Well, the letter isn’t completely unhinged, but it’s very vitriolic and accuses the Democrats in the strongest possible terms of playing politics. Trump also sent this screed to every member of Congress, both House and Senate. You can see it at CNN by clicking on the screenshot below.
I have no reaction save incredulity. But his supporters will love it, while the rest of us will just shake our heads. For one thing, he claims he has been given no opportunity to defend himself!
He’s running scared, or so I think. But he’s also sure, as we should be, that the Senate won’t convict him. Pity.
Sub
It’s relevant that it’s on White House stationary. We all have friends who assure us that his unhinged persona is an act for tweets and rallies. No, it’s who he is as our President.
I feel it should be our sworn duty to burst that bubble. Many voted for him thinking that he was the smart, savvy businessman behind the scenes. In 2016, even I wondered if that might be true, though I would have bet real money it wasn’t. The only way most regular folk can still believe in Trump is by scrupulously maintaining these fantasies. We have to get them to come to grips with them before the 2020 election.
There are no regular folks who believe in Trump. His base will NEVER stop supporting him regardless of how much he lies. Much of their Trump support is based on their hate of Democrats, non-whites, non-Christian [as they choose to define that], etc. We just have to make certain that the voters who see the charlatan for what he is actually show up and vote.
“There are no regular folks who believe in Trump.”
I’d like to believe that’s true but I doubt it. Just in the comments of this website alone I have seen people talk about relatives and acquaintances who believe the impeachment is just partisan bickering. They don’t follow the news. Perhaps they occasionally pay attention to Fox News playing in the background. They voted for Trump in 2016 because everyone around them voted for him and they mostly only saw Trump signs in their neighborhood. They’re default in 2020 is to vote the same way again. They just don’t come to grips with their government or the news. I think there are a lot of red state voters that can be described this way.
The idea of impeaching him, but NOT sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate has been talked about a bunch recently on the interwebs. I like this for a couple of reasons. 1) he is officially impeached. 2) it will allow them to wait for the courts to get witnesses currently obstructing. (Rudy, Mick, etc.) and 3. It would be sweet justice for the guy that refused to let an Obama supreme court nominee get his day for over 2 1/2 years.
and 4) it will drive Trump totally nuts. If his blood pressure gets high enough this might all become moot.
Lol! Also true.
I’ve heard about this strategy as well, and I think it is sound. But if the Senate has the 51 votes to allow witnesses like Schumer has demanded, then I’d say let it go.
I’d go with that.
I think Schumer knows they’ll never allow those witnesses to testify. After all, no one on Trump’s sides really wants the facts to be aired any more than they have to be. Schumer is just pushing back on the GOP’s hinting that they want the whistleblower and Adam Schiff to testify.
It also keeps pushing the narrative (and it needs pushing) that a vast majority of Americans want to hear the testimony of those immediately surrounding Trump who are and have been involved. Schumer’s argument is sound: “my colleagues say there’s not enough evidence to impeach. So let’s get the evidence.” As Schumer implies, it’s not like the evidence has been forthcoming. It’s the same impediment tactic that Mueller was confronted with, even though he still indicted a lot of people, and a few are and will be in prison.
For some recent perspective, Obama resisted charges he thought were bogus, but his administration still endured 9 separate Benghazi investigations (among others), but they complied with House subpoenas, handed over the required data and documents, agreed with depositions, etc., and they all proved nil. Now there’s Trump doing things no ‘president’ has ever done. And an educated body like the Senate is confronted with the obvious Obstruction of Congress Impeachment article and the Republicans deflect fact with conspiracy theories. The name for this is High-Bullshit, synonymous with high crimes, and never before witnessed in American politics to this extant. Yay! age of “information”. Here lie the foundations of a failed state. And the resistance to testify only strengthens the argument that they are engaged in a cover-up.
I look at the way Trump’s GOP regards the law and I ask myself, Damn, should we all stop obeying? Is that what the cult is all about? Got guns? Why pay income taxes? How about ignoring subpoenas? And while we’re at it, let’s ignore traffic tickets, bench warrants and jury duty! Why not? I love my non-complying Prez. #MeToo45
Well said.
Nancy don’t send it to the senate if they aren’t treating it like a trial. Just let it hang! The republicans will hate this more than a trial.
PCC: I’m not sure whence comes your incredulity. Especially considering what “he” had to work with, I find the letter brilliantly written, and brilliantly timed.
Which of course probably means that His Orange Shitheadedness had absolutely nothing to do with it. In fact, save for the spurious quasi-Germanic capitalizations, there’s not *anything* about the letter that even vaguely hints at his authorship.
But *someone* did a hell of a job on it. Bullshit it may be, but all in all it’s pretty well-written bullshit. I hope that our team responds as well.
Using Lindsay Graham’s comparison that Trump has been treated worse than the witches at Salem is brilliant? And still harping on Hillary? This looks like a desperate act by a desperate man to me.
Yes, it’s brilliant. It doesn’t seem that way to us because we’re not the target demographic. But when I try to put myself in the shoes of the people that he’s talking to here, yes.
Yeah, his base is easy to rile up as they are already riled, but as far as a strategy, it won’t change any minds or votes, so again, I see it as desperate (not to mention crazy).
It’s not about changing minds or votes. It’s about making more of the people on your side turn out to vote.
Jeremy Pereira puts it most succinctly.Some say (correctly enough) that this only “energizes the base.”
But if the Dems can’t do the same, the fact that they may still win the popular vote (again) won’t make any difference.
I, too, don’t think he wrote the letter, he couldn’t be that coherent for 5+ pages; and in my estimation his vocabulary and syntax are too deficient to have written it. It was written to seem as if Trump wrote it.
I certainly think that it accurately reflects what he thinks and wants; and I think he did have something to do with it in that some of his spoken words were worked over and cleaned up by an amanuensis and inserted into the text.
On reflection, I think that you’ve probably nailed it.
Yeah, the letter bears the indicia of a collaborative effort. The punctuation and syntax and capitalization are all a bit off, but not nearly as off as had the Great Man written it all on his own. (Plus, I don’t think Trump knows how to use a word processor, or any other computing device more complicated than a keypad for twitter.)
Some of it, nonetheless, is pure Trump, lines that he likely insisted be included. My guess is that White House Oberführer Stephen Miller did the rest of the drafting.
I agree, especially the part about Miller. I think he was also behind a certain anonymous letter many months ago.
Even reading the tweets my “close reading” sense picks up a tingling of several authors.
He has a twitter writer and he didn’t “write” any of his books either. He talks, and ony write notes-to-self with a sharpie.
I don’t think the arguments it makes are “brilliant” but it is a very nice summing up of Trump’s best position. His supporters have already slotted the impeachment as just Dems against Trump. Once a voter strongly believes that, there’s much point at looking at facts. He is painting a picture where he is the victim, something that his supporters will readily believe.
It’s like when a married couple argue loudly in the mall parking lot. After making sure no one is getting physically hurt, you tune it out and walk quickly to your car. You don’t ask to hear the facts so you can decide who to believe.
I agree, Trump sure as shit did not write this letter. Doubt started by the end of the first sentence.
I’d guess Sean Hannity wrote it, or his staff.
Is there enough of a corpus of Trump-written documents to allow for statistical text-evaluation to prove that it’s not his writing, and possibly even to show it’s from someone else?
Would it be worth the effort? After all, proving that the Earl of Oxford wrote Bill Shakespeare’s work is far more important. “Barely literate politician has speechwriter” hasn’t been news since … a very long time ago.
Agreed. WAY too well-written to be a product of the tRump.
cr
The senate can change the rules.
We need four Republican senators to go along with the Democrats to vote a rule that the senate votes in a secret ballot.
That will free up several Republican senators to vote against Trump, maybe enough to kick him out of office.
They should target Mitt Romney and Susan Collins and a couple more. Maybe Ted Cruz will want to get back at Trump for disparaging his father.
Collins showed her true colors when she voted for Kavanaugh. Cruz is a toady who will not risk his senate seat by turning on Drumpf, even if his orangeness repeated his slander against the senator’s father. Romney, like others before him, might speak out slightly against our cheetohead in chief, but like Flake and Crocker, before him, I don’t think he would vote with the dems against the republican majority.
Speaking of toadies:
https://politics.theonion.com/mitch-mcconnell-inflates-throat-pouch-in-show-of-domina-1819591493
Either that, or a siamang gibbon.
Googling…did not know that about those gibbons.
The senators are there to represent their constituents. They do not have to do everything their constituents say but they are accountable to them.
A secret ballot would fatally compromise the ability of the senators’ constituents to hold the senators accountable for their actions.
Ah, the Donald, his customary equanimity in full bloom.
His missive, I’m all but certain, sets a new low in the annals of presidential epistolary communication.
I’m just impressed that he managed more than 280 characters at all. Though I suspect he had some help…
I’m impressed that it’s not all in sharpie.
Good point.
Trump of course is only scared because he hasn’t got the faintest idea what is going on or what impeachment is or what exactly he did that people say is wrong.
No one, of course, should take the level of desperation and powerless he’s showing here as a measure of the amount of danger he is really in.
He just doesn’t know what’s going on, and has no idea whatsoever of the powers that are protecting him.
“He just doesn’t know what’s going on, and has no idea whatsoever of the powers that are protecting him.”
He also doesn’t seem to get that his erstwhile “friend and mentor” Vladimir is laughing at him, along with the other tough guys of the world. They expect him to implode and will guffaw out loud as they watch it happen.
The only ones who will care are those whose boats are poised to capsize alongside his, and those whose innate charity forbids them to find amusement in another’s pain, no matter how loathsome that individual may be.
“They expect him to implode and will guffaw out loud as they watch it happen.”
I highly doubt this. If you are Russia or North Korea or China, would you want Trump in office or an actual functioning adult. I’m betting Trump. His downfall will put someone with a marginally functioning brain in office which is an upgrade for us and a bad thing for them.
I’m sure that the leaders are laughing at the American people but they will not celebrate Trump’s downfall, whenever it happens.
There is no reason for DJT to be scared about anything. He won’t get convicted, there will be no repercussions. And if he asked his rabid followers to send along cash with their prayers to him, they would.
O wait… he already did? Ten million in 48 hours after impeachment, added to the already raised millions. I predict he will find a way to keep it all for himself.
He should go into Religion— he could really clean up there.
Can’t wait for John Oliver to refute it line by line.
Well, I got to the third paragraph and read the word “egregious”. Der Drumpenfuehrer would have no knowledge of that word, so he didn’t write this letter. But his unhinged ranting comes through perfectly, no doubt due to the zombies surrounding him who have absorbed this stuff unabated for three years now and can spout it at will.
But didn’t you know that Trump “knows words” and in fact “has the best words”? Hell, he might have words that are so best, no one else even has them.
And a “Very stable genius.”
🐴 💩
Like Cofevfe ?
Do not forget his “very, very large brain”.
What happened to twitter, his usual form of idiotic communication? He is running scared and he may see the tides are turning. The Senate democrats want testimony from some of his stooges and that really has him nuts. He could not stand that, but guess what – a poll shows 74% also want them to testify. If that “we” is a mouse in your pocket, fine. Trump may believe he will not be convicted in Senate but there is one or two of us who are not so sure.
Sub
If you know anything about 45 (and we all do), you can tell EXACTLY where he inserted his comments. (Hint: most of his additions end with an explanation point.)
Here is as good a place as any to quote a Gary Kasparov tweet (that I borrowed from a Heather Hastie Homily):
The usual contradictions of fascist rhetoric.
We’re superior, but victims
We’re in charge , but our opposition is to blame for everything.
We’re winning, but be afraid all the time
We’re dialectically challenged.
Ain’t that the truth!
The most shameful and shameless letter ever written on White House stationery.
WHat I foundquite amusing was the accusation that Speaker Pelosi had “…offended the Founding Fathers”. Considering that the last of the group most historians consider the FFs died 190 years ago (John Jay, died 17 May 1829), they’re not capable of being offended (but that distant sound we all hear is all of them turning in their graves).
The NY Times published the letter with notes.
nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/17/us/politics/trump-pelosi-letter.html
And the hits just keep on a-comin’:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1207147066075549697
Judicious use of some copper wire and magnets plus the founding fathers in their graves could produce enough electricity to power a small city. Then Trump could say he was reducing global warming. If he believed in it.