BAR MITZVAH'S AND PRESIDENTS....
The prophet Jeremiah was right- he predicted that if the Jews did not return to the rule of law and the commandments of God, they would be destroyed by foreign powers...
THE BAR MITZVAH BOY AND THE HAFTORAH
When a Jewish boy or girl is privileged to stand before his or her congregation as a Bar or Bat Mitzvah- at age 13, when the transition into adulthood is celebrated by being allowed to read from the Torah (the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) it is a great moment- a dividing line between all that went before, the years of Sunday School and Hebrew School, the hours of study, learning to read Hebrew without vowels as it was originally written by the extraordinarily skilled scribes on the sheepskin scrolls, and to translate it, and also learning how to chant the required blessings- in Hebrew, of course, before and after reading the Torah.
There is also another portion of the ceremony- in Reform Temples, anyway. I should know but have no idea whether this is also done in Bar or Bat Mitzvah ceremonies in Conservative or Orthodox (the latter of which I assume still only have Bar Mitzvahs- no females allowed to read from the Torah (!)) synagogues. But we read from the Haftorah. Which is Hebrew meaning "parting from the Torah" and which is traditionally read from the book of prophets after the Torah portion is read.
All of these works- the Torah, Judges, Kings, Prophets, etc. refer to the books and stories in our Bible referred to by Christians as "The Old Testament" to contrast it with the "New Testament," the books of Jesus and his life and teachings from hundreds of years after the last book of the Jewish Bible. I always thought it was a bit condescending to use the words "Old Testament." Kind of like the way a two car family refers to the older of the vehicles, less bright, less shiny, less desirable, less cool, than the new car.
Anyhoo, the Torah is limited to the Five Books of Moses which end with Moses gazing across the Dead Sea from Mount Nebo (in present day Jordan, rising up from the east bank of the Dead Sea) towards "the promised land," which he, by a somewhat cruel fate, may not enter. I have stood on that mountain, possibly near that very spot, and I took a photograph from where Moses might have stood looking across the Dead Sea to the Judean mountains. That is my Facebook cover photo since the day my very talented son set up my Facebook page when I visited him in Israel where he was working nine years ago.
And at my Bar Mitzvah many, many years ago, my Haftorah portion was about the prophet Jeremiah. And I learned a sobering lesson- way more than from my pretty dry and dusty Torah portion (which, in actuality, was amazing, as it foretold future bankruptcy laws and the need for them). Jeremiah was not a fun guy. He was called by God to tell the Jews that they had strayed and needed to repent and return to the ways set forth for them in the Torah. He predicted that bad things were going to descend on Israel from the Hand of God in the form of foreign invaders to punish the Jews for their sins.
As one might imagine, Jeremiah was not celebrated in his time. He was like the man on the corner with the banner "The End is Near!" But in his case, he was right. The Babylonians came under Nebuchadnezzar and conquered what was left of Israel circa 594 B.C.E. When the Jews revolted, he returned in 586 B.C.E., destroyed the Temple of Solomon. (As it happens, the Wailing Wall, the Western Wall in Jerusalem so sacred to Orthodox Jews and revered by all Jews is actually an outer wall- not a portion of the Temple, and it is not from the era of Solomon. It was built under the auspices of the Persian King Cyrus, who conquered the Babylonians decades after the first Temple was destroyed. Cyrus let the Jews- those who wished- return to their homeland. And they rebuilt, circa 516 B.C.E. until it too was destroyed after a Jewish revolt. This time by the Romans in 70 C.E. (A.D. for Christians).
Which is a long run up to what it means to be a prophet. Being right guarantees nothing. In fact, being right is almost always a negative in the world we live in. As Jeremiah found out- he was reviled for his predictions of doom and his nagging the Jews to repent and return to the ways set out in the Torah.
* THE LAFFER CURVE IS NO LAUGHING MATTER- TURNS OUT, CUTTING TAXES INCREASES THE DEFICIT. WHO KNEW?
In recent times, we had a president who claimed that he could cutting taxes and increase military spending and the result would be that the government's annual deficit would decrease. That was a lie, and it didn't happen. Plenty of people said so at the time (I'm pretty sure I was one of them- but it was a long time ago). Instead, deficits increased. But surprise- it wasn't Trump. Or even W. Bush. It was Reagan, 40 years ago. He famously championed the infamous "Laffer Curve" and the more infamous "trickle down economics." That was the theory that if you give a rich guy enough money to buy a second yacht, the waiter at his posh club will benefit because the rich guy will be inclined to tip a few bucks more after lunch.
And twenty years later, another president said the exact same thing- he could cut taxes, increase military spending, and decrease the nation's debt. I knew this was false. So did a whole bunch of other people, including Al Gore. I probably wrote about it for publication in our local paper. But Congress, just like Charlie Brown every Fall after Lucy promises for the umpteenth time to hold the football steady as Charlie tries to kick a field goal, did the same thing- cut taxes and increased military spending. And the debt skyrocketed- going from a $160 billion surplus under Clinton, to deficits of over half a trillion dollars annually under the president who told that lie, George W. Bush.
Sixteen years later, in 2017, a third president made the same promise, He would cut taxes, increase military spending, and cut the deficit in half (the deficits were left over from the rescue package necessary from the last Republican president who managed to crash the economy and almost cause a worldwide depression). Congress did it again- this time a Congress with both houses controlled by Republicans who no longer seemed to care about the deficits which were such an urgent concern during Obama's years in office. And they passed a bill making huge tax cuts to the richest Americans. They celebrated with high fives and appearances on the White House lawn. Of course they also increased defense spending - in a world where we have no military adversaries gearing up to go to war with us (North Korea is a joke- a popgun). And, of course, deficits skyrocketed to almost a trillion dollars annually- and this was before the pandemic destroyed the economy.
https://www.newsmax.com/finance/investinganalysis/david-stockman-tax-cut-pipe/2017/10/20/id/821088/
Meanwhile, our annual defense budget is more than the next ten countries- combined. Astonishing. Yet Republican presidents get away with falsely claiming that the previous president, a Democrat (first Carter, then Clinton, then Obama) had somehow allowed our national defense and the budget paying for it to dangerously decline. Absurd as that claim was every single time, nobody ever bothered to check- not the voters who voted for them, anyway. Math isn't their strong suit. Neither is history, as politicians repeating the same lies and being wrong every single time never seems to register with them
.
* THE WAR IN IRAQ: THE NON-EXISTENT WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, THE PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY, AND THE "FEW DEADHEADS" OF THE INSURGENCY
A year after those tax cuts, after the punch to America's gut by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, had emotionally devastated the American people and sent our government into a panic, we managed to make another huge mistake. It started the day after the terrorist attacks, then went on through 2002, when George W. Bush suddenly began claiming that Saddam Hussein and Iraq was an existential threat to the United States. And he also somehow conflated them with radical Islamist jihadists. That was a ridiculous asserttion- that Iraq- the only Arab country that was secular, where women appeared in public with faces uncovered, could drive, and even hold government positions, where men could appear clean shaven. where bars sold alcohol, which was the only country that had NOTHING to do with the radical Islamists who were known as Al Qaida, who had attacked the U.S. from training camps in Afghanistan, two countries to the east- was a threat to us. No way Jose.
Bush and Company claimed that Iraq was busy making nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction to threaten America. Colin Powell even went before the United Nations and told the lie about their attempts to purchase yellow cake uranium to build bombs- probably the single greatest regret of his otherwise praiseworthy career in the military and in government.
But the story about weapons of mass destruction was an absurd, blatant lie. And despite later claims to the contrary, it was never an "intelligence failure." Because our professional intelligence agencies- CIA, NSA, FBI, correctly reported at the time that there was no credible evidence to support this contention (Google the name "Curveball" for some enlightenment on the subject.).
Undeterred by the failure to get an intelligence assessment to justify the attack on Iraq they wanted all along, the Bushies farmed out their intelligence in this area to a specially created group in the Department of Defense headed by one Douglas Feith. His job: to create the lies upon which a war would be launched.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/01/lie-factory/
A war that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and many others centrally located in the Bush Administration had desperately sought since midway through Clinton's second term.
And this was something I later researched and wrote about extensively when I wanted to try to understand why my son- and thousands of others- had been sent off to a war that made no sense whatsoever.
http://buildabettermousetrap.blogspot.com/2012/09/
Douglas Feith was later accurately labeled as "the dumbest fucking guy on the planet” by no less than General Tommy Franks, an actual member of the military who served in Iraq. But Feith and his acolytes created the intelligence assessment that Bush- more accuratetely, Dick Cheney, the V.P. who was actually running the show- wanted to justify the invasion that the nefarious Project for a New American Century always wanted.
And history would soon prove that Glenn and I were right, and the Bushies and his supporters were 100% wrong.
Because of course, as history shows, Bush did the worst possible, the stupidest possible thing. He sent our military to invade and occupy Iraq from the south, from Kuwait, with U.S. Marines and the United States Army, after bombing Baghdad in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate and take out Hussein on the first day of war.
Try as they might, they found no weapons of mass destruction. They did topple Hussein, but that set in motion a series of dominos following which creating far worse problems than we had with that brutal dictator in power (although he totally deserved to be tried and hanged for his mass murders and crimes against humanity- no regrets there).
As much as I deplored this worst foreign policy mistake since Vietnam, once we had conquered the country and toppled Hussein's government, I strongly suggested in an e-mail to members of my son's Marine Corps Unit, which had led the invasion (not just his unit, the whole division), that we get U.N. peacekeeping troops in as soon as possible and get us out as soon as possible, warning- presciently- that if we didn't, we'd be facing an insurgency and suicide bombers. Here is what I wrote in April of 2003, about a war we had started on March 19, 20003:
April 19, 2003, e-mail to one of the family members of a Marine in my son’s unit:
“Why the UN should take over is simple- whether or not they do a better job, the perception among the people in the region will be hugely different regarding a UN sponsored trusteeship of the country. It simply is in our national interest to have a respected international organization take over the rebuilding of Iraq. The sooner American and British soldiers are out of there, the less likely that terrorists or suicide bombers will attack our loved ones there or here. And a quick exit will defeat the absurd arguments that we are a colonialist country seeking to exploit Iraq's oil.”
After my worst fears were exceeded by the growing insurgency and suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices (I.E.D.'s) which killed or maimed so many of our troops, our esteemed and awful Vice President, Dick Cheney, with all of the resources of all of the intelligence agencies of the United States government, said this on television (I think it was Meet the Press with Tim Russert) in 2005, two years later, after the major disaster had unfolded:
"the insurgency is in its last throes."
Well, that was dead wrong, too. As Cheney himself had to admit two years after that.
Meanwhile, early on, Bush Secretary of Defense, one Donald Rumsfeld, had dismissively referred to the insurgents as a "few dead enders." Again, another spectacular fail. Of intelligence (Rumsfeld's, not the professionals who knew better) and reason.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,543740,00.html
https://www.gq.com/story/dan-bartlett-george-bush-aide
So, Glenn and I were right. If we had a platform in 2002- if we were in power- thousands of American lives would have been saved. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be alive. Iraq would not have reinvigorated Al Qaida and spawned ISIS. Both of which happened. Iran would not have lost their natural rival to the west and been vastly strengthened as a regional power and emboldened to act throughout the region, including through proxies in Iraq, Syria Lebanon, and Yemen. Our national debt would be a few trillion dollars less for the money we poured down the sewer to run that war and the hundreds of billions we will owe for our veterans' medical care for injuries occasioned by it.
But being right doesn't matter. And neither did being wrong matter- no consequences whatsoever. Not for Bush, who won a second term in 2004 with his Darth Vader, Cheney. Not for then Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who voted in the Senate in 2002- just before the midterm elections where Democrats lost control of the Senate- to authorize Bush to use force in Iraq. He got the 2004 Democratic nomination (but he lost the election anyway, never once mentioning during his campaign the fact that Bush was president before the 9-11 attacks and did nothing to prevent them). Democratic Senator John Edwards of North Carolina voted for it, too. And he got the Vice Presidential nomination in 2004. Now he's in the dustbin of history, disgraced for a sex scandal that would not even have been a minor bump in a day's scandals for Donald T***p. So did then New York Senator Hillary Clinton. She had coldly calculated (she's never admitted this, but I know it's true) that as a woman she had to look tough if she wanted to be president. Instead, in 2016, she had to apologize later, after the awful consequences of her vote were apparent, when she was still being pilloried by progressives for that awful mistake. However, she claimed, deviously, that she had been "misled by the intelligence" before she cast her vote. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. That was a bald faced lie. She knew that Iraq was no threat. just as Glenn and I, sitting in my living room, knew.
Hah. Glenn and I figured it out. Just sitting in my living room. With no access to any intelligence briefing by the dumbest fucking person on the planet. Clinton knew it, too. And she showed a complete lack of character with that vote. But she got the 2016 Democratic nomination for president anyway, and there you go. Being wrong- not even spectacularly wrong- apparently really doesn't carry fatal consequences in politics.
* BARACK OBAMA: THE "CHANGE" PRESIDENT WHO BLEW HIS CHANCE
Six years later, after the 2002 debacle of a vote for force in Iraq, Barack Obama was elected president. He set a record for raising grass roots money through this new fangled internet thing. And he had 59 Democratic senators and a huge majority in the House. He was in a position to do something historic. To effect a sea change in American politics and American government. All he had to do was take my advice. Little old me. In my converted dining room, in front of my computer, where I wrote down and sent my suggestions to change our government and country for the better. By doing two things:
(1) Get a law passed banning all private contributions and solicitations for contributions to any candidate for federal office, including both houses of Congress and the presidency. Call those contributions and the "ask" for them what they are: bribes. Instead, publicly finance all federal elections. Do that and save officials from the interminable fund raising phone calls, meetings, and dinners, starting the day after they are sworn in until the next election. And thus we can also end the vise like grip fund raisers and huge corporations have on our government.
(2) And two, make a simple FCC requirement that before any attack ad is aired on television or the radio (that air is owned by the Federal government- it is only licensed temporarily to television and radio stations, and those licenses come with conditions), it has to be previewed by the opponent. And that opponent who was attacked can film a rebuttal to run, free of charge, after every airing of the attack ad. Such a rule or law will cause harm to the first amendment. The attack ads can still run, uncensored (unless they show Janet Jackson's breast, of course (!)). Citizens United (which actually happened later), would have had no impact on campaigns, as all of the PAC money, all of the dark money (about a half a billion dollars poured into two Senate run-off races in Georgia this cycle), would be neutered, rendered utterly useless.
Here's what I wrote in January of 2009, when his first term was just underway and the awful, horribly designed, Rube Goldbergesque Affordable Care Act was months away:
"Change" won't come to American until we first change our system for bribing policitians- the only money going to them should be public money, and the only "special interest" to which they should respond is Americans'."
https://buildabettermousetrap.blogspot.com/2009/01/obama-wont-be-change-president-unless.html
Right again, sorry to say. He didn't listen (I'm sure he never got the message). And no one around him was smart enough to figure this out. I thought it was obvious. And it still is obvious today. The current Biden administration absolutely should make this their number one political priority if they want to hold either house in Congress after the 2022 mid-terms and hold the White House in 2024.
* 2019: IMPEACHMENT NUMBER 1:
So, the day after Trump was inaugurated- actually, the day of- he demonstrated his unfitness for office. Awful things happened in the ensuing months and years. It came out that he and his campaign had colluded with the Russian government to accept and use e-mails stolen from the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election. And he obstructed justice during the investigation of this by special prosecutor Robert Mueller. He shut down the government in December of 2018 and January of 2019 in a fit of pique because Congress- one controlled by his party for two years, in 2017 and 2018- would not give him billions of dollars to build that "big, beautiful wall" on the border with Mexico- that he promised Mexico would pay for. His administration concocted a deliberate policy of separating children from the parents of persons legally seeking asylum at the southern border, then imprisoning the children in cages, sleeping on the floor under tin foil for blankets. He encouraged violence towards the press- calling them "the enemy of the people." One of his supporters then mailed pipe bombs to all of T***p's "enemies, including CNN.
Another supporter took up his call to deal with the Hispanics coming to the southern border by getting his guns and ammunition, driving several hours to an El Paso Wal-Mart, and massacring 22 human beings who looked Hispanic to him.
Another supporter went to the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and slaughtered 13 Jewish members of a congregation that very publicly supported immigrants.
T***p was accused of sexually assaulting numerous women.
T***p University was sued for fraud, then had to dissolve and pay a $25 million settlement.
T***p Charities, run by Donald and his kids, was also found to be a fraudulent enterprise by New York State's government, had to disband, and he and his awful progeny are banned from serving on the board of any charity.
Illegal contributions to T***p's 2017 Inauguration Committee, including from foreign governments and personages.
Clear and continuous violations of The Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which prohibits the President from cashing in on his power and his position.
Money laundering for the Russian mob.
Tax fraud. Deflating the value of his assets to reduce his taxes.
Defrauding banks to get loans. Inflating the value of his assets to get loans (all testified to, under oath, by the president's former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen).
(this is all off the top of my head, by the way. The scandals were literally so fast and furious, no one other than an idiot savant could possibly remember them all).
And then.... and then... the Mueller report dropped in 2019. No more indictments, other than his campaign manager, Paul Manafort, convicted of tangential crimes, his assistant campaign manager, his National Security Adviser of about 10 days, Michael Flynn, forced to resign- not for the charge on which he was later indicted, lying to the FBI, which is a crime, but for lying to the Vice President, which is not a crime. And various and sundry other persons. Sadly, Mueller really dropped the ball. Although he concluded- without actually saying so- that the Donald had committed crimes (this is how he put it: "If we had found that he had NOT committed any crimes, we would have said so." Well, they didn't say so: you do the math.).
But Mueller did not indict anybody in the campaign for the very obvious felony of receiving stolen property- the e-mails hacked out of Clinton's campaign. Nor for obstruction of justice. And so on. And all the while the story was put out, and Mueller's one time testimony before Congress validated it, that the proper remedy for all of his misdeeds was...
IMPEACHMENT.
But the House, led by Nancy Pelosi, didn't.
Until that is, the day after the Mueller testimony and T**p's bogus claim of "Total Exoneration!" and the "Russia hoax!" (Which was nonsensical on its face. Russia is, in fact a country. It really exists. It's not a hoax, by any stretch.)
And the "perfect phone call." In which T***p managed to perform a legally difficult, pretzel like feat: in one phone call he managed to commit the felonies of both extortion and bribery against the same person using the same valuable asset: American arms slated to go to the Ukraine, as authorized by Congress. Bribery in that T***p promised that if the Ukraine delivered what he wanted- a public announcement of an investigation into corruption by T***p's perceived strongest opponent on the Democratic side in the presidential primaries, Joseph R. Biden (who had not yet even made a decision to run, let alone announced it), then T***p would allow his defense department to ship the arms to the Ukraine that they so desperately needed to stave off the Russians in the Crimea. And extortion, but threatening to withhold those same arms unless the Ukraine president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, delivered what he wanted while the Russian bear was attempting to take eastern portions of the Ukraine.
Whipsawed, the Zelenskyy eventually relented, and he had even done exactly what T**p demanded: arranged an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakariah to announce the investigation of the (non-existent) corruption by Biden.
Thus, T***p used the power of the United States government to attempt to destroy a perceived political rival by smearing him. The same dirty trick that worked in 2016 when he loudly proclaimed that Hillary Clinton was a crook and that the authorities should "lock her up" as his rally goers chanted. Also for a non-existent crime for which she was never prosecuted- having a separate e-mail server when she was serving as Secretary of State for President Obama.
That "perfect phone call" blew up, of course, when the famed "whistleblower" let the cat out of the bag (and he really should get the Presidential Medal of Freedom, along with our former Ambassador to the Ukraine, Marie Yvonovich, and Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindmann, fired from the National Security Counsel- along with his twin brother (!)- for testifying truthfully under oath to the House Intelligence Committee).
Well, that was too much, even for Nancy Pelosi. And they impeached, after extensive hearings- but only on "the perfect phone call." Not on the plethora of crimes and abuses of power that were available.
And it was doomed to failure. As I pointed out in a letter to the New York Times on December 11, 2019. Sadly, I was right. Again.
The New York Times
Opinion
LETTERS
Advice for Both Parties on Impeachment Strategies
Democrats should prolong the impeachment hearings, says one reader; others view the Senate vote as a chance for Republicans to convict or redeem themselves.
Dec. 11, 2019
To the Editor:
Re “Impeachment Articles Say Trump Abused Power, Damaging Nation” (front page, Dec. 11):
The House Democrats are, as usual, likely to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by wrapping up a narrow impeachment inquiry, impeaching President Trump on only a scintilla of his crimes and omitting others for which there is ample evidence — emoluments violations, campaign finance felonies, ties to the Russian mafia and money laundering, fraud by Trump University and the Trump Foundation charity, and sex crimes.
The Senate trial will end quickly and be long forgotten by November. Instead, Democrats in the House should take advantage of the spotlight and hold evidentiary hearings lasting months, understanding full well that it will be the allegations, not the conviction, that will do Mr. Trump in.
If there was a monthlong hearing about just the emoluments violations, followed by another month of woman after woman who say they were sexually assaulted by Mr. Trump, including those who were paid off with hush money in violation of federal campaign finance laws, Mr. Trump would continue to lose his grip, and his re-election campaign would be stymied by his inability to focus on anything other than the impeachment hearings.
There is not a chance in hell of getting a conviction in the Senate. But that doesn’t mean that Democrats can’t get every one of his crimes in the public spotlight during the campaign.
James Finkelstein
Albany, Ga.
* IMPEACHMENT NUMBER 2: 2021:
Which brings us to today. HERE IS THE PREDICTION. This hasn't happened yet. But it will (not my idea, which they will fail to do.)
There is no doubt in my mind that the impeachment managers from the House will never hear my proposal that they do the nation a service. A little while ago the Senate just held a vote on Rand Paul's motion to dismiss the entire impeachment charge- and 45 Republicans voted to dismiss the entire case. That means only 5 even want to have a trial.
Since there is no reasonable hope of gettng 17 Republican votes for conviction (assuming we get all 50 Democrats), then House impeachment managers should turn this moment into the opportunity to render a true public service to the nation.
Tell the T***p team in advance that he will be the first witness they call. That they will give him every opportunity to bring with him the evidence that he won in a landslide in the 2020 presidential election but that Democrats engaged in massive, nationwide voter fraud (in four states at least) and "stole" the election from him.
Get this message out on every network. Show up on Fox. Every day, tell the nation that T***p will get his day in the court of the United States Senate- under oath- to prove that his lies are in fact true.
Now only two things are likely to happen. And either is good for this republic:
(1) Trump takes the Fifth Amendment, which is widely perceived as an admission of criminal guilt, and also shows that he is a cowardly weasel who refuses to take the one opportunity to publicly bring forward his "evidence" that the election was stolen. Not innuendo. Not rumor. No hearsay. Not wild conspiracy theories. Actual evidence that is admissible in a court of law.
(2) Trump testifies. And if he does, get out the popcorn. Because he will be subject to a piercing cross examination. He will trip up. He will contradict himself. He will contradict other witnesses (like Mark Meadows, his chief of staff who was in the room with him) who will also be testifying under oath. He will be unable to produce one piece of evidence of actual fraud. (By the way- Rand Paul doesn't even know what that word means, as he angrily told George Stephanopolous that county or state registrars who allowed votes to be counted that didn't include all of the information allegedly required on an absentee ballot was the same as "fraud." It has nothing to do with fraud.) T***p will absolutely fall into what his own lawyers said during the Mueller investigation is a "perjury trap."
And Trump should be mercilessly grilled about his spending hours watching on tv as his mob, the terrorists he incited, stormed the Capitol, driving his Vice President and members of Congress, including his own party, including his own enablers willing to overthrow democracy and install him as king, into hiding, fearing for their safety and their lives. And they called him for help. And he did nothing.
A good trial lawyer would win a conviction in the Senate and in the court of public opinion- the only one that counts at the moment- by roasting him over the coals for his complete indifference to the fate of Congress. As long as the vote counting had stopped, he was happy. And he sent no troops. He didn't so much as put out a Tweet asking his supporters to peacefully walk out.
That's a picture that should be painted not just with T***p, but with other witnesses. Mark Meadows. Every other person in the room with T***p. The members of the House who called the White House and got no help. Especially the Republicans who were his most vocal supporters.
By the end of that trial, the public will revile him. As much or more for sitting there happily watching the mob take the Capitol- the mob he had promised to walk down to the Capitol alongside- and he absolutely should be grilled about that lie, because it will reveal to his MAGA people what a true cowardly weasel the rest of us have always known he was.
If only..... (writes the frustrated trial lawyer).
AND HERE IS MY CROSS EXAMINATION: COOKBOOK FOR THE IMPEACHMENT MANAGERS OR THEIR LAWYER:
https://buildabettermousetrap.blogspot.com/2021/01/how-to-convict-ex-president-in-senate.html
posted by James Finkelstein (Ga.) at 4:53 PM
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