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***Official Donald J. Trump Impeachment (Whistleblower) Thread*** (5 Viewers)

Don't Noonan said:
It is very obvious Schiff knows who the whistleblower is, which would verify lie # 5,976 for Schiff.
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We're counting lies now?

President Trump has made 12,019 false or misleading claims over 928 days

AUGUST 12, 2019

President Trump’s proclivity for spouting exaggerated numbers, unwarranted boasts and outright falsehoods has continued at a remarkable pace. As of Aug. 5, his 928th day in office, he had made 12,019 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement the president has uttered.

Trump crossed the 10,000 mark on April 26, and he has been averaging about 20 fishy claims a day since then. From the start of his presidency, he has averaged about 13 such claims a day.

About one-fifth of these claims are about immigration, his signature issue — a percentage that has grown since the government shut down over funding for his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, his most repeated claim — 190 times — is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so he has tried to pitch bollard fencing and repairs of existing barriers as “a wall.”

False or misleading claims about trade, the economy and the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign each account for about 10 percent of the total. Claims on those subjects are also among his most repeated.

Trump has falsely claimed 186 times that the U.S. economy today is the best in history. He began making this claim in June 2018, and it quickly became one of his favorites. The president can certainly brag about the state of the economy, but he runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, the economy today is not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton — or Ulysses S. Grant. Moreover, the economy is beginning to hit the head winds caused by the president’s trade wars.

On 166 occasions, he has claimed the United States has “lost” money on trade deficits. This reflects a basic misunderstanding of economics. Countries do not “lose” money on trade deficits. A trade deficit simply means that people in one country are buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first country. Trade deficits are also affected by macroeconomic factors, such as currencies, economic growth, and savings and investment rates.

Trump has falsely said 162 times that he passed the biggest tax cut in history. Even before his tax cut was crafted, he promised that it would be the biggest in U.S. history — bigger than Ronald Reagan’s in 1981. Reagan’s tax cut amounted to 2.9 percent of the gross domestic product, and none of the proposals under consideration came close to that level. Yet Trump persisted in this fiction even when the tax cut was eventually crafted to be the equivalent of 0.9 percent of GDP, making it the eighth-largest tax cut in 100 years. This continues to be an all-purpose applause line at the president’s rallies.

The president’s constant Twitter barrage also adds to his totals. More than 18 percent of the false and misleading statements stemmed from his itchy Twitter finger.

Trump’s penchant for repeating false claims is demonstrated by the fact that the Fact Checker database has recorded more than 300 instances in which he has repeated a variation of the same claim at least three times. He also now has earned 23 “Bottomless Pinocchios,” claims that have earned Three or Four Pinocchios and that have been repeated at least 20 times.

Even as Trump’s fact-free statements proliferate, there is evidence that his approach is failing.

Fewer than 3 in 10 Americans believe many of his most-common false statements, according to a Washington Post Fact Checker poll published in December. Only among a pool of strong Trump approvers — about 1 in 6 adults in the survey — did large majorities accept several, although not all, of his falsehoods as true.

The award-winning database website, created by graphics reporter Leslie Shapiro, has an extremely fast search engine that will quickly locate suspect statements the president has made. We encourage readers to explore it in detail. For this update, we have added a new feature that provides a URL for every claim that is fact-checked, allowing readers to post the link on social media.
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hagmania said:
Here, right matters.

I'm putting this somewhere on my desk.
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The opposite to this is "the ends justify the means".  I believe this is what Republicans hang their hats on.  The thread of socialism is so great they are OK with bending a rule here or there to keep their guy in office.

 
Widbil83 said:
Jim Jordan is having his Blassey-Ford Lindsey Graham moment here showing there isn’t any facts anywhere to be found in this case. 
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My feeling here about posts like this and Noon's are that they really are not far from the White House's and the GOP's public defenses. I just think it's interesting that some of the things that are clung to are actually Dem points:

  • Trump completely circumvented constitutionally and legally established sources for reporting and support in State, the IC and the NSC.
  • The WBer and several of these witnesses yes yes they did indeed report what they found using legal channels.
  • State Department and national security officials were indeed in touch with and communicating with US allies in Ukraine that our government had been supporting as a matter of policy under Trump and other administrations, and there were attacks by Giuliani and Digenova clients (Parnas, Fruman, Firtash) and those aligned with them to attack US government officials and their counterparts in Ukraine.
The funny thing to me is that Trump supporters seem to like to point these things out as if they are defenses when in fact they are the charges. I find it amusing almost that Trump supporters jump up and down discovering things that Dems simply have been saying for some time as part of their case against the President.

 
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sho nuff said:
Id wonder how...the Rs have yet to question the actual facts.  Bring up Biden, Russia, and so in.  They question the process not the facts and have been insulting of credible people.  That isnt killing it in any possible way.  
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I don't believe the Republicans can question facts.  The facts are what they are.  Their only defense is interpretation of said facts:

  1. what Trump did was completely justified - asking for investigations into corruption and/or Ukrainian actions leading up to 2016 election.  remember - the ends justify the means.
  2. what Trump did was within his powers of President, and as president, he is above reproach.  The president has a duty to use every means at his disposal to pursue whatever goal he believes is important.
  3. The threshold for impeachment is so high that the only way you can get there is to unambiguously demonstrate a federal law was broken.  a general "abuse of power" or "obstruction of justice" isn't enough.
  4. because it hasn't been demonstrated that a federal law has not been broken, this entire thing is a (second) politically inspired attempt to remove a duly elected president and therefore they have no choice but to fall in rank and defend their guy.
I disagree with all four points, BTW. 

 
I wonder why no Republicans asked if Vindman told Eisenberg that he had already told Kent and the unnamed IC person when Eisenberg told him not to say anything to anyone else.

 
mrip541 said:
Did any of the Rs even attempt to refute any of the claims about what happened? I just heard them making personal attacks and talking about Biden.
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Closest I heard was from Ratcliffe I believe

”Have you called what happened bribery”

”No”

”See!  He said it’s not bribery!”

 
moleculo said:
The opposite to this is "the ends justify the means".  I believe this is what Republicans hang their hats on.  The thread of socialism is so great they are OK with bending a rule here or there to keep their guy in office.
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I'm not sure I'd turn it partisan. I think there's a human inclination to justify the end. I've been meaning to do a thread on that as there's a really good This American Life on it. 

 
Dickies said:
jamny said:
I wonder why no Republicans asked if Vindman told Eisenberg that he had already told Kent and the unnamed IC person when Eisenberg told him not to say anything to anyone else.
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How would this benefit them?
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If Vindman answered "No," then Republicans could use that to imply that Vindman coordinated with the whistleblower. Or they could just use it to imply that Vindman thought that his actions were wrong.

 
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jamny said:
I wonder why no Republicans asked if Vindman told Eisenberg that he had already told Kent and the unnamed IC person when Eisenberg told him not to say anything to anyone else.
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There is a report in the Mueller report that Eisenberg told KT McFarland something similar about an incident with Flynn, ie don't put it in writing and don't tell anyone.

 
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Does anyone know how the witness sessions are determined? 

We had Kent and Taylor in the same session.

Yovanovitch had a session all to herself. 

And now Vindman and Williams in the same session.

Don't they follow the same timeline for each session? Opening statement by witnesses, 45 minutes by leaders/lawyers, 5 minutes for each Rep. Why not do these one at a time, that would allow more time for specifics? Yovanovitch got all the questions. Others split their time. 

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
jamny said:
I wonder why no Republicans asked if Vindman told Eisenberg that he had already told Kent and the unnamed IC person when Eisenberg told him not to say anything to anyone else.
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There is a report in the Mueller report that Eisenberg told KT McFarland something similar about an incident with Flynn, ie don't put it in writing and don't tell anyone.
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Perhaps a bigger question is: does Eisenberg have the authority to order Vindman to not discuss the matter with anyone?

 
Dickies said:
How would this benefit them?
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I think it would go towards the lack of judgement that was mentioned by the Republicans if Eisenberg was not happy with Vindman talking about it. I'm not saying he wasn't in his right to or maybe even obligated to but there must have been a reason why Eisenberg told him not to. Not even to Morrison apparently.

 
moleculo said:
I don't believe the Republicans can question facts.  The facts are what they are.  Their only defense is interpretation of said facts:

  1. what Trump did was completely justified - asking for investigations into corruption and/or Ukrainian actions leading up to 2016 election.  remember - the ends justify the means.
  2. what Trump did was within his powers of President, and as president, he is above reproach.  The president has a duty to use every means at his disposal to pursue whatever goal he believes is important.
  3. The threshold for impeachment is so high that the only way you can get there is to unambiguously demonstrate a federal law was broken.  a general "abuse of power" or "obstruction of justice" isn't enough.
  4. because it hasn't been demonstrated that a federal law has not been broken, this entire thing is a (second) politically inspired attempt to remove a duly elected president and therefore they have no choice but to fall in rank and defend their guy.
I disagree with all four points, BTW. 
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Somehow I think this was the point of Bill Barr's speech at the Federalist Society, just as his June 2018 memo was meant as a kind of manifesto to defend shutting down the Mueller investigation. Basically the argument is for a unitary, authoritarian government. I obviously disagree with it too but it is the only "normal" argument to make out of these facts.

 
moleculo said:
I don't believe the Republicans can question facts.  The facts are what they are.  Their only defense is interpretation of said facts:

  1. what Trump did was completely justified - asking for investigations into corruption and/or Ukrainian actions leading up to 2016 election.  remember - the ends justify the means.
  2. what Trump did was within his powers of President, and as president, he is above reproach.  The president has a duty to use every means at his disposal to pursue whatever goal he believes is important.
  3. The threshold for impeachment is so high that the only way you can get there is to unambiguously demonstrate a federal law was broken.  a general "abuse of power" or "obstruction of justice" isn't enough.
  4. because it hasn't been demonstrated that a federal law has not been broken, this entire thing is a (second) politically inspired attempt to remove a duly elected president and therefore they have no choice but to fall in rank and defend their guy.
I disagree with all four points, BTW. 
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Is this the GOP's stated philosophy or does this only apply when a Republican is in office?  It seems really dangerous to me regardless of which party is in power.

Don't Noonan or any of the other Trump guys - I'd appreciate your opinion.

 
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I don't think all that much was learned from this morning's testimonies but it does seem to go towards compelling Sondland's testimony. I'm surprised they didn't squeeze Holmes in today as well for the same reason. Tomorrow is the big day.

 
jamny said:
I think it would go towards the lack of judgement that was mentioned by the Republicans if Eisenberg was not happy with Vindman talking about it. I'm not saying he wasn't in his right to or maybe even obligated to but there must have been a reason why Eisenberg told him not to. Not even to Morrison apparently.
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Seems like these are questions that would be better asked to Eisenberg

 
cosjobs said:
Name a Republican congressman who would have done better.
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What I meant is that it's crazy to me that they couldn't find a better lawyer to represent them.

At least (most) of the Congressman have an excuse, they're not lawyers.

 
The White House

@WhiteHouse

·

1h

Tim Morrison, Alexander Vindman's former boss, testified in his deposition that he had concerns about Vindman's judgment.

"I had concerns about Lieutenant Colonel Vindman's Judgment"
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Trump must have learned his lesson from last week. But, now we have the official White House twitter account (funded by taxpayers) tweeting things to undermine witness testimony. 

 
Don't Noonan said:
Huge relevance because he was wrong about call, met with Schiff team before report, and has obvious bias with ties to Biden.  He needs to testify.
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All due respect, this is just pure fantasy and fabrication.  But, even if s/he met with Schiff and was a Biden supporter, all testimony from all other witnesses flesh out consistent fact pattern that corroborates WB.  Unless told otherwise, this seems like a smear technique solely for the purposes of distraction and intimidating other witnesses.  Which is really wrong no matter your party allegiance. . 

 
KCitons said:
Trump must have learned his lesson from last week. But, now we have the official White House twitter account (funded by taxpayers) tweeting things to undermine witness testimony.
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And tearing down American personnel who are actually working for the White House and America. It's certainly never happened before this administration. It's bizarre and self-damaging.

 
Joe Bryant said:
I'm not sure I'd turn it partisan. I think there's a human inclination to justify the end. I've been meaning to do a thread on that as there's a really good This American Life on it. 
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I'm not saying it's an exclusively republican trait, all republicans make this claim, or republicans always make this claim.  I am saying this seems to be what they are going for WRT Trump.

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
“And isn’t a fact sir that you haven’t used the word bribery once today?!?!”
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"And isn't it a fact, officer, that Mr. Smith never said in the text exchange that he will specifically give Mr. Jones methamphetamines for $40 cash?"*

"No, counselor, I suppose he didn't. But we have him on recording providing a gram of meth in exchange for $40."

*Not quoting anybody in particular, and especially not quoting any decent defense attorney, because it's a terrible question.

 
Sinn Fein said:
Worth noting:

Ari Melber@AriMelber 14m

Rep. Ratcliffe pressing on why fact witnesses did not use the word “bribery” in their testimony.

Typically fact witnesses describe what they saw and facts, not adding their own legal conclusions.
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:goodposting:

Don't Noonan said:
I am a Trump supporter that has repeatedly said I would be willing to impeach Trump if he committed a crime or an impeachable offense so I fall into the category of innocent until proven guilty.  So far the Dems have not moved the needle one bit to prove the POTUS is guilty.
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trump begs for Russian interference on national TV, the Mueller report definitively states Russia interfered with our elections, trump fights legislation intended to curtail election interference, the Mueller report outlines multiple instances of obstruction of justice, trump admits to QPQ on national TV, trump says he'd accept political dirt from China, multiple witnesses confirm the facts surrounding the admitted QPQ...

trump supporters: I'm still waiting for something significant to move the needle. 

timschochet said:
Jordan is doing the President no good at all. 
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That's what I'd think normally, but we both know some people are eating up that nonsense. 

timschochet said:
That’s his intent sure. But Graham was able to make that argument because Blasey Ford has no witnesses that could corroborate her story. In this case we’re hearing one witness after another tell the same thing, which makes Jordan’s speech nonsensical. 
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:goodposting:

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
KCitons said:
Trump must have learned his lesson from last week. But, now we have the official White House twitter account (funded by taxpayers) tweeting things to undermine witness testimony.
Click to expand...
And tearing down American personnel who are actually working for the White House and America. It's certainly never happened before this administration. It's bizarre and self-damaging.
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Doesn't move the needle, tho.  :loco:

 
FF Ninja said:
:goodposting:

trump begs for Russian interference on national TV, the Mueller report definitively states Russia interfered with our elections, trump fights legislation intended to curtail election interference, the Mueller report outlines multiple instances of obstruction of justice, trump admits to QPQ on national TV, trump says he'd accept political dirt from China, multiple witnesses confirm the facts surrounding the admitted QPQ...

trump supporters: I'm still waiting for something significant to move the needle. 

That's what I'd think normally, but we both know some people are eating up that nonsense. 

:goodposting:
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Sorry, hard to take you serious when you say Trump begged for Russian interference on live TV.  He was obviously joking and I know you are just trolling.

 
Don't Noonan said:
Sorry, hard to take you serious when you say Trump begged for Russian interference on live TV.  He was obviously joking and I know you are just trolling.
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From the Mueller report:

On July 27, 2016, Unit 26165 targeted email accounts connected to candidate Clinton’s personal office ■■■■■■■■■. Earlier that day, candidate Trump made public statements that included the following: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press."183 The “30,000 emails” were apparently a reference to emails described in media accounts as having been stored on a personal server that candidate Clinton had used while serving as Secretary of State.

Within approximately five hours of Trump’s statement, GRU officers targeted for the first time Clinton’s personal office. After candidate Trump’s remarks, Unit 26165 created and sent malicious links targeting 15 email accounts at the domain ■■■■■■■■■ including an email account belonging to Clinton aide ■■■■■■■■■ The investigation did not find evidence of earlier GRU attempts to compromise accounts hosted on this domain. It is unclear how the GRU was able to identify these email accounts, which were not public.
Click to expand...

 
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Don't Noonan said:
Sorry, hard to take you serious when you say Trump begged for Russian interference on live TV.  He was obviously joking and I know you are just trolling.
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If it was obvious, a great number of people wouldn't have taken it seriously. 

Now we are left determining whether or not he was serious. 

 
Don't Noonan said:
Sorry, hard to take you serious when you say Trump begged for Russian interference on live TV.  He was obviously joking and I know you are just trolling.
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Sure, he was "obviously joking." And he was "obviously joking" when he said he'd take dirt on a political rival from China if they offered it.

I'm not trolling - I've no interest in such things. I mean, what's the point? I'm not trying to bait you into anything to get you suspended. I've literally never reported a single post. No, I'm just pointing out absurdity. Nothing more, nothing less. 

 
KCitons said:
If it was obvious, a great number of people wouldn't have taken it seriously. 

Now we are left determining whether or not he was serious. 
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Nobody took it seriously.  The partisan left jumped on it to try and score political points.  Yes, this includes some of the partisan folks on Mueller's team unfortunately.

 
Don't Noonan said:
Sorry, hard to take you serious when you say Trump begged for Russian interference on live TV.  He was obviously joking and I know you are just trolling.
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I disagree. Here's why: in my opinion, it's very easy to take him seriously.

One of the reasons that it's very easy for me to take him seriously, in my opinion of course, is because he tends to state his opinions without calling other posters trolls.

 
Don't Noonan said:
Nobody took it seriously.  The partisan left jumped on it to try and score political points.  Yes, this includes some of the partisan folks on Mueller's team unfortunately.
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You mean the same way the right jumped on Schiff for his opening comments about the call? It was obviously an overstatement of the facts. But, that didn't stop many from calling it a lie. 

 
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