Trump Tweets (no more)

[Key Board]

Originally Posted by kari-no-sugata II

For sure it's not a new thing but there did appear to be a step change recently. It felt to me like the initial coverage of the Ukraine scandal was kinda more of the same but shifted quite a bit by the end of the first week and that has continued. It probably helped that a lot of GOP members refused to make themselves available to the press and basically went into hiding, going by some things that I've read.

Fox New being the 4th branch of the US government probably made other stations anxious too.

//

[kari-no-sugata II]

Originally Posted by Key Board

Fox New being the 4th branch of the US government probably made other stations anxious too.

//

I'm not sure what you're getting at here.

Meanwhile, the twitterverse seems to have enjoyed this quote:
John Bolton on Rudy Giuliani: a hand grenade who's going to blow everyone up

Maybe more like - set a swamp to catch a swamp?

I imagine Bolton is going to be asked to testify as well, particularly since he considered the activity to be illegal, according to reports.

[Toukairin]

I really don't know if I should laugh or cry when I read this letter from Trump to Erdogan. It is below embarrassing and totally cringeworthy.

Trump wrote letter to Erdogan telling him 'don't be a fool' (CNN)

edit: The full letter is in the next article.

Trump’s bizarre, threatening letter to Erdoğan: ‘Don’t be a fool’ (The Guardian)

[Skulkraken]

Apparently Trump personally handed out copies of that letter to the press.

Turkey ‘effectively holding 50 US nuclear bombs hostage’ at air base amid Syria invasion

Officials from the State Department and Energy Department, which manages Washington's nuclear arsenal, met at the weekend to consider how they might retrieve an estimated fifty tactical nuclear weapons held at the site, according to The New York Times.

One official told the paper the bombs were now effectively Mr Erdogan’s hostages. It is feared that removing the weapons could signal the end of relations between the Nato allies, while leaving them in place could put the weapons of mass destruction at risk.

The conundrum comes just a month after Mr Erdogan said it was “unacceptable” that Turkey was not allowed its own supply of the weapons under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty the country signed in 1980.

...This, on the other hand, is decidedly not so funny.

[Edit]

US troops bombed their own anti-ISIS headquarters as Turkey-backed fighters closed in during Trump's hasty retreat

The US military destroyed its own anti-ISIS headquarters in Syria, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, to prevent them from falling into the hands of fighters backed by Turkey.

According to WSJ, Turkish-backed troops advanced on the facility, which had been used to equip and train SDF fighters against ISIS, on Tuesday, leading US officials to quickly withdraw US troops and destroy the base on Wednesday.

As the Turkish-back fighters moved closer, US troops attempted to repel them, using F-15s and Apache helicopters as a show of force to warn them away while US troops were still there. But, according to The Wall Street Journal, the airpower failed to dissuade the Turkish-backed forces; SDF fighters fled and set fire to their part of the base, and US troops left before US assets destroyed the base.

[Guardian Enzo]

What a clusterfuck.

[James Rye]

Apparently Erdogan threw the letter into his bin immediately after reading it and launched the invasion.

[kari-no-sugata II]

Originally Posted by James Rye

Apparently Erdogan threw the letter into his bin immediately after reading it and launched the invasion.

It was the last straw, apparently.

And also apparently, Trump was proudly handing out copies of his letter yesterday.

I wouldn't normally give a link to a rag like the Daily Fail but it does have a good summary of the reaction:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...an-mocked.html

[ramlaen]

Originally Posted by James Rye

Apparently Erdogan threw the letter into his bin immediately after reading it and launched the invasion.

But, but, I was told Trump greenlit the invasion!

Meanwhile;

YouTube

https://youtu.be/ngok_ez0p4I

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

[Eisdrache]

Originally Posted by ramlaen

But, but, I was told Trump greenlit the invasion!

Meanwhile;
[youtube vid]

He did by recalling the very reason Turkey hasn't launched the invasion until now.

The idea that you should be proud to fix (IF Erdogan cares about this at all) something that you caused in the first place for no reason is absurd.

[Skulkraken]

Originally Posted by ramlaen

Meanwhile;

YouTube

https://youtu.be/ngok_ez0p4I

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

If a ceasefire is declared and no one listens, does it make a sound?

Turkish FM Çavuşoğlu just now: "We will suspend the Peace Spring operation for 120 hours for the PKK/YPG to withdraw. This is not a ceasefire."

Çavuşoğlu's logic: "A ceasefire can only be declared between two legitimate parties."

[SeijiSensei]

The Turks got pretty much everything they wanted. They can control the "safe zone" for as long as they like. Meanwhile our Kurdish allies are uprooted again and put on some road to nowhere.

I thought Pence looked remarkably presidential in this appearance. If I were Trump, I'd be worried that Senate Republicans might be willing to sell him down the river in favor of Pence.

Usually when you send the VP on an errand like this, you don't expect it to go well. Did Trump make a miscalculation?

[Skulkraken]

Of course not. Trump doesn't have the mental capacity to do any calculations, period.

Edit: The BBC published a map showing how much land Turkey is expecting the Kurds to surrender in the span of a few days. It's... a lot of land.

[kari-no-sugata II]

Weird random thought: the US government is about to run out of money again (Nov 21st), so if that actually does happen what does that mean for the impeachment inquiry?

[ramlaen]

Originally Posted by kari-no-sugata II

Weird random thought: the US government is about to run out of money again (Nov 21st), so if that actually does happen what does that mean for the impeachment inquiry?

Nothing because the 'impeachment inquiry' has no legal authority until Pelosi puts a vote authorizing it to the House floor.

[Toukairin]

Gen. James Mattis roasting Donald Trump at the Alfred E. Smith Foundation Dinner. This is the full speech, no edit.

YouTube

https://youtu.be/g_sG7N7pJ6g

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

[Guardian Enzo]

I have to ROFL at Mulvaney going off script and explicitly admitting to the quid pro quo on camera. The press was so shocked they tried to give him an escape hatch and he was too dim to use it. Seriously, what a bunch of fucking morons.

Rudy is going under the bus, 100% guaranteed. Perry too. Seems like after today Mulvaney is a good bet to join them. Gonna get pretty crowded under there.

[kari-no-sugata II]

Originally Posted by ramlaen

Nothing because the 'impeachment inquiry' has no legal authority until Pelosi puts a vote authorizing it to the House floor.

Rather than "no legal authority" I would suggest something like "undetermined legal authority", since I don't believe there are any court rulings that would narrow the bounds of the distinction between an authorised and unauthorised impeachment inquiry.

But anyway, that's not what I was getting at. In abstract, imagine there is a government shutdown while an impeachment inquiry was running (or for that matter, impeachment proceedings or a trial in the Senate). Wouldn't such a thing undermine the impeachment action itself? Putting it another way, how can the House have "sole authority" over impeachment if other parts of the government can indirectly stop/block/undermine it via a government shutdown? It's under similar reasonings that the House and Senate have various powers not specified in the constitution (ie would lead to a contradiction if they didn't have them). So in theory, it should be possible for the House to unilaterally declare relevant parts of the government to be open and running so that it can carry out impeachment.

And yes that would obviously require a proper House vote and would go to the Supreme Court.

I'm not trying to take sides with this - just trying to point out some theoretical possibilities that I find interesting.

A similar but much more party specific scenario is what happens if the trial in the Senate overlaps with the actual primary season. Unless the House completes its part quite quickly, that's actually quite possible. Wouldn't that be a can of worms!

[The Green One]

And now their excuse is basically, "Yeah we did it. Get over it."

[SeijiSensei]

Congress will pass a continuing resolution so the government doesn't run out of money. Whether it will include wall money is, again, unlikely. When Trump vetoed the resolution at the beginning of the year and created the shutdown, his approval rating declined for the first time in months. I suspect he'll sign any continuing resolution that makes it to his desk this time around.

And there is no constitutional or legal requirement that the House vote to begin the impeachment inquiry. Claiming that the current proceedings are somehow illegal or unauthorized is a Republican talking point. If you listen to the Republicans you'll notice that nearly all their complaints about the inquiry concern process issues. That's because they have no substantive grounds to dispute. The White House has already admitted to the actions which are the subject of the inquiry. Mulvaney's performance yesterday added icing to the cake, but a "quid-pro-quo" is not required to bring charges for violating Federal election laws. The act of soliciting a benefit from a foreign power to aid in a domestic political campaign is per se illegal.

Bringing the G7 to Doral seems a pretty blatant violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause. Somehow the Administration has decided that they'll just flout the law in public, and eventually everyone will just accept it.

[kari-no-sugata II]

IIRC a judge said last Friday that it would make life easier if there was a House vote, in terms of okaying the request, or something like that. It was one of those 5 cases that Trump lost in one day.

I guess you could say that it's like the difference between a verbal statement and a signed letter. Generally it makes life easier to have things in writing.

I was wondering if the Democrats would have a vote basically saying "hey judges, this is an impeachment inquiry we have here, please prioritise this as much as possible"