In a conference call with House Republicans yesterday, Trump characteristically reasserted he’s been “perfect” in all things Ukraine, but then threw Rick Perry, of all Trumpists, under the bus saying that the Zelensky call was HIS idea.  Nevermind that all of the text messages between State Department diplomats about the call and the extortion of Zelensky all point to Rudy Giuliani, Perry is apparently the next victim to be thrown under the Trump bus.  Surely, I’m not the only one to figure out that Perry was set up as the patsy to protect Giuliani, who set the whole thing up.  In May, Mike Pence suddenly couldn’t go to Zelensky’s inauguration, so Perry was tapped to represent the US government for the event.  There was no plausible explanation for this move and no one had tagged Perry with having to do anything with the growing scandal until the last 48 hours, and it’s pretty apparent that Trump has pinned the whole thing on him even though there is zero evidence that Perry even knew what was going on.  Over the last couple of days, word has leaked out that he’ll be stepping down at the end of this year.  Now we know why, and I predict it will come a lot sooner than that.

This is classic gangland style character assassination.  Don’t get me wrong – Rick Perry is a dumbass and a shameless suck up, and he deserves everything he’s going to get here.  He hitched his wagon to Trump, the Reverse King Midas; everything he touches dies, and now it’s Rick Perry’s career.

Just moments ago, Trump brazenly asked China to open an investigation of the Bidens for supposed corruption.  That’s right, he’s just opened another front in the impeachment inquiry that started last week caused by his call to Ukranian president Zelensky as him to did dirt on the Bidens.  The corruption is breathtaking, and it’s clear that Trump truly believes that he can violate any law and smear any person with impunity simply because he is president.  This is beyond Nixon.  Even though Nixon also believed that by definition US presidents can’t commit crimes he clearly had some modicum of shame and when the reality of an actual removal vote being taken, he resigned.  Trump has no shame and has convinced himself that he is truly above the law and can essentially do anything he wants to cheat his way into another term.  If he’s willing to do that, who’s to say that he would actually leave office if defeated, or even at the end of a second term?

We’re now beyond the tipping point and Trump MUST be removed from office with great haste.  That’s going to require invertebrates in the Senate, including our own John Cornyn and Ted Cruz to change their spots from cowards to courageous.  And having witnessed both of them will to permanently damage their own legacies to support this criminal, that is by no means a certainty.

This morning at a press conference in Rome, Mike Pompeo admitted that he HAD been on the call when Trump extorted Ukraine’s president Zelensky to get dirt on Joe Biden and his son.  Mike Pompeo has now officially disqualified himself as the US Secretary of State and should immediately resign.  It’s also time for him to comply with all subpoenas from the Congress.  To be clear – Mike Pompeo has been intentionally misleading the public and the press about this call, acting like he didn’t know anything about it when, in fact, he knew everything about it.  He allowed the President of the United States use his position of power for personal gain which is an impeachable offense.

Pompeo must go now.

Pompeo is in Italy with discredited Sebastion Gorka doing God-knows-what.  Bill Barr has been jetting around the world and talking to international leaders.  Rudy Giuliani has been engaged with the Ukrainians for months.  Now we know Pompeo lied on national television on Sunday feigning ignorance of the Zelensky call when, in fact, he was ON THE GODDAM call with Trump.

WTF is going on with all this globe trotting and mysterious meetings with world leaders?  Here’s what I think – Trump’s number one order from Putin was to get the international sanctions lifted from Russia that were imposed after it invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014.  Trump floated lifting sanctions early on, after he infested the WH in 2017, but was slapped down pretty definitively.  Since then, his pandering to Putin is well documented, including trying to tweet Russia back into the G7 to make it the G8 again.  So far, that hasn’t worked either.

Trump’s goal, since dumping Jeff Sessions and gaining Bill Barr as his attorney general personal defender, has been to discredit the investigations that concluded Russia helped get him elected with their hacking and social media meddling.  He’s so obsessed with this mission that he’s ignored the vast majority of his duties as president, focusing only on watching Fox Noise, tweeting insults at enemies in a continuous stream, and trying to help Russia.  His primary effort has been to get Ukraine to dig dirt on Biden AND promoting the ridiculous theory that it wasn’t Russian meddling, but actually Ukraine doing the hacking of the DNC. It’s stupid, but Trump and Giuliani are pushing it hard, since they’ve got nothing else.

Trump sees the end coming, especially as his numbers for reelection have sunk even lower and the impeachment inquiry started heating up.  Lord only knows what kompromat Putin has on Trump, but you know the list is long, including money laundering and financial fraud.  Trump is clearly a Russian asset, and he’s desperately trying to get Russian sanctions lifted before he’s ousted, one way or the other.  The only way he can do that (in his fevered mind) is to discredit the Mueller report and the conclusions of every major intelligence agency in the developed world.  It’s simply not going to happen, but Trump in his addled state is trying to make that happen, and he doesn’t give a good Goddam who or what he burns down trying to accomplish this goal.

Call me crazy, call me conspiratorial, but nothing else, at least to me, explains this nuclear powered three ring circus Trump is orchestrating.

File under What a Coingkidink, Trump’s State Department has been notifying former Clinton aids that emails sent to Hillary years ago have be RETROACTIVELY CLASSIFIED and that the investigation into her private email server has been reopened.  Of course, this new very serious “investigation” has nothing to do with Trump’s woes, I’m sure.  Not passing the straight faced test, a senior State Department official said, “This has nothing to do with who is in the White House.  This is about the time it took to go through millions of emails, which is about 3½ years.” Uh-huh. Right.

This feels like yet another abuse of power by Trump’s goon squad, whipped back up to give him more manure to throw against the wall on Fox Noise.

So it starts.  Two nights ago the right-wingers were all aflutter, excitedly posting that everyone should be sure to watch Hannity because he was going to drop the bomb on Biden and his son, Hunter, even predicting that Biden’s campaign was “cooked” and over.  What was the “bomb”?  The same old warmed over bullshit that Hannity always peddles.  Take whatever Trump is doing, turn it upside down, change the names and label it a Democratic scandal.  Never mind that the only sane person at Fox Noise, Shephard Smith, inoculated against their viewers earlier in the day telling his viewers that “this is not about Biden, it’s about the phone call.” How correct he was.

When news broke last week that there was a whistleblower complaint against Trump about this conduct in a call with Ukrainian president Zelensky, Trump hitman Rudy Giuliani went into full meltdown, shouting about some fictional corruption of Joe Biden.  That narrative the fell apart when news broke that Trump had ordered the freeze of some $400 million in military aid to Ukraine to put maximum pressure on Zelensky to force him to investigate the Bidens.  So, to be clear, Trump used the full power of the US government to damage his US political opponent.  When caught, his cronies have desperately tried to flip the story around that Trump wasn’t really trying to get Ukraine to open a fake investigation on Biden, but really trying to get Ukraine to clean up its own corruption (which coincidently happened to suddenly include Biden and his son Hunter).  It’s nonsense, but as we’ve discussed, totally predictable.

Then Nancy Pelosi happened.  Yesterday afternoon, in a serious speech to the nation, Pelosi announced the beginning of a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump.  The shift in politics was seismic.  To pile on Trump, word then got out that he had called Pelosi yesterday morning wanting to “work something out” about the whistleblower report that she’s demanding.  It’s reported that she told him that his people should follow the law.  That call to Pelosi was the tell that Trump has figured out that he’s screwed the pooch.  He’s in real trouble and that fact has finally penetrated the narcissistic fog within which he hides.  You can tell he knows just based on his speech which he barely got through and the remarks he made to the press prior to the speech.  He’s told so many lies that he can’t keep them straight, and is picking up the pace of lying trying to worm out of this one.  To wit:

1. Earlier this week, Trump admitted that he talked to Zelensky about Biden, but his first excuse was that it was to get Ukraine to crack down on corruption (supposedly Biden’s), and said that was why he was withholding the $400 million in military aid.  Yesterday he changed his story, saying he withheld it funding because European countries weren’t paying their fair share.
2. Trump is lying about European countries not paying.  The EU has already provided $16.5 billion in economic support of Ukraine after Russia’s attempt to annex the country.  Additionally, NATO has an active program in place to support Ukraine’s defense efforts.
3. He then said he’s leading in the polls.  That’s a blatant lie since he actually trailed Biden in recent polls by about 15 points nationally and trails Biden in the swing states.  He’s even trailing Warren nationally, even though he’s leading her in some swing states.
4. Then he said that since he’s leading in the polls, the only way “they” can get him is impeachment, which has “never happened before”.  See Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, and Andrew Johnson.
5. Lastly, Trump said that he put no pressure on Zelensky about Biden, but that Ukraine should clean up its corruption that Biden had supposedly engaged in.  He continues to lie about this even though the prosecutor in Ukraine that replace ousted Viktor Shokin (who actually was corrupt) publicly stated that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe Biden or his son Hunter.

For this tsunami of lies, the Washington Post awarded Trump 4 Pinocchios this morning.  Predictably, the Noise Machine is desperately trying to distract from yesterday’s disaster by whipping up “the Democrats did this,” “Joe Biden did that,” “Trump’s been investigated since he was born,” blah, blah, blah, but you can tell that the entire machine is on its heels, at least at this moment.

Will the system work and end this long national nightmare?  I don’t know yet, but you can feel the seismic shift in  our politics.  I continue to believe that as the cost of Trump goes ever higher, the Repubs will jettison him and throw him to the wolves.  We’re far from that yet, but you can see his iron grip starting to weaken.  Ousting him can’t happen too soon.