The WaPo is adding details to the whistleblower story that's been percolating for the past few days. Here's what we have so far,

a member of the intelligence community filed a whistleblower complaint in August.

the Inspector General certified the complaint.

the Director of National Intelligence refused to release the complaint as mandated by law.

the DNI said a higher authority told him not to release the complaint.

tonight we learn that the complaint is based on a specific promise Trump made to a foreign leader. Neither the promise nor the leader is currently known.

And Putin is the only leader Trump is known to have spoke to on the phone in the 5 weeks prior to the complaint per Business Insider.

Meanwhile in Canada:


Photo Shows Justin Trudeau in Brownface at ‘Arabian Nights’ Party | Time

Dying lol

WATCH: Trump Asks General to Discuss 'Wired' Border Wall, General Replies 'Sir, There Could Be Some Merit in Not Discussing That' WATCH: Trump Asks General to Discuss 'Wired' Border Wall, General Replies 'Sir, There Could Be Some Merit in Not Discussing That'

He is the proverbial 3 year old you hand a glass of milk to and ask him not to spill and in 3 seconds your cat is wearing it.

and he took a shit on the living room rug

Guys like that general at least give me hope there are still adults in the room protecting him from himself.

I really hope we find out some day how many bat shit insane orders he tried to give that were just ignored or deflected.

That whole campaign rally with the Hispanic or your Country interaction was straight up cringe. The part about how he thought the guy looked more white(waspy) than him was especially cringe.

Oh, I have no doubt that once he is gone, we will have literally hundreds of former GOP Congressional and Executive branch insiders jumping up to tell us stories of all the crazy.

Now, when it could do good for the country we get crickets. But when they are all trying to convince us that *This new GOP guy* is totally normal and you can believe me and trust him because hey we all agree that Trump was a crazy outlier and we all knew it the whole time so its really not fair to bring up Trump anymore.

You will be able to fill an Amazon warehouse with "Thinkpieces written after Trump is out of office by people who benefited from Trump and who now very soberly say that we all need to, as a country, move on and stop bringing up Trump."

It won't be as bad as living through Trump. But it will be almost as bad as living through Trump.

It appears that the whistleblower came forward after a call with Ukraine's President. It's been known for some time that Rudy Guillani has been in Ukraine trying to get dirt on Joe's Biden son. The promise Trump made to him might be to release military/intel aid that they have been holding on too.



Again this is what the Washington Post and other media sources have been talking about. Until/if the whistleblower is allowed to come forward, we might not know for sure

It’d be hilarious if it was a double knockout of Trump -and- Biden but I’m sure it’s just “fake news”

The Senate GOP doesn't seem to care, and that means Pelosi won't do anything about it. Now it's normal for GOP presidents to contract with foreign governments to help defeat Democratic opponents. He got away with it last time, so of course he's going to do it again.

The Giuliani melt-down on Cuomo last night was 10/10.

As close as we'll ever get to a real-life, "You're goddamn right I ordered the code-red."

So the spin seems to be "Of course we asked Ukraine to give us dirt on Biden. But that's not because Biden is an enemy of the GOP. It is because Biden is an enemy of America. Don't you want the President to try and go after America's enemies?"

I expect not a single member of the GOP, barring Amash if he's still officially GOP, will speak out against this. It's now going to be normal for GOP presidents to trade foreign aid for dirt on political opponents.

It's the natural extension of McConnell saying that his goal was to make Obama a one-term president and the GOP going all-in with that strategy. When one of the two parties openly says that it would rather wreck the country then let the other party be in charge of it, and we don't treat that for the horrific sentiment that it is, then we get the government we deserve.

So I think the ClimateStrike Protest crowds were just slightly bigger than a MAGA rally-but I'm sure someone from the Trump campaign will "borrow" one or two for their crowd shots...

slightly?

I wonder what the carbon footprint of these protests were.

Alaska becomes the fifth state to eliminate the GOP presidential primary for 2020.

We now question a person's patriotism by simply asking where they're from.

Serious question: Does Trump actually want to be impeached?

Hell, part of him probably thinks it'll benefit him electorally by increasing turnout (because the Senate is never going to vote to convict).

That's kind of my thinking. He has been told that he will "win" impeachment in the Senate, so why not do it and get the win?

I think he knows the senate has given him complete immunity and therefore can do anything he wants w/o legal consequence.

I do want to read the transcripts but, with his track record, we probably can conclude he asked/hinted Ukraine to investigate. 2020 can't get here soon enough.

Why would you think it would be the actual transcript? After the shit they pulled with the Mueller report they wouldn't think twice about doctoring the transcript.

And TBH it wouldn't matter. He could come right out and claim he is trying to torpedo Biden and his followers and fellow republicans would claim he was doing the right thing.

And now we seem to be where we all expected. The GOP has rallied around the I don't know/So what axis and the Dems are too cowardly to do anything other than tweet concern.

How is Mike Pence feeling right now?

Curious what the context is for this. So much going on hard to keep up.

Would the GOP run Mike Pence for President in 2020 or open the primaries back up?

Just that it looks like impeachment hearings will actually happen over Ukraine.

There's no way the GOP convicts. Public opinion polls (at least the last ones I saw) are thoroughly against impeachment. It'll be a win for Trump and may well get this jackass re-elected.


And it's still absolutely, unequivocally the right thing to do.

House Speaker Pelosi to announce formal impeachment inquiry of Trump

Well how about that.

One other thought: there's nothing in this whole mess that points more to the utter and complete spinelessness of GOP elected representatives than the fact that Mike Pence is waiting in the wings. Pence gives them everything they want policy-wise, without the idiotic sideshow, without the tariffs, without, and without the risk of the President deciding Chuck and Nancy are being nice to him and therefore he should do gun control or something else that the left wants and the right doesn't. In a world where they cared about the policies and principles that they claim to support more than their own political hides, they'd JUMP at the first chance to replace Trump with Pence.

Pence has everything they could want policy-wise but he doesn't have the cult-leader-esque charisma of Trump that rallies the base.

aha.

I thought maybe Pence had a daughter with Asbergers or something

I like it. Win or lose (and it won't be approved by the Senate), I'm all for going through the process.

Ouch, forgot about the stock market ... but its worth it.

Dow falls after Trump criticizes China in UN speech, impeachment worries rise - MarketWatch

I'm in agreement, but the damage Trump has done will be his legacy. Say he is re-elected, isn't that the worse case scenario for Trump?

I mean, if the economy tanks in his second term, and more and more states turn blue (not saying the Senate will change hands), doesn't this kill the republican party...?

especially if these tariffs not only harm the majority of his voters but compounded with a depression, basically destroy the US economy for years to come?

Most of the middle class will be gutted, there will be no improvement to healthcare, there won't be a wall or any resolution to migrants, there will be more spree/mass killings, schools are basically being gutted so the next few generations will be completely behind, the current crop will be hopelessly in debt and probably homeless...

I want him to win because it doesn't get the Republicans off the hook, continue down this path and we go into a war...and I think the Grand Old Party will be over.

If a democrat wins, they get left will all of this, and they will fail. Fox News will propagandize and worse, Trump could come back.

If they do decide to impeach, Trump will resign and Pence will pardon him, and he'll be free to rally to his base and make money off their stupidity.

Either way, I'm insulated.

The Senate just passed a motion (non binding) by unanimous consent calling on Trump to release the whistleblower complaint.

Hmmmm...and here's another interesting tidbit:


McConnell: 'I was not given an explanation' for Ukraine aid delay | TheHill



If the most shrewd politician of this decade has made a calculated decision to distance himself from Trump...

Maybe the Republicans are finally sick of Trump walking all over them too?

Which means the Turtle knows something and he's giving himself plausible deniability. I have little doubt he'd sacrifice Trump to save his own shell.

Best-case plausible scenario is that Trump loses support from enough of the important republicans who feel they have a better chance at retaining the white house with Pence, and then figure out a way for Trump to resign and save face. But then they all still paint Trump as a victim of politics, with Pence kind of implicitly defending his honor and retaining Trump's base.

Edit: I think they'd still cancel the primaries in that scenario, after announcing that "Republicans are all behind Pence", which is apparently all they have to do to skip the primaries. I don't think this whole scenario is likely, maybe 10%, but it's more likely that being removed from office unwillingly.

I can’t imagine McConnell and the other GOPers who will be on the ballot next fall are going to allow Pence to be the top of the ticket. I would put his electoral college o/u at 50. The Republican base is 100% hatred and fury now; I can’t think of anyone less able to channel that then Pence.

Trump is so egregious that he's done the unthinkable: caused me to agree with every word Nancy Pelosi said in a substantive speech.

The Speaker of the House announces a formal impeachment inquiry into the 45th President of the United States pic.twitter.com/K6Y92S9yA0

— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) September 24, 2019

He's now bunkered down in the NY Trump Tower and is on a twitter tear