Greg Sargent points out that Rudy Giuliani has openly confessed to the whole Ukraine scandal conspiracy.
We don’t talk enough about how central disinformation is to the Ukraine scandal. The extortion of Ukraine was at bottom an effort to enlist a foreign power’s help in waging disinformation warfare in the 2020 election, to Trump’s benefit. Disinformation was central to the 2016 Russian attack on our political system, which Trump eagerly embraced. Now disinformation is being employed to escape accountability for all of it.
Dahlia Lithwick, in a you-absolutely-must-read-this column, says something along the same lines.
The truth does not really have a place in this administration. Attorney General Bill Barr’s pretend investigation into his conviction that federal agencies were illegally “spying” (his words) on the Trump campaign will be a bust. Never mind, they will refocus the umbrage on some attenuated fact about the Steele dossier. The evidence that Donald Trump has, on several occasions, conditioned foreign aid on domestic political favors is now so unequivocal that Republicans have advanced three dozen alternate defenses for it, without even attempting to coordinate a theory beyond the Russian propaganda line upon which they now seem to have settled. Any attempts to pierce the logic of that illogic is pointless, which is why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has no option other than to keep seeking and speaking truth into the factual void. Doug Collins somehow kept up his refrain on Wednesday that nobody in the room could agree on the most elementary facts, even as every single fact witness (including those selected by the GOP) and every single legal expert (including one selected by the GOP) agrees substantially on all of the material facts surrounding the Ukraine transaction.
I sincerely urge you to read both columns. I’m not going to try to summarize them further; just read them.
Other stuff to read:
Eric Levitz, Jobs, Jobs Everywhere, But Most of Them Kind of Suck
Charles Pierce, This Highly Organized Right-Wing Militia Is an Ominous Portent. Also at Esquire, Jack Holmes writes The President’s Fans Think He’d ‘Operate More Effectively’ Without Congress or the Courts.
WaPo, Phone logs in impeachment report renew concern about security of Trump communications. Follow that up with comments from Scott Lemieux and Max Boot.
There are white lies and embellishments which are all the advertisements we are bombarded with in the most part.. At times some of these cross the line into serious lies and flat fraudulent advertisement. It appears that the sales pitches and tactics on Oxycodone reached the point of malicious lies which caused many addictions and large numbers of deaths to many citizens of this country. Those who profited are busy hiding their money, while cities and states and families struggle to do damage control on the human carnage it left in its wake. Ah capitalism at its best or worst depending upon your point of view. Capitalize the profit and socialize the loss. Oh, and hide the human misery that the lies created. If you can, also protect the liars and cheats from all consequences.
The malicious lies we are dealing with from the Trump administration with reference to Ukraine are two. One has to do with a Russian lie that has been adopted by Trump and the right wing. Senator Kennedy from Louisiana is still spouting the lie and quotes references as to its veracity. In this lie the company Crowdstrike was called a Ukrainian company by Trump. Crowdstrike is and American company located in Sunnydale, California. This is not hard to fact check. It is harder to say Ukraine does not have a server with Hillary's e-mails on it, as it is to say any country does not have it. All we really have is the Russian lie, fingering Ukraine, and a president and a couple of Senators who propagate that lie. The amazing part of this is that Lindsey Graham, refutes this lie. Is he not as sold out as some? The other lie is of course about Biden and his son. Here one does not even need truth, just a rumor with legs. It is the almost perfect political dirt, with no way to prove the negative.
The perfect political dirt, however, is Trump and Rudy caught red handed trying to embellish a Russian cover story and trying to extort added "facts" from Ukraine to embellish its tale of corruption aimed at Biden and really all Democrats. They were caught doing a Russian propaganda game, planting stories in news media and building a base for dissemination of disinformation. The big lie straight from the Russian Political Playbook. It was being prepped for the upcoming election, ready to be unleashed by the right wing media and probably Russian social media attack trolls as the election unfolded. The best part of this dirt is that, by and large, it is true and as such fits the facts at hand. It is not dirt the Democrats fabricated but the dirt that came from Trump and Rudy wallowing in it.
SOSDD!
Same Old Shit Different Day…
At this point I just assume anything coming from the mouth of anyone in the Trump administration is a lie. It saves a lot of fact-checking time.
So SOSDD or some semblance of truth or RHR. RHR = Rabbit Hole Reality.
Pardon my Swami, but if you find yourself down the rabbit hole this is the Cheshire Cat.
One thing that should be included in the impeachment should be that Zelensky told trump that he had stayed in his property. Ie I paid you. Emoluments. Right there in the phone call.