As JJ talked about on Saturday, Moscow Mitch voted along with 42 other Republicans to acquit Trump, which was expected.  What wasn’t expected was that after the vote, he got up in front of national television and then excoriated Trump for his incitement of the crowd to insurrection and even said that he could be prosecuted by state and federal authorities.  He also said that it was unconstitutional for the Senate to try him, since he’s already out of office.  Never mind that history, precedent, and over 200 legal scholars disagreed, this was the tree he hid behind to excuse his immoral vote to acquit.

We also have to keep in mind that McConnell always plays the long game, always focused on his own position and power.  He was never going to vote to convict because doing so would start a loud mutiny and he’d be ridden out of his minority leader spot in a nanosecond.  Also, politics comes first; everything else comes second.  Everything.  McConnell’s strategy is to create a political dilemma for Biden.  McConnell always had control of the process here.  He now says it was unconstitutional to try Trump after he was out of office, but HE’S the one who refused to take the case before the election.  He created the problem he says in unfixable.  That’s classic McConnell.  Second, he says that the criminal justice system should prosecute Trump – and guess who’s shoulders that falls on?  None other than Biden, who has already nominated Merrick Garland as AG.  The moment Garland would dare move against Trump, McConnell would rush to the microphone to decry “criminalizing politics” and “Biden “politicizing the DOJ,” which, by the way, Trump had already done.

It’s the long game.  It’s always the long game.

Mitch McConnell signaled the end of the Trump presidency today by telling associates that he’s “pleased” that the Dems are impeaching Trump and that impeachment will make it easier to purge him from the party.  Said associates immediately leaked the comment to the press.  That’s McConnell’s way of communicating to Trump to pack his shit and get out. Clearly the money stream is drying up due to Trump’s attempted coup last week, and McConnell now sees him as a liability.  Folks, it’s over.

Looking into my Crystal Bourbon Bottle, I predict that Trump will be gone by Friday.  Republican resistance to the impeachment effort in the house is tepid at best, coming mostly from Drooler Caucus, and even McCarthy is backing away from Trump.  Having lost McConnell’s support Trump is toast.  Now it’s just a matter of how Trump leaves, and I predict he will try to resign rather than face a conviction and removal from the Senate.  The thing is, though, to purge Trump, they’ll have to convict, then vote again to disqualify him from holding any other federal offices.

“Turn out the lights, the party’s over…”

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.

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.

George Conway teamed up with Neal Katyal yesterday to opine on Trump’s latest outrage of holding up aid to Ukraine as inducement to dig dirt on Joe Biden.  Katyal was solicitor general in the Obama administration.  It’s become obvious now that the whistleblower case that Bill Barr is covering up is a blatant incident of Trump violating the Constitution and US law to induce a foreign power to assist him in defeating a domestic political opponent.  Another weekend must-read, this one is powerful.

As we roll into the new year, a few observations:

As of this moment, we have no Attorney General, no White House Chief of Staff, no Interior Secretary, no Director of the EPA, the Secretary of Education is a religious nut trying to destroy education, the VP is a religious nut who believes women should be subjugated, the Secretary of State is a political hack helping cover up the murder of a Saudi journalist, the Director of National Security wants to bomb Iran, 18 countries have no US ambassador (including Australia), half of the positions in the State Department remain unfilled, the stock market is down almost 3,000 points, China now owns Pacific rim trade, the US is the only major power to NOT be in the Paris accords, the entire world is either terrified or laughing at us, and the president has shut down the government for the last 10 days over his 5th century solution to a 21st century problem. Notice I didn’t mention anything about everyone convicted, in jail, or on the way to jail, or Trump’s current average of telling over 500 lies per month.

This is great? Are we tired of winning yet?

I’m just tired.

Happy New Year

#myattorneygotarrested #pleasetellmethisisanightmare #ITMFA #gotemoluments? #trumpresign