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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      Ray Salemi

      I think one of the issues is that the Trump Republicans are losing ground demographically and so they are resorting to more and more extreme tactics to try to maintain power as a minority in an Republic.

      The is causing the same sort of tension you get when you draw a rubber-band back. Eventually it has to snap with a tremendous release of potential energy.

      Once the filibuster is gone and several issues have been addressed unilaterally (health care, climate, automatic appointment of judges if the Senate fails to act.) the Republicans will be able to reconstitute themselves as the party of classics liberalism rather than as the party of white guys and their wives holding onto power like grim death.

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          Ray Salemi

          This is another case where McConnell did tremendous damage. There was once an agreement that the party out of power would try to temper the direction of the winning party’s proposals but would not flat out block them. The good old days of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neil come to mind.

          McConnell changed the game (maybe Gingrich before him?) to be that the party out of power would block the message of a lost election with every trick in the book. Whereas the filibuster was once used to create a moderated version of the winning party’s mandate, McConnell used it to block the will of the majority and thus made the tool unusable in the future.

          I’m hoping that if there is no filibuster then moderate Republicans will provide votes that will leave the extreme liberals out in the cold when it comes to the legislation. If they don’t then the extreme liberal elements will have to be installed to get the needed 50 votes.

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          Ray Salemi

          This is one of my arguments for removing the filibuster. The Republicans would actually have to run on removing benefits with voters knowing they could do it.

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  7. 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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        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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    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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        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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      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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    CynthiaW

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

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