First Trump Broke The Presidency For Putin, Now It's America & The Mideast

ELIZABETH GRIFFIN / ESQUIRE

My gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me. ~ DONALD TRUMP 

If utter stupidity and venality were impeachable offenses, Donald Trump would be long gone.  But they are not, and now the president -- in his latest but by far most consequential foreign-policy misadventure -- has managed the extraordinary feat of abandoning the Kurds, America's steadfast ally in Iraq and in fighting the Islamic State, who have now fallen into the welcoming embrace of Russia, which in turn has given new life to ISIS and meant strategic victories for Syria and Iran and left vulnerable U.S. tactical nuclear weapons at an air base in Turkey because the always problematic U.S.-Turkey alliance is now in tatters. 

Trump's latest self-inflicted wound, and make no mistake that this is entirely his own doing as he ignored months of warnings of the calamity to come from the few remaining foreign-policy advisers that he has not driven away, grew out of a so-called "off-script moment" on the Oval Office blower with one of his favorite strongmen, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.  

Off-script is code for the president, as usual, being not just unprepared -- Fox News is always more important than policy briefing books or listening to his generals in the Situation Room -- but being unaware of the consequences of rolling over for Erdogan.  Trump, defying logic and yet again going with his sizable gut, assured Erdogan that he would remove the small U.S. troop contingent in northern Syria that was the only buffer between disaster and a tenuous peace.    

But the biggest winner in this rat fuck is Vladimir Putin, Trump's favorite strongman, who has done so much to help him break the presidency, and now break a vulnerable America and the always fragile Middle East.    

It is easy to suggest that Trump is following Putin's orders through some kind of a secret backchannel.  Easy but wrong.   It is simply a matter of Trump being a dim bulb, and an unhinged one at that, and Putin being a master who can play Trump the chump to Russia's strategic benefit, most recently in Syria and also is the powerful if invisible hand if you dig down through a layer or two of the Ukraine scandal crap, corruption and crime that has Trump in the impeachment hot seat.   

As Julie Davis put it in the Daily Beast: 

Trump is moving down Putin's wish list, fulfilling the Kremlin's aims at a rapid pace.  He is chipping away at U.S. sanctions against Russia, deepening America's internal divisions on the basis of race, faith, sexual orientation and political affiliation, vocally undermining confidence in our elections, intelligence agencies and institutions, all the while empowering our foreign adversaries and undermining NATO alliances.  Trump's claims that Ukraine -- not Russia -- is somehow responsible for the 2016 election interference fall right in line with conspiracy theories the Kremlin has been propagating for years."

That Trump's usually unquestioning Republican allies in Congress are outraged over his latest betrayal of an ally is of little consequence because they still stand with him -- or rather in fear of him -- on impeachment. 

Meanwhile, officials were reviewing plans to evacuate 50 tactical nuclear weapons the U.S. has long stored at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, about 250 miles from the Syrian border, that are now essentially Erdogan's hostages. 

Trump's response to the Kurdish betrayal and the consequent slaughter at Turkish hands greenlit by the White House, was as predictable as the sun rising from the east over the Washington swamp: Blame everyone but himself and offer contradictory and nonsensical explanations, the richest of which is that ISIS already had been defeated, so what's the big deal? 

That lie, if you're counting, is one of the 13,400 false and misleading claims that Trump has made as his presidency slouches toward 1,000 days, and is only slightly more egregious than his explanation that the troop withdrawal is a result of his commitment to terminating "endless wars," which happened to be uttered on the day he sent 2,000 more troops to Saudi Arabia, where he has graciously allowed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to escape accountability for the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and refused to cut off support for the Saudis' genocidal war in Yemen. 

Having threatened to "totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey" after Republican rancor over his withdrawal order grew, Trump has now increased Turkish steel tariffs by half.  Ouch!  One can only hope that wrist-slap doesn't hurt business at his Trump Towers hotel in Istanbul.    

But back to Putin. 

Trump has taken the Russian president's side on every issue of consequence involving the two nations.  Resisting implementation of tougher sanctions.  Firing Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovich because she opposed the corruption on which Trump and Rudy Giuliani dined.  Holding up $400 million in badly needed aid for Ukraine to fight Russian aggression.  Diverting $700 million from defense projects for allies to fund construction of his border wall.  Insisting that Russia be readmitted to the Group of Seven after its expulsion for invading Ukraine.  Questioning whether the U.S. would live up to its mutual defense obligations under the NATO charter.  Supporting Brexit.   

And the biggie: All but publicly supporting the Russian interference that got him elected in the first place while unashamedly saying he was unconcerned about that attack on the bedrock of American democracy because the U.S. does the same thing.

Richard Codor's Cartoon du Jour

MORE HERE.

The Man Behind The Curtain Is Revealed. Are We Now Closer To Impeaching Him?

MEDIUM.COM

It was the week that the man behind the curtain finally was revealed for being what we've long known him to be -- a petty tyrant who spews threats against his perceived enemies, large and small, but ultimately is unable to harm him.   And who do we have to thank for this game changer?  Not James Comey or Robert Mueller.  Not Nancy Pelosi or Adam Schiff.  Not Saturday Night Live or Steven Colbert's The Late Show.  Not The New York Times or The Washington Post.  It was a bespectacled 61-year-old career diplomat from Connecticut with the demeanor of a high school librarian. 

In a few hours last Friday, Marie Yovanovitch ripped away the curtain, walking determinedly into the Capitol through the front doors and not sneaking in through the basement, to tell three House committees pursuing the impeachment of Donald Trump that despite her exemplary 14 years as the U.S. ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and most recently Ukraine, that the president had fired her at Rudy Giuliani's behest because her anti-corruption crusading was getting in the way of their little scheme to extort the leader of a foreign government into digging up non-existent dirt on Joe Biden and his son. 

"Today we see the State Department attacked and hollowed out from within," Yovanovich said in a scathing denunciation.  "Bad actors [in Ukraine and elsewhere] will see how easy it is to use fiction and innuendo to manipulate our system.  The only interests that will be served are those of our strategic adversaries, like Russia."  

Trump went on the attack, but there was nothing he could do beyond spewing harsh and suddenly very empty words.  It was all smoke and mirrors.  No throwing Yovanovich in irons and sending her off to a federal detention facility.   

The First Amendment -- and America -- had won, and the best the imploding Chosen One could come up with was an empty promise to sue Pelosi and Schiff because they were hurting the feelings of a narcissist whose seeming self confidence is betrayed by the knowledge that the one thing he craves more than anything else -- respect -- is well beyond his oleaginous reach.  

Last week, in fact, was the first since Trump's "election" that there was the sense that we at long last may be gaining the upper hand.  House Democrats dutifully slogged toward an impeachment vote and the full horrors of the Ukraine scandal and an out-of-control president who is weaponizing foreign policy for his own personal and political gain was laid bare.   

Then there is newly awakened realization of the moral rot of Trump's posse -- Vice President Pence, whose self-righteous religiosity masks his willing participation in Trump's evildoing, Attorney General Barr, who we now know jetted off to foreign capitals in the service of Trump's delusions about a "deep state" plot to undermine the 2016 election, Secretary of State Pompeo, who is neck deep in a real plot to undermine the 2020 election, and presidential fixer Giuliani, whose financial ties to Russian and Ukrainian mobsters run so long and so deep that he is now under investigation by the very U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan where he began his career as a prosecutor in 1981.   

All of that is why this week is so important.   

Will momentum against Trump continue to build as others break with president as did the courageous Yovanovich?  Will Fiona Hill, Trump's former top Russia advisor, and former European Union ambassador Gordon Sondland, both scheduled to testify before the impeachment committees, step up?  How about Donald McGahn, Hope Hicks, James Mattis, H.R. McMaster and other players who mutter in private about Trump's awfulness but have been reluctant to speak up?   

Or will the harsh light that Marie Yovanovich so bravely shined be snuffed out and we retreat back into that crushing feeling of helplessness and malaise to which we have became all too accustomed?      

(UPDATE) All About Donald Trump's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

© RICHARD CODOR

Still need evidence that Donald Trump not only is out of his mind, but flying solo through that great right-wing echo chamber as the Ukraine scandal continues to grow new tentacles at a breathtaking rate?   

If so, please note that amidst an impeachment crisis that has him cornered like a trapped animal, he set in motion a series of events over this Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week that have outraged some of the very congressional Republicans who are pretty much the only reason he's still holding forth on the White House lawn and not the visitor's room at a federal penitentiary.   

As Turkish President Recep Erdogan was preparing to attack the U.S.'s longtime Kurdish allies in northern Syria and in jaw-dropping disregard of his defense secretary and few remaining clear-headed foreign policy advisers, Trump said that was okey-dokey and he helpfully would withdraw the American troops who have been fighting alongside the Kurds.   

On Monday, Trump quickly sort of walked back this gift to one of his favorite strongmen when Republicans, including Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, blasted him for abandoning the Kurds.  Even Representative Liz Cheney, a Trump sycophant if ever there was one, called the pullout a "catastrophic mistake."  The Turkish offensive duly commenced and the slaughter of Kurds duly began despite Trump's empty 11th-hour promise that "If Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits I will totally destroy and obliterate the economy of Turkey."   

On Tuesday, the White House showed its hand in a letter to the Democratic leaders of the House impeachment investigation stating (no, it actually was more of a scream) that it still would not cooperate in any way because the investigation was an effort to undo the 2016 election (cue "deep state" Jaws music).  Besides which, he can do anything he wants because he is the Chosen One and therefore immune from the actions of those two other co-equal branches of government -- Congress and the Supreme Court.   

The letter, devoid of any legal substance, was variously described by legal scholars as "preposterous," "unbelievable," "reckless" and, inevitably, "loony."  I called it "pathetic." 

Wednesday was a relatively quiet day -- unless you were one of an increasing number of dead Kurds -- until the president defended his troop withdrawal by noting that the Kurds "didn’t help us in the Second World War, they didn't help us with Normandy as an example . . . they weren’t there." He explained that he had learned that factoid from a "very, very powerful article," which it turns out was written by a conservative commentator and supporter of Trump's wingnuttery.

Then as the day wore on, another Ukraine scandal tentacle slithered into view. 

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, business associates and clients of Rudy Giuliani who were helping him to get non-existent dirt on Joe Biden and his son in the extortionate scheme that underlies the Ukraine scandal, which underlies the impeachment push, were arrested on charges that they schemed to funnel foreign money to U.S. politicians as they tried to flee the U.S. for Vienna.   

It surely was a coincidence that earlier in the day, Parnas and Fruman had lunched with Giuliani (at the Trump International Hotel, natch) and had been ordered to turn over certain documents to House investigators.  Or that Giuliani, in his quest for Biden dirt, himself has spent quality time in Vienna courting notorious Ukrainian oligarch Dmitri Firtash, an upper-echelon associate of Russian organized crime who is fighting extradition to the U.S. on bribery charges and once wheeled and dealed with Paul Manafort, Trump's convicted and imprisoned former campaign manager.

Parnas and Fruman, who are Soviet-born and naturalized American citizens, of course are now being subpoenaed by House investigators for personal appearances, are said to have been instrumental in Trump recalling Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, who objected to the Trump-Giuliani scheme to hold up $400 million in aid in return for the Ukraine president digging Biden dirt.   

Fortunately for both men, neither are Kurds. 

Thursday dawned bright and sunny in the Washington swamp even if the weather in the great right-wing echo chamber was turbulent.  Trump got things rolling in a tweet by criticizing a Fox News poll showing that a majority of Americans now favor impeachment. 

Then further dirt trickled out on Parnas and Fruman, who already were being referred to as the equivalent of the Watergate burglars who ultimately were to bring down Richard Nixon, and like them not particularly smart operators because their scheme to shower Republicans with foreign dough wasn't exactly covert. 

A federal magistrate set bail a $1 million each after prosecutors argued Parnas and Furman were flight risks.  They were represented at the bail hearing by two lawyers who unsuccessfully defended Manafort.  Who must have just been in the neighborhood, or something.  Their regular lawyer is John Dowd, who as Trump's onetime criminal lawyer was so convinced that the president should avoid an interview with Special Counsel Robert Mueller that he told him, "It's either that or an orange jumpsuit."

Meanwhile, Trump confirmed the appointment of Trey Gowdy as an outside legal counsel in the impeachment cage match.  Gowdy is the former Republican representative who beat the congressional oversight drum in holding endless hearings into the 2012 Benghazi terror attacks that sought to tar Hillary Clinton, the favorite punching bag of Trump and Vladimir Putin's cyberwarriors in that very same 2016 election.  Want to bet that congressional oversight suddenly doesn't seem so important to him? 

Over at the State Department, Michael McKinley, senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, resigned his position amid rising dissatisfaction and plummeting morale over Pompeo's failure to support career personnel ensnared in the Ukraine scandal. 

On Thursday night at a campaign rally in Minneapolis, Trump lashed out at House Democrats and Biden, whom he declared to great roars "was only a good vice president because he knew how to kiss Barack Obama's ass." 

Then came a Friday to remember. 

First Trump was snubbed for the bright, shiny object known as the Nobel Peace Prize he has so coveted.  Some guy from Ethiopia got it instead for stopping a famine or something.   

Then a lawyer for Gordon Sondland, the now resigned U.S. ambassador to the European Union, announced that Sondland would defy the White House and testify before three House committees next week about his neck-deep involvement in the Ukraine extortion scheme. 

Then Yovanovich, in closed-door testimony before the three House committees, delivered a scathing indictment of how Trump personally saw to her removal and how his administration is using private influence and personal gain to usurp diplomats' judgment and serve the interests of the U.S.'s adversaries, including Russia.  "Today we see the State Department attacked and hollowed out from within," she said. 

Then multiple courts ruled against elements of Trump's border policy, while a Washington, D.C. appeals court ruled that Trump's accounting firm must comply with House subpoenas for eight years of his financial statements and audits.  The court stayed release of the materials pending an appeal by Trump's lawyers. 

Then CNN reported that the prosecutors who brought indictments against Parnas and Fruman are now investigating Giuliani's financial dealings with the two men. 

And finally Kevin McAleenen, acting Homeland Security secretary and the fourth person to hold that post in less than three years, quit in frustration over clashes with the White House and attacks from immigration hardliners.  His departure brought to nearly 50 the extraordinary number of Cabinet secretaries and other senior officials who have quit or been fired.           

Giuliani's role as Trump's personal lawyer and fixer has never been in doubt, but it still astonishes.   

He was hired to help fend off Mueller's Russia scandal investigation, although it was Attorney General William "Whitewash Bill" Barr who did the heavy lifting in that case, only to steer the president into the Ukraine scandal.  It shouldn't take long -- we're talking days if not hours -- before still other Ukraine tentacles emerge and Giuliani, the gift to House Democrats that keeps on giving, gets Trump into further trouble.  As if he isn't getting into enough trouble on his own. 

Oh, and Kurds continue to die. 

The Die Is Cast: Trump's Legal 'Strategy' Against Impeachment Is Pathetic

LAWFARE.COM

When I wrote barely 24 hours ago that Donald Trump "has long nursed a well-developed sense of grievance, and no more so than anger over the (accurate) view of his enemies that he was not legitimately elected," I did not know how correct I was although I understood how desperate he was.  The president and his lawyers don't have a pot to piss in when it comes to claims that House Democrats are violating the constitution in developing articles of impeachment against him, let alone because of the Ukraine scandal, a starkly black-and-white instance of presidential misconduct of the most egregious kind.  But I was shocked when the White House announced that its legal defense is the claim that the impeachment inquiry is an effort to undo the 2016 election. 

Pathetic. 

"Your unprecedented actions have left the president with no choice," wrote White House counsel Pat Cipollone in a scathing letter to House Democratic leadership on Tuesday.  "In order to fulfill his duties to the American people, the Constitution, the executive branch and all future occupants of the office of the presidency, President Trump and his administration cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances."

If you are searching for a hidden meaning -- perhaps some clever tactical advantage -- in this preposterousness, it's not there.  Cipollone's eight-page letter was more of a scream, devoid of legal reasoning and a reflection of the president's obsession with the legitimacy of an election that he won, in part, because of Russian interference.  

Given that the Constitution mandates that Congress, as a coequal branch of government, can investigate a rogue president and impeach and try him for high crimes and misdemeanors, depriving investigators of crucial witnesses and evidence is not a strategy.  It's desperation. 

And in refusing to cooperate with what Trump calls a "kangaroo court," the president risks ensuring the very outcome he has been trying to avoid through his stumbles and bumbles because the Democratic leadership has made clear that his failure to comply with their demands for information could form the basis for its own article of impeachment. 

Meanwhile, an anonymous senior administration official declared during a press call that no other witnesses or documents would be provided, putting a "full halt" to cooperation. 

Among the issues the Cipollone's letter raises is the refusal of Democratic leaders, at least so far, to vote to establish a formal impeachment inquiry as was done during the Nixon and Clinton impeachment proceedings.  Democrats argue that such a vote is not necessary, as the investigating committees already have the full subpoena powers they didn’t have during those previous impeachment inquiries.  Unsaid in the letter is that even if that vote was taken, the White House would continue to refuse, block and stonewall. 

"The White House should be warned that continued efforts to hide the truth of the President's abuse of power from the American people will be regarded as further evidence of obstruction," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi countered in response to the letter.  "Mr. President, you are not above the law.  You will be held accountable."

The letter came shortly after the White House blocked the voluntary appearance of Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union and a key player in Trump's attempt to extort the Ukraine president to investigate Joe Biden and his son, before three House committees.  It also is expected to block an appearance on Friday by former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, whom Trump fired because he believed that she was getting in the way of his extortion scheme.    

Key to and lending a further air of unreality to this pushback is the "deep state" conspiracy theory long nurtured by Trump that some of America's closest allies plotted with his enemies at home in 2016 to try to prevent him from winning the presidency.  Those enemies, by his telling, included the FBI, which worked to prevent his election and then Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who tried to discredit it through his Russia scandal investigation. 

To that end, Attorney General William Barr and John Durham, a top federal prosecutor whom Barr assigned to review the origins of the Russia scandal investigation, visited Rome and the United Kingdom last month in an effort to prove the entire Russia scandal investigation was a setup.  Australia also is being pressed to roll over.    

Trump's anti-impeachment "strategy" is a gift to House Democrats. 

It comes as public sentiment has begun to shift toward impeachment and removing him from office, the first cracks in Republican congressional support for the president, and declarations from former national security officials in the Trump administration, including recently fired national security advisor John Bolton, that the president is endangering national security because of his overt attempts to extort Ukraine to collect dirt on Joe Biden and his son, his utter lack of foreign-policy expertise and running roughshod over institutional restraints. 

The law and history are on the Democrats' side.  Now all they have to do is not blow it. 

This means not overreaching, obtaining crucial whistleblower testimony, playing the long game and responding to the inevitable flame throwing from Trump and his surrogates with poise and dignity. 

JOHN LOCHER / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

I have resisted blogging about Rudy Giuliani because I don't have much of anything to say beyond the obvious: This once crack federal prosecutor is cracked.  But as the guy who almost single handedly is assisting Donald Trump with his ongoing self-impeachment, he has a certain fascination.  Kind of like watching a burning building.  

What finally took me over the top was Giuliani's announcement that while he wouldn't be caught dead testifying before one of the Democratic-led House committees ginning up articles of impeachment, and neither would any other West Wing big, he is going to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Lindsey Graham.  

My initial reaction was, "This must be a joke!"  

What is so stupefying is that while Graham has become Trump's poodle, he occasionally gets uppity, like when he condemned the "commander in chief" earlier this week for abandoning America's Kurdish allies by withdrawing U.S. troops from northern Syria to appease Turkey, which launch an offensive against the Kurds on Wednesday.  Then there is the fact that the minority Democratic members of the committee include presidential wannabes Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, who already have their knives out in anticipation of having Trump's personal lawyer-fixer for lunch.  

But will Giuliani, who is a pathological liar if not exactly of the president's caliber, testify under oath?         

The Whistles Blow & Trump Doubles Down On The Deep-State Election Fiction

ANDREW HARNIK / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Donald Trump has long nursed a well-developed sense of grievance, and no more so than anger over the (accurate) view of his enemies that he was not legitimately elected. This goes far in explaining why, as the threat of impeachment looms larger because of the whistleblower allegations central to the Ukraine scandal, he is doubling down on the long discredited fiction that the FBI worked to prevent his election and then Special Counsel Robert Mueller tried to discredit it because of a nefarious "deep state" plot. 

Attorney General William Barr's effective whitewash of Mueller's final Russia scandal report -- which found that Trump repeatedly obstructed justice but could not be criminally indicted as a sitting president -- and the former special counsel's tepid performance in an appearance before Congress in July has emboldened Barr and John Durham, a top federal prosecutor whom Barr assigned to review the origins of the Russia scandal investigation.  They are mining the conspiracy theory long nurtured by Trump that some of America's closest allies plotted with his deep-state enemies at home in 2016 to try to prevent him from winning the presidency. 

To that end, Barr and Durham visited Rome and the United Kingdom last month in an effort to prove the entire Russia scandal investigation was a setup.   Key to the setup claim is Joseph Mifsud (photo, below), whom FBI Director James Comey bluntly called a "Russian agent" and Mueller's prosecutors said "had connections to Russia."

According to the deep-state theory, Mifsud, a Maltese professor with Russian ties who taught in Rome and dangled the prospect of Russia having "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails" before Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos during a London meeting in one of the earliest connections between Kremlin and campaign, actually was a CIA agent in some tellings and merely a Western intelligence asset in others. 

Trump personal attorney and fixer Rudy Giuliani, who is Trump's wingman in his efforts to extort the Ukrainian president into investigating Joe Biden and his son, said that the White House is interested in Mifsud because it "seems to me it was a counterintelligence setup . . . a rather typical CIA plot to create a basis for the investigation." 

Papadopoulos, who served 12 days in prison after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with Mifsud, has tweeted that Mifsud was "an Italian intelligence asset who the CIA weaponized." 

Establishing those fictions is made easier by the fact that Mifsud went missing -- and is presumed dead by some observers -- three days after Papadopoulos guilty plea was announced. 

Barr's efforts to enlist the Italian intelligence service in his effort drew a blank.  "They confirmed no connections, no activities, no interference," an Italian intelligence official said.  

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Meanwhile, Australia also is in the White House's crosshairs. 

Prime Minister Scott Morrison was asked by the president himself in a phone call to help discredit the Mueller report because the FBI's Russia investigation began after a drunken Papadopoulos told Alexander Downer, Australia's High Commissioner to Great Britain, that Russia had political dirt on Clinton in the form of emails.  Downer later passed on the information to Australian intelligence officials, who informed the FBI. 

Like Trump's call to Ukrainian President Zelensky, the transcript of the Trump-Morrison call -- in which he essentially asked Australia to investigate itself -- was restricted to a small handful of aides in yet another instance of the president using high-level diplomacy for political gain.      

Giuliani, in communications with convicted Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's legal team, originally intended to push a variation on the deep-state narrative -- that the Democratic National Committee, Democratic donors, and Ukrainian government officials had "colluded" to defeat Trump in 2016.  

The narrative has been repeatedly debunked, although that has not prevented Trump, Giuliani and conservative media surrogates from repeatedly pushing it, while Giuliani himself has acknowledged that while pursuing that failed narrative he stumbled upon the business dealings of Biden's son Hunter in Ukraine and consequent creation of the also debunked allegation that Biden, while Barack Obama's vice president, sought to bail out Hunter by pushing for the dismissal of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the energy firm with whom his son did business. 

This was part of an overall effort to pursue Manafort's enemies in Ukraine in the service of a possible presidential pardon. 

Trump, for whom Ukraine scandal events are moving faster than he has been able to push back against them, has defaulted to claims that there is a broad foreign plot against him.  "And just so you know --  just so you know, I was investigated," he told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House.  "I was investigated.  O.K.?  Me.  Me.  I was investigated. I was investigated.  And they think it could have been by U.K.  They think it could have been by Australia.  They think it could have been by Italy." 

Durham, the United States attorney for Connecticut and a veteran prosecutor who has broken up mafia rings and investigated CIA torture, has no power to subpoena witnesses or documents and has the authority only to read materials the government already gathered and to request voluntary interviews from witnesses.  He could write a report at the end of his review summarizing his findings and presumably make a criminal referral if he finds evidence of a crime. 

You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows on the deep-state pushback narrative: Trump's base and the Fox News crowd will eagerly lap it up while few other voters, if any, will be moved as Trump's reelection poll numbers continue to march southward.  The efforts of the new lawyer for Michael Flynn, Trump's short-lived and abjectly corrupt national security adviser, to portray himself as a deep-state victim to get a lighter prison sentence also have flopped in court.  That lawyer is Sidney Powell, an appeals court attorney and Fox News pundit.

The shameless Barr, who has been hardwired to the Ukraine scandal at Trump's behest, makes predecessor Jeff Sessions seem like a pillar of probity by comparison.  He is stonewalling Congress, including Republicans, on requests for details on his deep-state mission and will do anything to placate Trump.   Even if that means undercutting his own Justice Department, U.S. law enforcement in general, and its  intelligence agencies.

DELHI SOULEIMAN / AFP-GETTY IMAGES 

There basically are two ways to get rid of Donald Trump: Convict him in the Senate after a trial on House-submitted articles of impeachment or defeat his ass in the November 2020 election. 

At least 20 Republican defections would be needed to convict Trump in the Senate, which is decidedly long shot even if many upper chamber Republicans privately loath the president and what he has done to their party, let alone the country. 

They know that even the most muted criticism will provoke outrage from Trump, but if they are going to break with Trump, they have to start somewhere and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may have provided that opening on Monday when he joined several other Republicans in rebuking Trump over his latest effort to plunge U.S. Middle East policy into deeper turmoil by removing troops from northern Syria as Turkey plans a military offensive there.  This, in one fell swoop, is an effective abandonment of America's Kurdish allies (photo, above) and a victory for Russia, Syria and Turkey, countries ruled by three of Trump's favorite strongmen, as well as ISIS. 

"The Kurds were instrumental in our successful fight against ISIS in Syria," tweeted Nikki Haley, Trump's first ambassador to the United Nations.  "Leaving them to die is a big mistake." 

McConnell called on the president to "exercise American leadership" in a rare show of bipartisanship, and criticizing him over the Syria capitulation may be a way to provide some cover without criticizing him directly for the Ukraine outrage.  Trump, confronted by influential members of his own party, partially walked back his decision in a series of conflicting messages, but that did not appease McConnell. 

Are Senate Republicans learning to count to 20?  Perhaps.  In any event, you have to start somewhere.  

Richard Codor's Cartoon du Jour

MORE HERE.

Trump's Anti-Impeachment Strategy: A Short-Term Winner & Long-Term Disaster

ANNA MONEYMAKER / THE NEW YORK TIMES

It is an insult to Bob Dylan, the magisterial poet, to use his name in the same sentence as Donald Trump, the maniacal president, but here goes: Like Dylan’s rolling stone, Trump is on his own, no direction home. 

In the 11 days since House Democrats kicked off a series of hearings that will precede a vote on articles of impeachment, there has yet to emerge an impeachment strategy, let alone a team to coordinate a strategy, only the sight of a spittle-flecked president raving on the lawn of the White House as he, to use the term of the moment, self impeaches.   

As hard to believe even in these mind-boggling times, for Trump that is a strategy.  There is no war room, no communications staff, no nothing beyond the pathologically narcissistic Chosen One himself.  

Although the concerted efforts of he and his surrogates to pressure Ukraine -- and now China -- to investigate his leading Democratic challenger are a clear violation of the constitutional ban on accepting "something of value" from foreign entities in a U.S. election and are the smoking gun driving impeachment, Trump is claiming that these overtly extortionate schemes are neither unconstitutional nor out of the ordinary.   

Trump will continue to push that claim relentlessly while fabricate even greater falsehoods about Joe and Hunter Biden. 

The most recent is that as vice president, Joe Biden threatened to hold up $1 billion in aid to Ukraine unless it sacked its abjectly corrupt prosecutor general.  That much is true, but what Trump never mentions is that Biden had Republican support, as well as the support of the International Monetary Fund, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the many rank-and-file Ukrainians who are desperate for their homeland to embrace Western values and are sick and tired of the endemic government corruption that is a holdover of the Soviet era and when a pro-Moscow president ran their country. 

As shabby as Trump's so-called strategy may be, it will work in the short term.  His base isn't going anywhere, Senate Republicans are dutifully supporting him, and no one in the West Wing is going to convince him that he needs to do much more than bloviate if he's going to fight off impeachment.  

This is because, as a long-term strategy, it is a disaster.   

As it is, impeachment-worthy revelations are outpacing Trump's ability to push back against them.  (I added an extraordinary 14 major developments to my Russia-Ukraine scandals timeline over the past week).  He declared that there was no quid pro quo between he and Ukrainian President Zelensky and hours later text messages between two key State Department aides revealed that there was just that.  And so on and so forth. 

Indeed, Trump is failing to control a crisis that engulfs his presidency a little more with each news cycle.

And if you listen closely, few Senate Republicans beyond Lindsey Graham are pushing Trump's flimsy anti-impeachment meme that using foreign policy to advance his political interests is okay.  Their silence, instead of their usual unified message, is instructive because many privately loath Trump and what he has done to their party, let alone the country, and they know that even the most muted criticism will provoke outrage from him.  

"It's very difficult to message on quicksand," is how one Republican operative puts it.

Listen a little more and you find that while the 30-something percent of the electorate that Trump's base represents will dutifully vote for him in 2020 come hell or high water, his prospects in the swing states he barely took in 2016 in winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote, and even some of the states he won handily, are so dreadful that it becomes a safer bet by the day that he will lose very badly if the election is fairly contested. 

Senate Majority Leader "Moscow Mitch" McConnell now says that under Senate rules he would have "no choice" but to bring articles of impeachment articles voted out of the House to the Senate floor, which would occur just as the election campaign is heating up, but that may be thinly-disguised trickery.  McConnell, for example, could take is Old Kentucky Home time doing that.  

At least 20 Republican defections would be needed to convict Trump in the Senate, but Senate Republicans up for re-election in swing states also are listening and will soon be arriving at a very big fork in the road.  They can't please both Trump loyalists and swing voters.  So do they continue to support the president and face possible defeat or do they get behind impeachment?   And in the meantime, do they dare speak up as Mitt Romney did on Friday in calling the president's extralegal excursions "wrong and appalling." 

Trump has not acted entirely on his own. 

Dutifully passive Vice President Pence, acting Chief of Staff Mulvaney, Secretary of State Pompeo and Attorney General William Barr have been jumping on his command, but Rudy Giuliani occupies a special place in this historic melodrama. 

Trump's lawyer-fixer has managed the feat of doing what James Comey and Robert Mueller could not -- putting the president on the ropes by amplifying his crap, corruption and criminality.  That (sorry, Bob) is a significant reason why Trump is on his own, no direction home. 

The Impeachment Threat Is Leading A Crazed Trump Ever Deeper Into Darkness

© RICHARD CODOR

No American is above the law, least of all the president despite the many protections of that office enshrined in the Constitution.  But in the context of the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, what is to be done when he is not just unwilling to acknowledge limits of any sort on his conduct -- including the safeguards in said Constitution designating Congress as a check on a rogue president -- while openly declaring that no kind of accountability is legitimate and threatening a civil war if he is removed from office? 

If your answer is "Move to Canada," then you are not taking this seriously, because after nearly three years of crap, corruption and criminality, Trump endangers the very future of our democracy and obeisance to that Constitution. 

If your answer is "Work on Senate Republicans," then you understand that the only way to get rid of Trump is with their support, an abstraction at this point that still might not move him even were that long shot come to pass. 

Are you depressed yet? 

If somehow you are not, check out a terrifying video clip of an unhinged Trump seated next to the Finnish president in the Oval Office and later at a press conference on Wednesday as he rants, raves, continues to melt down and, as ever, denies and deflects when inconveniently confronted by anything that collides with his alternate reality. 

In that reality, the Mueller report on the Russia scandal is a deep-state plot.  His presidential oath-shattering attempts to extort the Ukrainian president to dish dirt on his leading Democratic opponent for the presidency is okey-dokey since enlisting a foreign power in an election campaign, as Russia infamously did in 2016, is well within his rights. The help he is getting from Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Pompeo, Attorney General Barr and lawyer-fixer Rudy Giuliani in this dirty laundry effort is most welcome and just fine.  His Democratic impeachment foes are a bunch of traitors.  Oh, and pharmaceutical companies are behind the impeachment push because his administration is working to lower drug prices.   

While it should be noted that Giuliani is so batshit loony that he actually makes Trump seem vaguely sane by comparison, all of this leaves an off-the-rails Trump even less fit to carry out duties he has botched or simply ignored since his inauguration, while finding time to cage migrant children, start trade wars, embrace autocrats, roll back environmental reforms and weaponize the Justice Department.  

Writes attorney and Trump nemesis George Conway, who is married to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, in The Atlantic:

You don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and you don't need to be a mental-health professional to see that something's very seriously off with Trump -- particularly after nearly three years of watching his erratic and abnormal behavior in the White House. Questions about Trump's psychological stability have mounted throughout his presidency.  But those questions have been coming even more frequently amid a recent escalation in Trump’s bizarre behavior, as the pressures of his upcoming reelection campaign, a possibly deteriorating economy, and now a full-blown impeachment inquiry have mounted.  And the questioners have included those who have worked most closely with him.

But back to those Senate Republicans. 

House Democrats are pushing for drafting articles of impeachment centered on the Ukraine scandal by Thanksgiving, which means the articles would reach the Senate early in the new year. 

At least 20 Republicans would have to join every Democrat in voting "guilty" after a Senate-conducted impeachment trial in order to reach the two-thirds supermajority needed to remove Trump from office. 

Among the problems with that scenario is that hypothetically the Republicans could block a trial, which would result in Democrats throwing themselves at the mercy of a Trump-infected Supreme Court, while the likelihood of there being 20 Republicans who would join Democrats to convict is, as I said above, a long shot abstraction. 

The disparities between Senate Republicans' private and public views are complex.  But they basically boil down to their needing Trump because they like enough of his policies and want to keep winning elections, never mind that he has turned the GOP into a cult-like political party, and to break ranks with him would be an ego-bruising admission that they were wrong all along. 

I happen to think that all is not lost, merely mostly lost. 

If there are to be mass defections, the exodus will start with rank-and-file Republicans up for reelection who understand, as the House impeachment juggernaut gathers steam and Trump continues to lose his shit as he gins up new scandals, his deny-and-deflect defense strategy fails to get traction beyond the Fox News echo chamber and his poll numbers sink further under water, that they're in big trouble.   

When it comes to taking a hit for Trump and preserving one's own political skin, that long shot abstraction starts to become a little less so. 

All we need now is a tipping point.  Please!