Uhhh, no. Not even close.
If Democrats and the resistance think the conversation revealed below is smoking gun evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors, or such evidence at all, Trump has truly driven them out of their minds.
As a strong hint that the resistance realizes it has been, once again, outmaneuvered and embarrassed, desperate pundits at the Huffington Post and MSNBC are now peddling the despicable theory that the transcript has been fabricated. So are my Facebook friends, even some of the relatively sane ones. Frustration and desperation will do that, and, of course, bias makes you stupid.
On the other side, some conservative pundits are suggesting that the diabolical President, who is both a genius and an idiot, deliberately set the whole thing up to push the Democrats into proving that their impeachment mania is unmoored to fact or law, while simultaneously putting Joe Biden under the hot lights. Brilliant!
This is also silly. I will say that Trump has been blessed with the most useful and blundering enemies of any President since FDR.
Here is the transcript:
Ethics Alarms 
Et tu, Ken?
Seriously, are there any other legal bloggers who have not fallen victim to TDS? I really miss his First Amendment commentary, but now he spends less time on this and more on bashing Trump.
I don’t even know what Ken thinks he’s saying here. This is what working for the Atlantic will do to you.
I’ve been following Ken’s podcast work quite frequently. He is far from deranged. His general belief is that Trump is reckless with the law, and has likely run afoul of it, usually by covering up various non-violations of the law. He cites numerous examples of Trump’s behavior, and prior case law.
I have no idea what Ken is saying that particular tweet, but it is not representative. He will likely parse the conversation, call the president of the Ukraine a weasel, and show several potential quid-pro-quo transactions. He may thus be questioning why the president’s keepers made a demonstrably dumb argument, rather than argue that any promises made were part of the ordinary course of diplomacy. (I of course can also read tea leaves….).
I don’t know why pointing to the lack of any quid pro quo is a dumb argument at all. Prof. Turley also makes that point. Without a quid pro quo, there’s literally no offense. Of course Trump is reckless with the law, but I’m sick of “has likely” arguments, which have easily slid into “he must be guilty of SOMETHING.” And parsing a conversation like that one is itself offensive to justice, fishing for a problem. No President has been subjected to that approach, and none should. Ken is also all lawyer. My field is, among others, leadership and the Presidency, and the non-Trump deranged will not read that transcript and see anything wrong with it, even with “parsing.” I assume subtle and not so subtle suggestions and pressures are exchanged in such calls and have been as long as there have been calls; in fact, I know they are.
This is one of the weakest impeachment argument yet, and that’s what they are going to go with?
(and even WITH the quid pro quo…there still is no proven crime here)
Quid Pro Quo is literally how geopolitics works.
And IF there is reasonable likelihood that someone in Biden’s family was engaging in corruption in a foreign nation that is part of our President’s duty to pursue, then that quid pro quo was in pursuit of those claims.
No, this is about protecting Biden AND smearing Trump. A two-for-one deal for the DNC.
I mean, if the claim is that Trump is interfering with an election because Biden is running…then … I mean… can Buttigieg gun someone down in the middle of the street and be immune from investigation as long as he’s a candidate?
Indeed, I don’t know how any international business could be done without various carrots and sticks. Also, any Democrat why Trump brought it up now during the election cycle conveniently ignores that he was speaking months ago to another official who himself was recently elected.
I shall see what his actual argument is when he does his next show.
Personally I think Ken is openly rejecting, and rejecting absolutely, any argument from any person that says there is no quid pro quo based on the transcript (it’s not damn summary Ken) and I think that absolute pre-rejection is signature significant.
The closer we get to the election the more out of whack people are going to get.
November 4, 2020, assuming Trump wins (53% chance according to LasVegas oddsmakers) will likely be the beginning of the next American civil war.
Why did the House open an “impeachment inquiry” (Haven’t the last 2.5 years been just that?) yesterday? Because one of the deep state’s finest, Joe Biden, is exposed as a traitor and guilty of trading American jobs and security for Ukrainian and Chinese funded personal gain while Vice President of the US. This is their MO, project and blame others for their own misdeeds.
Any rational set of people would have stopped this idiotic charade long ago. The deep state and resistance can’t. Their crimes are genuinely heinous and must be covered up. They are building outrage to the point where, if Trump wins, he will be deemed even more illegitimate than now because he will be accused of stealing the election regardless of popular or electoral college vote totals. The only answer left, assuming Trump wins, is a violent revolution. Be honest with yourself, we’re perilously close to it now.
The next step is militia style organized overt violence comprised of released prisoners, gangs, malicious illegals, corrupted elements of law enforcement, and a split military with our enemies aiding or even joining the revolutionary side.
Say I’m insanely pessimistic if you wish, I just don’t see any light at the end of this tunnel. To be clear, I hope I am very wrong.
Are you prepared? We have only just over a year to be so.
You sound a little like this from October 8, 2018…
The United States Political Left Has Been Permanently Radicakized
Damn fat finger typos. Arrgh!
Glad to know I’m not the only one with fat fingers
Had not seen or read that before, but it is eerily similar. Though I do not agree with all points.
Maybe Ken thinks that if there was a quid pro quo, like in what it appears Biden did, it is okay.
But because Trump asked for the son of a political leader, who based on what we know may have been involved in corruption, to be investigated for same by the cognizant legal authority (I don’t think some corrupt government paying a US citizen a bunch of unearned money is a US crime unless it is a crime in the other country) is somehow impeachable.
What if this had been the son of, oh, Jeff Flake. Would that be impeachable? Nobody seems to say. Apparently, if it isn’t a Presidential candidate, it maybe doesn’t matter much. It surely doesn’t seem to matter to anyone that Biden apparently (by his own words) not only offered a quid pro quo but frankly extorted the Ukranians. And he did it in public without anyone in the media taking any notice at all, even suggesting Obama had his back. And he was arguably doing it to protect his son from being charged with wrongdoing.
I can’t wait to see them try to make this case in front of America. I’m investing in Orville Rickenbacker, because I think a lot of popcorn will be required for this one.
We have a Facebook friend who leaves helping verbs out of her sentences (this is both an oral and written phenomenon).
One day, she posted something along the lines of “I hacked; don’t accept friend requests from me”, etc.
My husband and I looked at each other and I quipped dryly, “I wonder how we’ll know which one is really her?”
Your FB friends who think this is fabricated are dolts. This is exactly the kind of conversation I would expect President Trump to have and it utilizes his speaking style perfectly. I doubt the Trump administration employs fiction writers talented enough to mimic him this well.
Please roll the video and audio of The Blessed One telling Vlad the Desrtoyer something along the lines of: ” If you can back off and let me get re-elected, after that we can get something done on the medium range missiles in Poland.”
Obama is the Messiah. That he left the White House after Trump was elected is proof that Trump is the devil incarnate. QED.
A BLAST from the SanFranNan memory hole that I’d bet the farm, out buildings, AND machinery she’s wishing had stayed there.
The 12/18/1998 money quote:
“We are here today because the Republicans in the House are PARALYZED WITH HATRED of President Clinton, and until the Republicans FREE THEMSELVES OF THAT HATRED OUR COUNTRY WILL SUFFER.” (caps mine)
Seems like she was against impeachment before she was for it, am I right?
So the new line is “collusion with Ukraine”? Trump is now “Zelenskyy’s cockholster,” right? Trying to get my taking points in order.
The Democratic Party will put the spin factory in high gear, they’ll read between the lines and cherry pick and it will mean whatever “truth” they want it to mean regardless of actual facts and their dumbed down anti-Trump base will eat it up like immature children in a candy store.
How can Joe Biden be any more of a political rival at this stage to Trump than Mary Ann Williamson. Neither have won a nomination unless the DNC has established Joe will be the nominee already.
The point is is that anyone running for president can engage in illicicit overseas activities with impunity because the it will be claimed the president is getting assistance from a foreign power to smear a political rival. If that’s the case I am running for president.
This has occurred to me as well, especially since I think Joe has about the same chances of being the nominee as Marianne.
Theoretically, the American citizens on Obamas disposition matrix ( read those killed) were his political rivals by definition.
Political rivalry is not limited to those running for office. Any American with an opposing political perspective to a sitting president is a potential political rival.
Maybe Trump didn’t orchestrate this from the beginning, but after it started, I wouldn’t put it past him to have been trolling the opposition and feeding them enough rope to let them hang themselves.
I don’t think the “no quid pro quo” argument is relevant in the slightest, because I think it would have been completely appropriate for Trump to offer a quid pro quo, given the seriousness of the allegations that he asked them to investigate:
(1) That the DNC servers were not really hacked by Russia and that Democratic operatives deliberately deceived the FBI with false evidence of hacking; and
(2) That the Vice President of the United States corruptly used his office for the financial benefit of his son.
The evidence regarding both of these allegations is located in Ukraine. If Ukraine does not investigate, then nobody can investigate. The United States cannot investigate these allegations without the cooperation of Ukraine. I understand why partisan Democrats don’t want these claims to be investigated, but normal, patriotic Americans should want truthful answers.
Ukraine is our ally, and the President did exactly the right thing by asking them to investigate and share their findings with us. He didn’t ask them to falsify any evidence to harm his political enemies or advance his agenda. He asked them to find out the facts and tell us.
The claim that it was somehow outrageous to ask Ukraine to talk to Giuliani is absurd. Giuliani has been investigating these matters for many months. He probably knows more about the subject than anybody else in the world. It was entirely correct for Trump to ask Ukraine to talk to Giuliani so that he can brief them on what he has learned.
Given the fact that the US Justice Department and intelligence agencies are riddled with deep-state spies and saboteurs (such as the “whistleblower” here), I for one would be reassured to learn that there is a trustworthy middleman like Giuliani making sure that information from the Ukrainians does not get squelched or distorted before it reaches Trump and Barr, who are the people that the Constitution has designated to make sure that the laws are enforced.
Three things that infuriate me about the lock-step, scripted response to the transcript by the anti-Trump forces that have been dominating the airwaves all day:
1. The pretense, as Jack has noted, that the transcript is somehow not genuine.
2. The repeated claim that both of these allegations have been “debunked.” In fact, neither of them has ever been investigated at all, much less debunked.
3. The refusal to acknowledge that Ukraine spent two years investigating Trump at the behest of the Democrats or the insistence that somehow it was appropriate for Democrats to press for Ukraine to investigate but inappropriate for Trump to ask for the same thing.
This entire ridiculous caper has been stage managed by somebody. And it still is. If the Dems were actually reacting to developments, at this point, Nancy Pelosi would call a news conference and say, “Oh, never mind.” And then after a day or two, the Dems would gin up the next reason for impeaching Trump and roll out that script to all their foot soldiers.