New Evidence Reaffirms: Donald Trump Fails the Fitness Test

His back-channel diplomats to Ukraine were a virtual traveling Mos Eisley cantina.

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On the eve of Trump’s impeachment trial, there’s a pile of new evidence. Lev Parnas, a man who looks like he stepped off the set of The Sopranos, is dropping dimes on former Mafia prosecutor Rudy Giuliani. What does it all mean? Also, do you ever wonder how reasonable people become snarling radicals? Let’s sort out the very human way in which people lose perspective. Today’s French Press:

  1. New impeachment evidence reaffirms everything we already suspected.

  1. How public apathy feeds political polarization.

New evidence chips away at Trump’s already-weak factual defense.

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  1. Avatar photo
    JimC

    I'd be interested to hear some more background about the Impoundment Control Act in this latest report. Are there precedents for prior administrations violating this Act? What's the enforcement mechanism? Maybe you could offer a few words in an upcoming Advisory Opinions episode?

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    David M

    Nice article.

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    Jenny

    I think you make some good points in this article, and I completely agree that we need to energize the middle of the political spectrum more!

    One thing that I think contributes to the problem of polarization you describe is the people in the middle tuning out on purpose. As a political junkie, I have no idea how people can decide to ignore what is happening in the government, but lots of people in my family have. I have two theories. First, I think some of them voted for Trump and are sorry for it now. Rather than admit they made a mistake (or giving approval to the things about Trump they don't like), I think they have decided to keep their distance from the consequences of this vote. I'm not trying to be smug when I say this. I'm sure it's hard to have the thing you wanted turn out so differently than you expected. Second, family members who didn't vote for Trump seem hopeless and powerless to make any change.

    Also, I listened to the new Dispatch podcast where you guys all talk about the news as a team. I love it, and it's going to be part of my weekly listening. I agree with you, David, that the Democrats should have waited to get the subpoenas before plowing along. That said, I think I should have given Nancy Pelosi more credit than I did for knowing what she was doing when she held the articles. Having all of this other information come out puts the Republican Senators in an interesting position. They look extra bad if they decide not to hear witnesses now. This won't hurt Trump, but it might hurt those of the up for re-election in the fall.

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      Jenny

      One more observation. We are not talking to people who disagree with us. You don't hear anyone bring up politics in public or with people who they think might disagree. This means we don't have to try to be nice when talking to people with different views. We get to hold all our outrage in and only let it out when we are with people who tell us how right we are. I wasn't around for Nixon, and I don't remember the Clinton impeachment well, but I suspect people talked about it with each other more than what we are seeing now.

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    Jason

    One qualifier to that polarization though. Of those two radicalized sides, one is embracing a vision of government entirely alien to the form of government we all agreed to.

    So it's not just entrenched/worsening polarization that will be testing our union in the next 10-15 years (and currently weakens us internationally), it's the embrace by that non-minor segment of the population of a different form of government, a different deal than the one we all agreed to.

    If that spreads, the political union breaks. Texas won't allow gun confiscation. North Dakota won't abide the idea that the government could prevent them from purchasing healthcare services privately.

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    Ray Salemi

    Another factor that rarely gets discussed in polarization is conservative talk radio. There is literally no equivalent on the left to conservative talk radio. One cannot drive around all day listening to some radio personality spin them up with a toxic mix of identity politics and income inequity. There seems to be no market for it.

    Listening to day-long diatribes while driving around town cannot be good for the brain, and I think it’s at the root of much of the outrage being injected into our society.

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  6. Ann G

    Stress can create overlarge reactions as well. Small annoyances become threats when we are stressed, and there is evidence than we are more stressed as a society.

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      Jenny

      I agree with you. I think a lot of us are pulled in too many directions, and it's hard to keep a level head when everything feels like an emergency. It makes it easy to see every bit of news coming out as conclusive evidence that civilization is breaking down. I'm not as nice when I'm overwhelmed.

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    Kevin Durant?

    “So, Rudy says he is acting with his client’s knowledge and consent. His client tells Zelensky to talk to Rudy about his requested investigations. It’s growing harder and harder to argue that Rudy went Rogue.”
    ——————————————
    Okay so we have documented that Trump gave Rudy an “on behalf of the President” VIP pass and Trump also called the nightclub owner to put in a good word

    So Rudy has bad judgement AND a VIP pass to a Star Wars bar....but it’s not possible for him to use that VIP pass independently in ways that are not smart?? Yeah that obviously is incoherent. In fact it is basically guaranteed that Rudy went rogue under those circumstances

    Not that it matters. Rudy SHOULD go rogue. We already know it is totally fine to send someone sketchy to coordinate with sketchy people to manufacture conspiracy theories about your opponent. Normally those conspiracies get funneled through intelligence agencies, FISA courts, and promoted by the media and they don’t get called conspiracies until they have run through the midterms

    I’m glad all of the people who were absolutely wrong last time now have their conspiracy antennae properly tuned

    A private investigator was watching Yovanovitch? Okay. That’s 1000x more legal than using fraud to get surveillance warrants

    Rudy Giuliani IS Christopher Steele with the key difference being that we still don’t know Steele’s disreputable sources and Rudy’s sources just interviewed with Rachel Maddow

    Just remember, last time we did this (and we literally just did this) Sean Hannity ended up being 100% right for 3 years. Just let that sink in. It’s statistically impossible for Hannity to be 100% right for 3 minutes under normal circumstances

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      Ray Salemi

      "A private investigator was watching Yovanovitch? Okay. That’s 1000x more legal than using fraud to get surveillance warrants"

      Actually, I think this is specifically illegal with regards to diplomats.

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        Pat Riot

        Also, there's no evidence "fraud" was used to obtain FISA warrants.

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      Pat Riot

      So those illegal surveillance warrants excuse a lot then.

      Then, in the next administration, all of *this* illegal activity will excuse theirs?

      This is the destructive power of polarization on display here: the other tribe did it, so my tribe should do it too, and so on. If nobody cares about *principles* of law and order--or care about their tribe more than those principles--then we are indeed lost.

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        Kevin Durant?

        I wouldn’t say the surveillance warrants ‘excuse a lot of things’. I would say they are simply quite a bit worse than a lot of things.

        Hiring a private investigator is legal. Defrauding a court is not legal.

        Generally speaking:
        Illegal thing = worse than legal thing

        I do like this move where we engage in creepy behavior and then say with exasperation:

        “This is the destructive power of you trying to do a less sophisticated version of the creepiness we just did without ever getting to the crime part.”

        The bogus Steele Dossier wasn’t a crime and the bogus Giuliani Dossier is not a crime

        If we find out the FBI used Giuliani’s dossier to spy on Hunter -> crime

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          Pat Riot

          The FBI did not "use the Dossier" to do anything. And the Dossier, as a set of unvarnished intelligence papers, has held up pretty well to scrutiny. While it's not completely proven, some of its reports did turn out to be true, and only one item seems to have been proven false.

          Regardless, you seem to be excusing everything Trump does based on what you say others have done before.

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    JohnF

    Lev Parnas is about the farthest thing I can think of if the term "credible witness" is used. However, he is also one of the primary sources that right-wing media uses to smear Marie Yovanovitch for "criticizing the President" (an allegation that cannot be sourced to an endpoint that does not involve Rudy Giuliani and his various cohorts). Given his previous support from these various outlets, it is amusing to watch these same supporters attack his credibility now that his statements go against "their guy."

    So rather than debate Lev's various utterances, maybe it's worth thinking about how willing we are to accept "testimony" (put in parentheses since it's outside of a court) as long as the statements support what we want to believe. Marie Yovanovitch lost her job because a small group of people decided that this was their goal. Yuriy Lutsenko, a Ukrainian Politician, resented her and wanted her removed. He promised to exchange dirt on the Bidens once she was removed. Rudi, Parnass, and various other cohorts worked to get this done by conscripting a former Congressman to write a letter to the President, recruiting a friendly columnist to "report on" the slanders they wanted to perpetuate, and then finally pulling the ultimate lever (the Sean Hannity Show) to drive things to the point where she was fired. To this day, Donald Trump believes she was disloyal to him. Not because of anything she actually did, but because of what these people "said" that she did.

    Leaving aside this specific case, what should concern us all is how easy this was to do. There are hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) who firmly believe that Marie Yovanovitch is a horrible person who was disloyal to the President. If you want to really smear someone and destroy them, the media infrastructure is now fully in place. All you need is to engage the right people, but you don't need many of them.

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      Kevin Durant?

      “Marie Yovanovitch lost her job because a small group of people decided that this was their goal. Yuriy Lutsenko, a Ukrainian Politician, resented her and wanted her removed.”
      ————————————
      Lutsenko is the guy who replaced the prosecutor Biden had fired, Victor Shokin. Sounds like they had a real good handle on who the bad guys were

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        JohnF

        Things are very complicated over there. Perhaps less complicated than they were, but it is not easy to go from a state that was Soviet-controlled to a free democracy in twenty years or so. There are factions upon factions based on regional and familial associations there. Lutsenko was given the job in part because he had gone to jail for opposing the previous government, but also because he had connections with the new one.

        Understanding the complexity of these relationships requires expertise, a solid understanding of the history, and fluency in the language. The State Department has/had people with these skills. They were available to provide their best advice.

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          Kevin Durant?

          “Understanding the complexity of these relationships requires expertise, a solid understanding of the history, and fluency in the language. The State Department has/had people with these skills. They were available to provide their best advice.”
          ———————————-
          Yovanovitch WAS the Ambassador when Biden had Shokin (corrupt) replaced with Lutsenko (corrupt)

          Bravo to Joe and Marie on the skills, solid understanding, navigating complexity, and expertise portions of the exam :)

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            JohnF

            Sorry, but you have your dates wrong. Yovanovitch became US Ambassador to Ukraine in August 2016. Shokin was fired by the Ukrainian Parliament six months earlier in March. Lutsenko was appointed on May 12, 2016 - a week before Yovanovitch was even nominated for the post.

            This is why it is so easy to manipulate the public these days. Despite having full access to easily-referenced data on the Internet, people can't be bothered to look anything up before they state things that can easily be proved to be untrue.

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      Pat Riot

      You make a very good point about just how powerful Trump's Fox News "lever" is.

      On another note, how do you *know* Trump believes she was disloyal to him? What if, conversely, Trump knew that part of the "drug deal" they were cooking up required she be gone?

      Every time somebody in the media says, "Trump doesn't understand..." I think to myself: what if he in fact *does* understand? How can we know whether it's ignorance or mendacity? His "ignorance" sure is *convenient* for him much of the time...

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        JohnF

        In this instance, I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. I believe that he was their target, not their accomplice. They chose the approach they knew would be most successful. They didn't criticize her work performance, instead they said she was saying bad things about him. They didn't plant "journalists" and lawyers on Rachel Maddow's show (which he probably wouldn't watch), they put them on Hannity (which he definitely would). All the while, Rudy was chirping in his ear.

        I completely believe that he was all aboard on the Biden expedition, I just think that Marie Yovanovitch was collateral damage and he was manipulated into her dismissal.

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        1. Ann G

          Unfortunately, Trump is so easily manipulated.

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            JohnF

            Perhaps, but he's not easily engaged. I doubt very much that he cares about the performance of US Ambassador's in Burkina Faso, Belgium, or Ecuador. I doubt that he would care if someone turned up in his office to complain that the US Ambassador to Belgium was unduly favoring the Flemish speakers over the French speakers. However, put someone on Hannity who will attest to the "fact" that the Ambassador to Belgium said that Trump is an imbecile and you'll see some real action.

            Rudy and his team knew exactly what they were doing.

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    CynthiaW

    When did Giuliani go around the bend, or was he always, but we didn't notice?

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    Tyler

    One idea that’s been banging around in my head for a while now is that social media dramatically distort our perception of mainstream versus fringe views. I think of it as “Dunbar hacking”. We can maintain significant social relationships with about 150 people—about the size of the average person’s Christmas card mailing list. In this context, if I know fifty people who hold a given view (and I’m not a member of a cult), that view is likely to be pretty well represented nationally, at least in certain communities. It certainly may not amount to a third of the electorate, but it’s unlikely to be an extreme or completely bonkers perspective.

    On the other hand, social media creates false intimacy with people who provide the most “engaging” content, which is nearly always outrageous, invidious, and hyperbolic. It is easy to come away from a quick spin through a Facebook feed with the impression that “everyone” believes some insane thing—that the left wants to institute Sharia law or that the right wants to repeal the nineteenth amendment. It’s even worse on Twitter, since political moderates effectively don’t participate at all.

    I think this dynamic may at least partly explain Trump’s tendency to argue his points by proclaiming that “people are saying” or “everybody’s talking about” various things. No doubt he sees hundreds and even thousands of Twitter accounts proclaiming that CrowdStrike has a hidden server in Ukraine (or whatever). That’s a lot of people in absolute numbers, but of course even if every one were a real US person, it’d amount to a vanishingly small percentage of the population—probably less than the flat earth community.

    Another way of thinking about this concept is that most of us probably have one friend who is a bit of a goofball—or about 0.67% of our social network. There are around 250 million adults in the US, so that works out to roughly 1.7 million people who are at least as weird as your weirdest friend. Twitter’s, Facebook’s, and YouTube’s algorithms love promoting these weirdos, because they say engaging things. What we see online is effectively a Mensa community of high-WeirdQ types that is completely invalid as a guide to the opinions of our countrymen. It is, however, large relative to our personal Dunbar set, so it seems like an overwhelming consensus.

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      Ray Salemi

      This is a good point and builds upon the notion that our brains can’t tell local news from global news. When we hear about a bus accident in Asia we start thinking about our local cross-town bus because our brains take all information as coming from nearby.

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    2. Ann G

      And we have the option to disengage with internet "society".

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