John Bolton’s tell-all book was leaked yesterday (at least the part about Trump’s extortion of Ukraine) by someone, likely WH staff, and it says exactly what you think it does.  How did the WH get a copy? A transcript of the book had been provided to the WH on December 30, to review for classified information.  According to the NY Times, Bolton confirms that Trump told him personally that he was going to withhold military aid to Ukraine until Zelensky announced investigations of Joe Biden and his son Hunter.   The account apparently runs dozens of pages, describing not only Trump’s role, but also Giuliani, Mulvaney, Pompeo, and others describes events around Trump’s extortion plan from the Spring of 2019 up until his departure in September.  Of course, Trump lied via Twitter last night that he didn’t discuss Ukraine with Bolton.  Right. Trump NEVER talked about his Ukraine plan with his national security advisor.  That’s believable.

This should ratchet up pressure to allow witnesses in the impeachment trial, but it won’t and you can bet that Cornyn and Cruz will lead the way off the cliff.

Remember when Trump kept repeating the lie that Barack Obama was going to start a war with Iran to get re-elected in 2012?  Here it is:

Later, when he decided to run for the office, Trump released continuous Twitter salvos of all kinds of lies and taunts, but the Iran theme was a common one.

One thing we’ve learned from Trump (and other Republicans, BTW) is that when he accuses someone of doing something vile, he’s doing that very thing.  Now, with his polls in the tank and still going down, Trump is so desperate that he’ll try anything to get re-elected and stay out of jail for a while longer.  As we’ve discussed before, Trump is even trying to get impeached so he can cast himself as a “victim” of the big, bad, Democrats.  Since that’s not working, his next stunt is doing exactly what he accused Obama of doing – starting a war with Iran.  What’s really scary is that he’s got Iran hater, John Bolton, continually whispering in his ear achieve his ultimate dream of bombing the crap out of Iran.

Trump’s already moved a carrier battle group and Air Force bombers to the Middle East to “counter Iran’s threat”, and now, Bolton is pushing for deploying 120,000 US troops to the Middle East.  The drumbeats of war for politics are now being heard, even as Pompeo and Bolton whip up fears of Iran, just in time for the 2020 election.  The only real threat we have is allowing Trump another 4 years in the WH.