on new evidence:

U.S. Attorney John Durham's investigation into the origins of the FBI's 2016 Russia probe has expanded based on new evidence uncovered during a recent trip to Rome with Attorney General Bill Barr, sources told Fox News on Tuesday. 

The sources said Durham was "very interested" to question former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, an anti-Trump critic who recently dismissed the idea. 

The two Obama administration officials were at the helm when the unverified and largely discredited Steele dossier, written by British ex-spy Christopher Steele and funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, was used to justify a secret surveillance warrant against former Trump adviser Carter Page. 

In Italy, Barr reportedly told embassy officials he "needed a conference room to meet high-level Italian security agents where he could be sure no one was listening in." 

A source in the Italian Ministry of Justice told The Daily Beast earlier this month that Barr and Durham were played a taped deposition made by Joseph Mifsud, the professor who allegedly told ex-Trump aide George Papadopoulos that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. Mifsud reportedly was explaining to authorities in the deposition why people would want to harm him, and why he needed police protection.

Papadopoulos has suggested he was connected with Mifsud as part of a setup orchestrated by intelligence agencies.

What would this misconduct--specific to the FBI--be, and what connection would it have with Mifsud? This is speculation, but my guess is that what Barr and Durham learned to their satisfaction in Rome was that the FBI knew Papadopoulos had no Russian connection but that the FBI targeted him anyway--essentially to pressure him into providing false or misleading testimony.

Follow the link for the interview with George Papadopoulos.

Separately, Fox is also reporting that

Additionally, documents obtained by Fox News confirmed that Australia proactively offered support for Barr's review, and seemingly contradicted reporting that Trump was pressuring other countries to assist. 

... 

"If the rumors are true that IG Horowitz’s report and findings in Durham’s review will blast the conduct of the FBI’s Russia investigation, it will give Trump a lot of ammo to support his argument that he was unjustly targeted then and is being unjustly targeted now," a House GOP source told Fox News on Tuesday. "It will justify Trump’s warnings about the Deep State acting to hobble his presidency."

All of this is looking like a powerful counterattack to the Dem's absurd "all roads lead to Putin" narrative. As absurd as Hillary's "everyone I don't like is a Russian asset" line of attack.

Have Barr/Durham Flipped A Very Important Witness?

CTH is reporting on a DoJ announcement--Major Obama/Clinton Fundraiser and Donor Pleads Guilty as Foreign Agent and Contributing Illegal Campaign Contributions:

(Via DOJ) Federal prosecutors today filed a criminal case charging Imaad Shah Zuberi, a Southern California campaign fundraiser, with falsifying records to conceal his work as a foreign agent while lobbying high-level U.S. government officials. The criminal charges allege that Zuberi engaged in lobbying efforts that earned him millions of dollars, most of which was pilfered from his clients, and Zuberi has agreed to plead guilty to those charges at a later date, pursuant to a plea agreement.

Plead guilty at a later date? Ya mean, after he finishes cooperating with prosecutors? Yeah, I think that's what that means. How big is that? This big:

But it gets potentially even bigger--sundance:

Here’s an additional alarming part. The DOJ and FBI were investigating Mr. Zuberi since 2014 and 2015, but for some reason the Obama administration never brought charges.  One could argue Zuberi was just participating in a financial process that was business as usual for politicians in the swamp. 

However, while the lack of charges against Zuberi, perhaps related to the contributions the Obama and Clinton teams were gaining, allowed Zuberi to continue his malicious effort; after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, Mr. Zuberi turned his influence efforts toward the incoming Trump administration:

What are the odds the lack of DOJ/FBI prosecution was part of an intentional design to let sketchy characters interact with incoming administration officials?

Sundance thinks this is "alarming." I'm not so sure. I wonder whether a case is being built around the FBI/DoJ targeting Trump with this guy ... but without any adequate predication for this investigation. Big deal, as Barr would say. Because that's what it would be: an investigation, and this would have been an attempt to set Trump up on some sort of influence peddling charge. Therefore his continuing cooperation would be part of the Barr/Durham investigation, or a spinoff from it.

Follow the links for more details. I will tell you this. The guy making the announcement is Assistant Attorney General of National Security John C. Demers. He clerked for Scalia. He's bound to be a sharp guy, and I'm guessing from his background that he's not headhunting for the Deep State.

My speculation. On my mental health day.

Converging Impeachment Strategies?

Who wants to impeach President Trump, and why? No sooner had I pointed out how threadbare was Pelosi's "non-fact sheet" and noted that, upon issuance of the counter factual screed, the Dems had admitted that impeachment isn't coming in the near term, than new theories on impeachment popped up. Let's review what's being said and see if there could be a convergence going on. It's a given that Trump is yanking multiple Establishment chains--hard!--but we need to look at what's going on from the standpoint of impeachment to evaluate it all.

First of all, we know for sure that the most vociferous--loudest in public--proponents of impeachment are the Progressives: broadly Cultural Marxist radicals. They see that Trump has empowered what I will call Cultural Conservatives, and so they are desperate to reverse the 2016 election.

The Trump coalition of Cultural Conservatives goes beyond religious "Social" Conservatives to embrace even non-religious people who are dismayed at the Progressive dismantling of broadly traditional American culture and values. Many of these Cultural Conservatives are former Dems, who have been marginalized in that party.

Since impeachment must originate in the House, it's Pelosi who bears the burden of threading the needle with regard to all the competing interests. She needs to allow Impeachment Theater to continue in order to appease her radicals, which now form the Dem base, yet if it gets too out of hand she risks permanent minority status. In a sense, the Ukraine Hoax works particularly well for Pelosi's purposes because it doesn't raise social or cultural issues in the way that the Kavanaugh nomination, for example, did. That means that Impeachment Theater can be conducted on seemingly technical legal grounds without directly alienating the non-radical voters the Dems as a party desperately need.

We all know that, and that's pretty much what we've been discussing. However, with the development of Trump's Syria policy, the issue of impeachment has put pressure on the GOP, as well. The overwhelming GOP repudiation of President Trump gave Pelosi much needed cover and breathing space, and the pushback against Trump in the Senate has come from GOPers like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. In turn, conservative pundits like Tucker Carlson and Rush Limbaugh have drawn attention to Graham's utter failure to conduct meaningful investigation of the Russia Hoax--as he had promised. At the same time Senator Burr is ginning up hearings on the Ukraine Hoax. What's going on here? Isn't this aid and comfort to the enemy?

Can The Democrat Party Survive?

Some of you may have seen Matt Taibbi's latest. I like Don Surber's intro to the highlights of Taibbi's piece:

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone has tried to save liberalism from liberals, but to no avail. They keep being cashews and pistachios to President Donald John Trump's very sane genius. 

Having warned them not to pursue the Russian collusion hoax, he is now trying to stop them from calling everyone they don't like Russian assets. 

Taibbi wrote, "Hillary Clinton is nuts. She’s also not far from the Democratic Party mainstream, which has been pushing the same line for years. 

"Less than a week before Clinton’s outburst, the New York Times — once a symbol of stodgy, hyper-cautious reporting — ran a feature called, 'What, Exactly, is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?' The piece speculated about the 'suspicious activity' surrounding Gabbard’s campaign, using quotes from the neoconservative think-tank, the Alliance For Securing Democracy, to speculate about Gabbard’s Russian support. 

"This was the second such article the Times had written. An August piece, “Tulsi Gabbard thinks we’re doomed,“ hit nearly all the same talking points, quoting Clint Watts, an ex-spook from the same think-tank, calling Gabbard 'the Kremlin’s preferred Democrat' and a 'useful agent of influence.' The Times article echoed earlier pieces by the Daily Beast and NBC.com that said many of the same things." 

Perhaps Democrats are othering Gabbard -- a Sanders socialist -- to punish her for an absence of fealty to Hillary in 2016. She is as anti-life, anti-capitalism,and anti-individual rights as any of them. 

More likely they are laying the foundation for spying on her. Obama's McCarthyism against Donald Trump (and likely earlier opponents) did not end with him.

However, Zerohedge republished a blog that is actually rather more serious than Taibbi, although covering similar territory. The direction he goes shares some commonality with Surber's jibe regarding Dem spying--the Globalist collusion of the DC political establishment and the Intelligence Community.

Renee Parsons asks the interesting but quite serious question: Will The Democratic Party Exist After 2020 Election? Here's an extended excerpt:

Fake Impeachment, Real Delay?

I'll be taking a partial mental health day. Or I thought I would, but couldn't resist this for starters. David Marcus at The Federalist:

According to multiple news outlets on Monday, House Democrats have conceded that they are very unlikely to conclude their impeachment inquiry and vote on articles by Thanksgiving, their original preferred timeline. They cited scheduling difficulties and new evidence of potential wrong doing by the White House as main reasons for the delay. 

Democrats now say that they hope to be ready for a vote by Christmas, but waiting that long to resolve the matter in the House and send it over to the Senate is rife with problems, which was why Democrats wanted it to be wrapped up by Thanksgiving in the first place. If articles of impeachment were passed near Christmas, the Senate would be unable to begin a trial until inside of one month before the Iowa caucus on Feb, 3rd. 

With 5 of the top Democratic contenders serving currently in the Senate, an impeachment trial could badly gum up the works in the Democratic primary. 

According to the New York Times, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries addressed the delay by saying, “Just the facts, baby. If we tell that story with simplicity and repetition, the American people will understand why the president must be held accountable. If we don’t then there is great uncertainty, and in that vacuum Donald Trump may find himself escaping accountability again.”

Three problems with this Impeachment Theater.

First: As I addressed yesterday, and contrary to what Hakeem Jeffries is saying, Democrats are very much afraid of allowing the real facts to get out--which is why Pelosi had to release her falsified version of "Trump's own words", which were not actually his words. That's a clue! Pelosi's Outrageous Fake Narrative Of Impeachment.

As I Suspected

The NYT did a poll on impeachment and came up with some interesting results--results that fit in with what my suspicions have been:

Voters in the states likeliest to decide the 2020 presidential election support the impeachment inquiry that House Democrats began last month, but a majority still opposes impeaching President Trump and removing him from office, according to a New York Times/Siena College survey.

In the six closest states carried by the president in 2016, registered voters support the impeachment inquiry by a five-point margin, 50 percent to 45 percent. The same voters oppose impeaching Mr. Trump and removing him from office, 53 percent to 43 percent.

How to figure that? Are these people totally schizo? Actually, no.

For starters, of course, you'd want to how the poll questions were framed, and the NYT isn't telling us that. However, you can get an idea of what the questions may have like from this sentence further down in the article:

acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, acknowledged that aid to Ukraine was conditioned on an investigation of Democrats. (He later retracted those comments).

See how fair they're being? After presenting a false version of what Mulvaney said, they add that Mulvaney retracted comments that they say he made but that, in reality, he never did make.

From that it's reasonable to suspect that the poll question might have run pretty much along these lines:

Pelosi's Outrageous Fake Narrative Of Impeachment

OK, The Hill has it: Pelosi's 'fact sheet' on Trump impeachment. Here's the lead in by The Hill:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) office on Monday released a "fact sheet" detailing allegations against President Trump amid House Democrats' ongoing impeachment inquiry. 

“President Trump has betrayed his oath of office, betrayed our national security and betrayed the integrity of our elections for his own personal political gain,” the document argues. 

It goes on to list what Pelosi's office calls proof of a "pressure campaign" and "cover up" by Trump related to Ukraine. The sheet includes quotes from Trump and the anonymous [spy] ...

So, this isn't serious--in fact, it's an outrage. What it is is a fraud perpetrated on the public.

The Hill rightly puts "fact sheet" in quotes because the sheet or screed is not factual in any real world sense. The second paragraph, the charge for impeachment, is actually the tired old Jerry Nadler scam. This scam script was written out as soon as Trump took the oath of office--in fact, Maggie Hemingway overheard Nadler outlining it to a friend. It was written before any "facts" were known. Anyway, if the Dems had actual facts to support the allegations presented in this BS narrative, why has there been no vote to impeach?

Here's why. What follows is the beginning of the "fact sheet"--really a non-factual narrative put together to attempt to influence the public discussion:

THE SHAKEDOWN 

On September 25, the White House released a record of President Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, which paints a damning picture of Trump abusing his offce by pressing a foreign government to interfere in our 2020 elections.  

President Trump has betrayed his oath of office, betrayed our national security and betrayed the integrity of our elections for his own personal political gain.

IN PRESIDENT TRUMP'S OWN WORDS: 

“I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine…. 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.”  

“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.”  

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to and out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.”

“I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to have Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it. I’m sure you will figure it out.”

Now, what Pelosi presents bears the same relation to Trump's actual words as a presentation titled "IN THE NYT'S OWN WORDS" would if I were to take a copy of the NYT and select paragraphs from four separate pages and string them together as if each paragraph came from one connected passage. Note that there are no ellipses setting off the paragraphs to show that the quotes are actually taken out of context, which makes this presentation not just a misrepresentation but an outright fake--as if it were an audiotape that had been edited and then presented as correct and true.

Thus, the key part, in which Trump is presented as asking for a "favor" with regard to Biden and his son:

“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.”

There should be an ellipsis here to signify a gap in the quotation. 

“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to and out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.”

in fact should read like this:

"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. 

"I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation."

As I said, that's not mere misrepresentation--it's outright falsification. As such, if in the wildly improbable circumstance that such a charge were voted out of the House, Trump's attorney's would be strongly advised to present a motion to the Chief Justice (who would preside in the Senate) to dismiss the charge based on its patent falsity. It would be a fraud on the Senate--presenting, in actual fact, a falsified document.

Therefore this is clearly not serious and is presented by Pelosi only to stoke the left wing loon base.

On an only slightly more serious level, I suspect the real target here is not so much Trump, as AG Bill Barr. Note how Barr is presented as acting in concert with Giuliani and both are presented as acting to investigate the Bidens. That's another, and very serious, falsification of the actual text of the document. The point of it is to portray Barr as engaged in a political witchhunt rather than an investigation with a proper criminal predication. In other words, just as we've seen in the barely controlled hysteria of the media accounts since we first heard of the Durham investigation's "expanded timeline", what we're seeing here is evidence that the Left is spinning out of control in its alarm over Barr's investigation.

That's good news.

Impeachment Theater And The GOPe

We've all known, I think, that the NeverTrump movement within the Republican Establishment went beyond mere rhetorical handwringing. During the 2016 campaign there were outright efforts to sabotage the Trump campaign. After the campaign, however, we also know that there was collusion with the Russia Hoax efforts. Disgraced former Speaker Paul Ryan--a key member of the Gang Of Eight--was key to that effort. For example, President Trump recently explained Ryan's obstruction of House investigations into the Russia Hoax while Republicans still had the majority:

President Trump: We have great, great relationships with the people in the Rupublican Party. But they don’t fight dirty. As an example with subpoenas. You take a look at Paul Ryan when he was Speaker. He wouldn’t give em! I’m not even knocking him for that. He wouldn’t give em. He thought it was inappropriate. Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, all of the guys wanted, Gaetz, all of them. Matt Gaetz. I could name 25 people. These are incredible people. They wanted subpoenas to investigate all of the corruption that they found. Horrible, horrible corruption. Paul Ryan would say, “Well, wait a minute, slow down. Let’s come back next week.” They would come back, they wouldn’t get it. She hands them out like their cookies!

Later, in the runup to the 2018 Midterm elections, Ryan appears to have deliberately sabotaged Republican efforts and to have helped lose the House to the Dems. The NYT, How the House Fell: Republican Chaos and Democratic Focus, notes:

While he promised to keep raising money for fellow Republicans, Mr. Ryan’s contributions to the party would steadily decline; in the last fund-raising quarter of the campaign, his political committee transferred a paltry $1.4 million to the N.R.C.C., less than some first-time Democratic candidates raised for themselves.

I've long believed that at least some GOPe senators played into that perfidious game. My reasoning wasn't based on inside information but on the simple belief that the Russia Hoax could not have gone as far as it did without institutional support within key Senate committees (and bear in mind that the Majority leader doesn't have the degree of control in the senate that a Speaker has in the House).

Yesterday, regarding the Senate, I noted: