Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse



Why would a president say such things? And in public? My view, for what it’s worth, is that Trump’s pathological narcissism overrides reality on a minute-by-minute basis, and that because of this, the very idea of the rule of law, which makes no distinction between the really stable geniuses and everybody else, is impossible for Trump to understand.

It’s designed as a neutral check on any individual’s desire to do whatever he wants — and a “neutral check” is, quite simply, beyond Trump’s comprehension. Looking at his long and abysmal business career, the rule of law was always, always an object of scorn, something only suckers cared about and lawyers were paid to circumvent. For Trump, the law is something to break, avoid or pay off. And as president, he clearly believes he is above it.

But narcissism is no defense. Delusional mania and paranoia are no defenses either. This is an open assault on the integrity of U.S. elections and the rule of law by the president himself. We need no more investigations or even hearings. We already have irrefutable proof. The suspect has confessed. Some detail and background might be discovered by interviewing witnesses, but the core case is in our hands.

An attempt to get a foreign power to intervene in an internal election process is definitionally an impeachable offense. It was precisely the fear of foreign interference that prompted much of the founders’ discussion of impeachment.

Draw up the articles of impeachment, keep them short and focused on unchallengeable evidence in the Ukraine, and now China cases. Don’t let Trump deploy a barrage of distractions or misdirections. Don’t let the evidence grow cold. Hold a vote as soon as possible. This man is a menace to the core integrity of our republic and Constitution. He must be removed before the damage is incalculable.
 


We can now make an educated guess that President Trump probably knew the jig was up when he appeared on the White House lawn Thursday morning and announced that he wants Ukraine and China to investigate his leading political rival. This brazen presidential advertisement for more foreign interference took place as the House Intelligence Committee was receiving a batch of text messages recording for posterity that the administration’s Ukraine policy was predicated on trading a presidential visit and military aid for the investigations Trump wanted.

If he didn’t know by then, Trump almost certainly knew it at 9:00 p.m. that night, when he tweeted out his bottom-line position: He has an “absolute right” to push foreign countries to investigate anybody he desires, for any reason.

...

The clutter has been cleared away and everybody faces the brutally simple choice that Trump presents. Either they hand the president the absolute right, now and forever, to use American foreign policy as a lever to discredit their political rivals, or they vote to impeach.
 


New York (CNN Business)A former Trump Organization executive says she thinks President Donald Trump may resign rather than face possible removal from office by impeachment.

"He does a lot of things to save face," Barbara Res, a former Trump Organization vice president, told CNN's Brian Stelter on Reliable Sources Sunday.

"It would be very, very, very bad for him to be impeached," Res said. "I don't know that he'll be found guilty but I don't know that he wants to be impeached. I think that's what this panic is about. And my gut [instinct] is that he'll leave office, he'll resign. Or make some kind of a deal, even, depending on what comes out."

Res said she was hesitant to share her opinion, because "I could very well be wrong."

But Res has first-hand experience working with Trump. She was the construction engineer on some of his key projects, including Trump Tower, and she is the author of https://www.amazon.com/All-Alone-68th-Floor-Construction-ebook/dp/B01BK5XSZM ("All Alone on the 68th Floor: How One Woman Changed the Face of Construction,") which partly chronicles her time working for the President while he ran his company.

She has been critical of Trump in recent years, including during the 2016 campaign, when she said he wasn't fit for office.
 


SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said on Sunday that it had no desire to engage in “sickening negotiations” with the United States anymore, rejecting Washington’s suggestion that negotiators from both countries meet again in Stockholm in two weeks.

In a statement issued a day after bilateral talks broke down in Stockholm on Saturday, the North Korean Foreign Ministry said it would not meet with American negotiators again until after Washington took “a substantial step” to “complete and irreversible withdrawal of hostile policy.”

The ministry suggested that the Trump administration, faced with a slew of domestic political scandals, was more interested in forcing a deal on North Korea and claiming a major diplomatic achievement to help the president’s re-election bid than in satisfying the North’s demands.

“The U.S. has actually not made any preparations for the negotiations but sought to meet its political goal of abusing the D.P.R.K.-U.S. dialogue for its domestic political” interests, said the ministry’s statement, which was carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. D.P.R.K. is the abbreviation of the North’s official name, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
 


KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — As Rudy Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian officials last spring to investigate one of Donald Trump’s main political rivals, a group of individuals with ties to the president and his personal lawyer were also active in the former Soviet republic.

Their aims were profit, not politics. This circle of businessmen and Republican donors touted connections to Giuliani and Trump while trying to install new management at the top of Ukraine’s massive state gas company. Their plan was to then steer lucrative contracts to companies controlled by Trump allies, according to two people with knowledge of their plans.

Their plan hit a snag after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko lost his reelection bid to Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose conversation with Trump about former Vice President Joe Biden is now at the center of the House impeachment inquiry of Trump.

But the effort to install a friendlier management team at the helm of the gas company, Naftogaz, would soon be taken up with Ukraine’s new president by U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, whose slate of candidates included a fellow Texan who is one of Perry’s past political donors.

It’s unclear if Perry’s attempts to replace board members at Naftogaz were coordinated with the Giuliani allies pushing for a similar outcome, and no one has alleged that there is criminal activity in any of these efforts. And it’s unclear what role, if any, Giuliani had in helping his clients push to get gas sales agreements with the state-owned company.

But the affair shows how those with ties to Trump and his administration were pursuing business deals in Ukraine that went far beyond advancing the president’s personal political interests. It also raises questions about whether Trump allies were mixing business and politics just as Republicans were calling for a probe of Biden and his son Hunter, who served five years on the board of another Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.
 
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