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Not at all, but hey, you should tell that to the the nonpartisan group that made the claim. White collar crime is nothing but paper pushing.

Is that why he pulled troops out of Germany, Afghanistan, believed Putin over U.S. intelligence, and invited the Taliban to Camp David? Really? President Trump is more liberal on foreign policy than Sec. Clinton.

Again, 4th National Security Advisor within 4 years, excluding acting NSAs.

Have you ever heard of "spoilers"? You know the stuff that actors have to sign in their NDA?

Him talking with his free will *is* his advertising. Once he is forced to talk, then he has no other choice but to provide spoilers. That's no longer advertising.

At the direction of the president. You were acting like it was absurd to question the person that directed the crime. If I only read the headline, I wouldn't have been able to provide you the part that you are ignoring.


Funny how everyone's opinion on foreign policy just magically changes.

If a position (normally held for four years) is filled with four different people less than four years, then the problem is most likely not with the people being replaced........

Literally the entire point. There is no benefit for him to testify!!! It would only benefit the White House if they *knew* he didn't have anything damaging. In that sense, it would make the most sense to have him speak. So, either they knew he had something or didn't want to take the chance that he had something, which implies that there is something to be had.

The "goods" were released before the book came out. The difference is that he is not legally bound for strictly telling the truth in a book or interview. Him saying the same thing in the trial has an entirely different meaning. He could go to jail.

In contrast to the "Obama is drone striking the whole Middle East!! OMG!!!


Pick one.

"I broke something, then kinda fixed it. VICTORY!!!"

Let me put the whole paragraph back in, since you apparently didn't bother to read it all. And I'll even bold the important part:



He didn't direct them in what exact words to write down on a response form though. There's literally a list of "valid reasons for a hold", and for some reason the nameless guy in OBM who filled out a form put something not on the list down. Which is a "violation of the law". A very very technical violation of the law. When they further asked the White House for clarification they received a response that was on the list. Which is why, for everyone not wearing a tinfoil hat, this is a non-issue. It's a freaking clerical error. Stop trying to make this more than it really is.




Um. I've explained this several times, and apparently, it's not sinking in. The impeachment trial was not ever about a serious attempt to remove Trump from office. Let me repeat that: The impeachment trial was not ever about a serious attempt to remove Trump from office..

Got it? I just want you to understand where I (and the GOP, and the White House, and pretty much everyone not in the kool-aid drinking liberal echo chamber) stand on this. The only point for the entire thing was to put a parade of people who would bash Trump on national television to try to damage him politically so they could give their party a chance of winning the 2020 election. That's it. That's why they did it. Nothing more.

Even if you don't agree with that assessment, can you at least accept that this is how the trial was viewed by conservatives, and certainly by the White House and Trump? So in their minds, allowing Bolton to "testify", just allows the same liberal media sources to oooh and ahhh about a "close advisor and member of Trump's inner circle" joining in the parade of people bashing Trump. That's it. That's why the Dems wanted him to testify, and that's why the White House did not.



There were no "goods". That's the point.

Uhhhhh. There was exactly 0% expectation that the GOP Senate would remove the President, so your point is moot. Having their "key witness" look silly would only empower the administration. You're literally arguing that the GOP didn't want the Democrats to look bad. Yea, that's it. The same party that is helping Kanye West get on the ballots doesn't have the time to play silly games with the Democrats. Sure...

There have always been goods. The goalpost just keeps changing whenever the standard of the "smoking gun" is moved. The GOP is on the record saying his actions were wrong, but do not rise to the level of impeachment. You're literally in more denial than elected politicians. That's pretty low.

LOL Is that the metric we're using now? All hail Obama then for his tremendous success in dealing with North Korea! Meanwhile, North Korea has openly increased its nuclear weapon production and its response to Trump's lame agreement was to end its testing moratoria. The UN said a few days ago that N. Korea can now most likely put miniaturized nuclear warheads on their ballistic missiles.


And yet Iran has ramped up their enrichment and nuclear program since 2017. So you just listed a bunch of stuff that didn't work since the whole point was to slow or halt those programs. I don't think you know what a "foreign policy success" is.


You mean the laughable telegraphed attack where we warned Russia and Syria to move their good stuff off the airbase before we "attacked"? Oh, yeah, that totally changed the course of events. Oh, wait... no, actually it did nothing to slow Russian expansion into the region. If anything, it emboldened them because they knew Trump was a pushover on this and wouldn't dare risk upsetting Putin or his regional puppet allies


Hasn't done anything to slow Taliban attacks in Afghanistan. The Taliban has secured a 5:1 prisoner swap and still continues waves of attacks despite Pompeo's Peace In Our Time agreement that the Taliban has reaped the fruits of and ignored the actual requirements. Have you read the agreement? It's only three pages long so it shouldn't take long but the gist of it is "You pinky-swear not to beat up the United States and, in return, we'll remove all our soldiers and related staff, leave our military bases and give you 5,000 soldiers. Also, we make no requirements for you to cede your captured territory and make no provisions to keep you from seizing Kabul once we're gone." Man, that Trump is just the master of driving hard bargains, huh?


No, I could talk about the failures of the trade war at great length if you wanted. Cost of steel in construction has gone up as US purchasers are forced to pay increased tariff costs and shoulder the burden resulting in a down-stream effect of other trades losing money because if you spent an extra 15% of your budget on steel, that's 15% less to spend on windows or floor trim or an amenities deck. That's not even the steel guys making more money, it's just money lost to the government so they can funnel it to welfare payments to farmers. Success! Take that, China!

Which of these was your argument for a foreign policy success? I'm legitimately curious.

Edited, Aug 6th 2020 7:30am by Jophiel

Yea, it's not like we have Americans stationed there.

All this is irrelevant. The GOP run Senate should have let any and all witnesses testify and they let NOBODY testify.

Any excuse as to why not is a vote for dictatorship. But, coming from you; no surprise.

gbaji is of the mind that if there are no questions asked (GOP Senate not allowing them) then there is no matter as to the facts of the case.

Uh. Then why not just link the source instead of a google search?

That way I can read the question he's responding to and know the context. Geez. It's not that hard.

I'll come back to this later.



The part on page six where it clarifies the kinds of reasons a president may defer the payment (but not past the end of the fiscal year, which he did not do). One of those reasons is " to achieve savings made possible by or through changes in requirements or greater efficiency of operations". Huh. So looking in to getting other European nations to provide more aid to Ukraine so that the US doesn't have to foot so much of the cost is a "cost savings", right? Which is precisely what he said in the quote you provided. Get why this is relevant?

This is also consistent with both comments he made in the phone call to the Ukrainian president *and* past actions he's made himself, specifically with regard to NATO funding. He threatened to pull out funding of NATO if other nations did not meet their funding obligations. He also has no actual authority to do this, since Congress controls the purse strings there as well, right? Yet, by simply threatening this, he got other nations to start paying their fair share.

This is an established methodology by him with regards to foreign aid funding. It's consistent. It's reasonable to assume, therefore, that this was the actual reason for the deferral in this case as well, and not some crazy conspiracy theory that he was doing it to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden's son. Two things can happen at the same time without being connected.

He can also have multiple aligned reasons for doing something. In addition to the whole "can we figure out how to get other nations to contribute" issue, there's also the whole "make sure we're not handing out money that may be used against us" angle. Which is part of the GAO exceptions as well: "or as specifically provided by law". The law in this case has to do with anti-curruption laws in which the president is required to ensure that foreign aid money doesn't end up funding things it's not supposed to. Given he *also* talked about past corruption issues in Ukraine with the newly elected president, and got assurances from him that things were being cleaned up now that his party had taken control of the legislature as well (this happened during this whole process btw). This can also be legally allowed as the president wanting to wait until he got a chance to directly talk to the man to get a feel for things before opening up funding. Something that is also consistent with how Trump tends to operate.

So yeah. Let's ignore the two very consistent reasonable and legal reasons Trump had for doing what he did and leap instead to a totally crazy conspiracy theory instead.



While Fox is the largest cable news channel in terms of viewership, that's still tiny in terms of total population. Less thatn 1% of the population watches that channel. This trial was aired on standard TV channels all day long. That's where most people would watch it, and that's where the spin would occur. And that was overwhelmingly spun against Trump. Shocking.



Would that percentage chance have changed if the Senate had allowed every single witness the House Managers asked for to testify? If the answer is "no", then there's no reason to call those witnesses.

The facts of the case were not in doubt here. It was only as matter of whether you thought that what Trump did was sufficiently "wrong" to justify removal from office. No amount of testimony will change that opinion. All it would have done is put a parade of people in front of the TV viewers to bash Trump. That is why I keep saying it had nothing to do with changing the outcome of the trial, and everything to do with trying to change the outcome of the election.

Which is why the Senate GOP did not allow it.

Edited, Aug 22nd 2020 5:21pm by gbaji

The hive-mind. amirite?