Trump’s going to try to distract MSM with a new release of a second, April “transcript” which probably resembles the non-verbatim memorandum of a telcon from 25 July already released that confirms the arms for dirt scandal.
It presumably will be as “perfect” as the first one. And just as diverting of mass attention as the stupidity of insisting on revealing the whistleblower’s identity.
The reality is that the scandal covers months of activity now documented by the impeachment inquiry, even as the inquiry will include patterns of obstruction revealed by the Mueller report.
The “favor” is a series of demands that turned into bribery and extortion over months and only pointed at by a whistleblower. Even if the military aid got released, it was still about Trump’s personal gains and not national policy. It is like many crimes, about the attempt, rather than its success. This week is about the public perception of actual impeachability in preparation for a Senate trial.
CNN tried to summarize the depositions and testimony now that the open sessions are beginning this week. It’s worth your time.
To President Donald Trump, the whole flap with Ukraine is over a “perfect” phone call.
“It’s based on a single phone call of congratulations to the President of Ukraine, which they fraudulently mischaracterized to sound absolutely horrible,” Trump said a few weeks ago of his July 25 call with the Ukrainian President cited by awhistleblower complaint.
But a review of more than 2,600 pages of transcripts released this week from eight witnesses who have testified in the House impeachment inquiry over the past six weeks shows how controversy over Trump’s Ukraine policy had been brewing inside the US government for months. It roiled efforts to bolster a key strategic alliance after Trump enlisted his own personal attorney to work outside normal diplomatic channels in an apparent effort to bolster his reelection chances.
Trump’s defence, as the House prepares to open its hearings Wednesday on the matter, has been to point to his own problematic words in the Ukraine phone call, declare them to be exonerating, and repeat.
In the face of abundant evidence that the whistleblower remains engaged, Trump suggests the whistleblower has skulked away. Political loyalists who tried to do Trump’s bidding with Ukraine are lumped with career diplomats as “Never Trumpers.”
He assails the whistleblower’s account of the phone call as “sooo wrong, not even close,” even though the official White House account of the call that came out afterward showed the whistleblower got the details right.
“Once I released the actual call, their entire case fell apart,” Trump said of Democrats. The rough transcript actually helped fuel the inquiry because it affirmed and fleshed out the whistleblower’s account.
Trump has approached the spectacle of public hearings in the impeachment inquiry with understandable frustration but also a flawed account of the circumstances behind them. https://t.co/HbwulFlRxLapnews.com/… canada.lastminute-news.com/…
Trump’s awful new ‘transcript’ tweets demonstrate how his propaganda works – The Washington Post
Trump is now openly calling on his Republican allies to produce doctored transcripts of witness testimony that will exonerate him. #ImpeachmentInquiryhttps://t.co/Wi4OZTpzTq
