Day: November 21, 2019
Nothing new, everything clear
The testimony of former National Security Council staffer Fiona Hill and Foreign Service officer David Holmes today has confirmed what we already knew: President Trump was pressing Ukrainian President Zelensky for investigations not to serve the nation’s interest, but rather to serve Trump’s own electoral ambitions. Russian security services planted the cock and bull story Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was plugging about Ukrainian involvement in interfering in the 2016 US election and the need for an investigation of the Bidens, father and son.
Combined with US Ambassador to the EU Sondland’s testimony yesterday, it is clear that not only Trump but also Secretary of State Pompeo and Acting OMB Director Mulvaney were in on this scheme to defraud the American people and give Trump a leg up in the 2020 electoral contest. This was no rogue operation but a conspiracy against the United States that the President directed. How anyone at this point can stomach the thought of such a president in the White House is beyond me. Just imagine how Republicans would have reacted had President Obama done something comparable. I guarantee most Democrats in the Senate would not have stayed loyal.
So far however the Republicans have, because they don’t see the loss of Trump’s popularity in the electorate that would endanger their own re-election campaigns. They are putting at risk the national security of the United States for their own interests. Just remember this: Russian President Putin, whose services surely listen to non-encrypted phone calls with the White House, knew what was going on and could use that knowledge to blackmail Trump. Not that they necessarily had to: he seems to be at the very least a willing Moscow dupe, and maybe an agent.
It is high time America is rescued from this nightmare Administration, where the principal architect of immigration policy is a white supremacist, the Secretary of State is an evangelical ideologue, and the Attorney General is a partisan hack, not to mention the extremists determined to undermine their own agencies leading Commerce, Education, Interior, and other government departments and several embassies. Honest non-partisan experts are fleeing in droves. Inexperienced careerists are everywhere. None of it is new, all of it is clear.
PS November 22: Laurence Tribe did a great job of drawing out the conclusions on Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC show last night:
Here is a Fox News commentator who sees the situation much as Tribe does:
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stevenson’s army, November 21
– To me, the most significant foreign policy exchange in the Democratic presidential candidate debate was the widespread sharp criticism of Saudi Arabia. I don’t see how any of them can back off that if elected.
– Meanwhile, the US is sending more troops to Saudi Arabia.
– But DOD denies planning troop withdrawals from South Korea.
– FP article raises a concern I share — the vulnerability of US forces given advanced technology available to others.
– The docudrama about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s “torture report” opens in theaters and will stream after Thanksgiving. RollCall tells a story about how the key staffer found his way in DC through networking. Good lessons for Hill job seekers.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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