Thin-skinned Joe Biden calls voter "fat" and "damn liar" after question about Ukrainian dealings.
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1202668426734571522
A little touchy there aren't you, Joe?
https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1202668426734571522
A little touchy there aren't you, Joe?
Typical liberal, but he will get a free pass because he is Creepy Unlce Joe.
shareHis lame damage control is that he didn't call the guy "fat", despite everyone (even NBC news) clearly being able to hear him say, "Look, fat, here's the deal." He was presumably about to call him "fat ass" before catching himself. You know he was insulting the guy for being fat because of Biden's spiel about how he's not "sedentary" (unlike the voter who had just mentioned watching news reports on tv), which dovetailed with the whole "pushup contest".
In an hilariously stupid riposte attempt Biden even told the 83 year old Warren supporter that he's "too old to vote for me".
He sure didn't like what that man asked him. He became immediately defensive and started flinging insults. Sounds familiar. 🤔
Gee I wonder if Joe got his vote? 🤥😏😅
Something equally troubling was that the people in the room, likely the old guy's neighbors or fellow citizens (it was a local town hall, right?), didn't seem to have a problem with what was happening. I didn't see much reaction.
"Something equally troubling was that the people in the room, likely the old guy's neighbors or fellow citizens (it was a local town hall, right?), didn't seem to have a problem with what was happening. I didn't see much reaction."
The crowd clapped (for Joe) once Joe told the man he's a damn liar and challenged him to a push up contest.
It is possible he was a plant there for that very reason though. That kind of thing does happen at these town hall meetings but whether he was or wasn't, the question was still legitimate.
Biden needs to work on answering questions better without insulting voters.
If I were there considering voting for him and that type of scenario took place, it could really change my mind on that candidate.
Joe could have defended it without getting personal.
He had to know someone may ask him about this. He should have thought what he would say.
But the Biden's are as guilty as sin.
I didn't see that part of the video till after I wrote that. The applause is much more disturbing. One of Joe's supporters challenged the man later on camera.
Sure the question was legit.
The fact that Joe did it, intentional or not, is just bad news. It would have 86d my vote for him. It's so out of character from the last 50 years, I honestly think he's losing it.
And I believe there's no doubt he sold his influence thru Hunter.
I just think Joe isn't very bright. Never thought he was.
He could never handle going up against President Trump! Trump could debate him in his sleep and still squash Joe. Poor fella.
Obama didn't think he was too bright either, that's why he used him like a puppet.
shareI think you are overestimating Trump's ability to debate. Trump is showing signs of dementia and it's just getting worse. The pressure of a debate might be too much for Trump and he'll start babbling nonsense like he does often at his press conferences and rallies.
Biden may not be the sharpest pencil in the box but at least he can complete sentences. I don't like Biden much but he's a better alternative than Trump. Actually, a sack of flour would be a better president than Trump.
Joe can't even debate against his own kind. He could never handle Trump.
You know, all this talk on here about Trump's "dementia" and even Biden is being labeled like that now, it's really nothing to be throwing around lightly. I know many people who have had dementia and I was a caregiver for one. How so many just throw these statements around like they're his doctor...🙄
Biden has a real struggle with completing sentences! Where have you been?! He gets easily tongue tied, loses his train of thought and all too often he says words that amount to incoherent sentences.
I will admit President Trump isn't the best speaker but he's easy to understand.
Really? Did you say Trump is easy to understand? He does when he's reading from a teleprompter or notes jotted down using a Sharpie but he doesn't write those because Trump has a speechwriter for that. But when Trump starts ad libbing he speaks incoherently.
This is his latest example of Trump babbling at a meeting in the White House.
"We have a situation where we're looking very strongly at sinks and showers and other elements of bathrooms, where you turn the faucet on in areas where there's tremendous amounts of water, where it all flows out to sea because you could never handle it all, and you don't get any water," he said. "They take a shower and water comes dripping out, very quietly dripping out. People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once; they end up using more water. So EPA is looking very strongly at that, at my suggestion.
"You go into a new building, new house, a new home, and they have standards where don't get water, and you can't wash your hands practically; there's so little water," he added. "And the end result is that you leave the faucet on, and it takes you much longer to wash your hands, and you end up using the same amount of water. So we're looking very seriously at opening up the standard, and there may be some areas where we go the other route, desert areas, but for the most part, you have states where they have so much water where it comes down — it's called rain — that they don't know what to do with it."
"It's called rain." Trump struggled to remember "rain." Yeah, easy to understand. Who talks like that? Not someone with a healthy brain.
He was talking about poor water pressure caused by conservation laws.
What's so hard to understand?
He used more words than he needed to but he was just reiterating what he was saying.
You're just making excuses for Trump's babbling incoherently which he does often. You see Trump is struggling with completing simple sentences and it's just getting worse. You see this but you don't want to admit it because you are in denial. Good luck with that.
shareNo, I was letting you know what that was about.
You must be especially concerned for Pelosi and Biden because neither of them makes any sense every time they open their mouths. Talk about incoherent!
If you listen you can hear him kinda swallow the "fat" as he says it. He realized what he was doing and tried to stop it. He wound up dropping some of the volume out of it, and tried to distract from it by forcefully saying "...here's the deal...".
He was saying "Listen, fat ass...".
Everything he said, his posture and body language, his tone, ... the way he walked up on the old man was aggressive. The first thing he did was practically yell "You're a damn liar!"
There's something wrong with Joe Biden and it's not getting better...
Typical liberal? Ha. I guess Trump is a typical liberal too, as he’s said those exact things multiple times.
Oh wait, I forgot it’s totally okay if someone you like does something stupid...
It is actuay reducing him to an infantile state
shareThere is something undeniably wrong with Joe Biden's mind. This is indicative of some kind of weakness in his thought processes. He has gotten progressively worse over many years. When will this be taken seriously?
shareI truly believe that he is in early stages of dementia. He is a lifetime politician, he knows what is acceptable and what isn't, and has done a great job playing the part until recently.
shareExactly. Some of the younger politicians either have forgotten, haven't learned, or are using this field as a stepping stone, but Biden has known one important rule for decades - Do Not Alienate Your Constituents.
These are the people who cast the votes that put you in office. Without them you might as well find yourself a comfortable cubicle.
So for him to act the way he has in the last year, especially YESTERDAY... something is really wrong.
And Obama has known it for years. It's the reason he won't endorse Joe and immediately distanced himself when he left office.
It's sad to watch, actually.
Joe has teflon. He’s almost the perfect candidate to troll the GOP and MSM. His approval ratings remain sky high and he continues to trounce Trump in head to head polling both nationally and in key swing states. That's why the president has tried to pressure foreign heads of state to investigate him, he recognizes Joe as the greatest political threat to his own re-election chances.
Stuff like this won’t touch him.
Biden's an increasingly weak-minded faceplant machine who fails to excite crowds or base enthusiasm. Trump asked about a particular issue, a legitimate issue still meriting inquiry, seeking the truth. Not for anyone to investigate "him" for whatever, or to manufacture BS crap like the Democrats did with the debunked anti-Trump dossier. Trump was doing his job as president.
shareYou're repeating what's been said of Biden since he declared his candidacy. Yet he remains in the lead in primary polling and trounces Trump by 10 points in head to head matchups. The public clearly prefers a flawed Biden to the flawed Trump. Trump knows this, or he wouldn't be asking foreign heads of state to investigate Biden under threat of withholding military aid if he didn't perceive him as a threat to his presidency.
shareActually those legitimate inquiries into Biden's shady Ukrainian dealings predated him even starting his candidacy, and Trump never tied that to aid. He's also withheld aid for legitimate policy reasons and concern about corruption around the world, from Pakistan to Honduras.
The polls, which skew Democrat anyway, are paper thin, as they were for Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, especially this early out. While polls often change radically during a campaign it's hard to see the long term problems of low charisma, low enthusiasm, and increasingly inept public performances somehow improving. Biden's not even winning the early primary states. According to the RCP average, for whatever that's worth, he's in 4th place in the both the first two momentum building states of Iowa and NH. He's even slightly losing to Warren in California and decisively losing to her in MA. He has to defeat the Democratic field before taking on Trump.
Then there's impeachment. The same polls that show Trump assuming larger leads over Warren and Sanders in battleground states as this farce drags on, even as his fundraising shatters records in part due to it, show him edging closer to a statistical tie with Biden, moving in the right direction. And he hasn't even started his campaign yet. All the Democratic candidates and virtually the entire media/entertainment industry have been violently campaigning against Trump with mouth-frothing intensity every day he's been in office, the equivalent of countless billions spent in campaign ads, and the result is that by many metrics he's in better shape than Obama was in 2011.
What more can they do in an "official campaign"? By contrast Trump and the Republican operation will have a lot more than a sometimes censored Twitter account at their disposal.
"Trump never tied that to aid."
He did. This was proven in the impeachment hearings by the preponderance of evidence and witness testimony.
The only "shady Biden Ukrainian dealings" are those alleged by the right wing propagandist John Solomon whom I assume you must be a fan of. Good thing The Hill published a complete repudiation of Solomon last month where they completely exposed Solomon's reliance on discredited witnesses like Lutsenko and Shokin as his sources.
https://thehill.com/homenews/news/483600-the-hills-review-of-john-solomons-columns-on-ukraine
Actually that assertion was roundly debunked in the "hearings" by the Ukrainians, the Democrats' own witnesses, and the fact that the aid flowed without any announced investigation. It's a fact that not a single witness claimed Trump told them to make a quid pro quo demand, and Sondland even testified the opposite. The Democrats had no case and rushed to impeach for purely political reasons.
As for Biden's undeniable conflict of interest and potential corruption, I'm not interested in clicking on your Dem spin job, that you admit relies on trying to discredit WITNESSES WHO DISPUTE YOUR NARRATIVE (thanks for that concession, btw, unwitting though it likely was), since all that crap is old news. But I am looking forward to the Senate finally hauling Hunter and possibly his father in as they finally conduct a real investigation.
And thanks for bumping this thread! 😀
What assertion? You really believe the order tying it to aid just came from nowhere? I know right wing conspiracy theorists are gullible but your denial really proves the rule.
As for what you're calling a "Dem spin job", The Hill is Solomon's own publisher conducting a review of his work. But I understand if you're a fan of Solomon's right wing conspiracies you're not going to be interested in facts that counter the narrative he spun you on.
There was no such demand to Ukraine. We've established that. You're trapped in a lie and you can't get out. Cut your losses.
Sondland: ‘Was there a quid pro quo? The answer is yes’
The sworn testimonies of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, Bill Taylor, Tim Morrison, and Laura Cooper said the same. Even Republican Senator Ron Johnson according to the Wall Street Journal said he was told by Sondland of a quid pro quo between Trump and the Ukrainian president.
Additionally in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Johnson said Trump had conveyed the quid pro quo in question to him via an August 31 phone conversation. He said he tried to get Trump to release Ukrainian military aid but was unsuccessful.
So why can't you answer a simple question? Do you really believe the order tying it to aid just came from nowhere? Do you think Republican Ron Johnson just made it all up to make Trump look bad? Do you think he coordinated this made up conspiracy that Trump ordered the quid pro quo with career diplomats in Ukraine along with Trump's handpicked ambassador Sondland in order to undermine Trump?
Very curious how the impressionable right wing conspiratorial mind could arrive at your cognitive dissonance at odds with the above. Or is this just what John Solomon told you to think?
Actually Ron Johnson corroborated Sondland's testimony that Trump directly told him he wanted NO quid pro quo, the opposite of your misleading characterization.
https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/ron-johnson-says-trump-denied-quid-pro-quo-in-august/article_6f857423-9f65-5704-beb4-3e8e475f73b0.html
And Sondland testified that his later opinion that security aid was tied to an investigation was entirely his own speculation, contradicted by several other witnesses, Trump himself, and the facts. Taylor and the others you mention got their wrong opinions from Sondland. Here's a funny montage from the impeachment trial that I guess you missed (starts a couple of minutes after this mark; watch from 1:05:05 - 1:12 for a complete refutation of your post):
https://youtu.be/DtWYg0mU9b8?t=3905
And even if he hadn't, you're still dishonestly trying to conflate two separate issues: (1) whether an investigation was one of the conditions for internal review consideration and (2) whether such a demand was transmitted to the Ukrainians. Only the latter would be a quid pro quo (though still not impeachable). It's been firmly established that the Ukrainians didn't even know about the aid pause, so there was no quid pro quo.
It's hilarious that you ignore hard evidence and mindlessly repeat DNC rhetoric accusing me of being "conspiratorial" on an issue in which you and your party are peddling an actual debunked conspiracy theory. And that you keep fixating on "Solomon" when I haven't mentioned him. He's a good reporter, but focusing attacks on him and constantly bringing him up is an old sleazy, dishonest tactic to try and obscure the fact, as shown in the trial, that numerous reporters, mostly liberals, have written about the apparent Biden corruption over the years (I don't recall the Trump team even mentioning Solomon in that presentation). Pretending it all somehow came from Solomon attempts to diminish that, and is more conspiracy theory thinking by you.
A classic example of this misleading tactic is trial lawyers over the years labeling much needed loser pays tort reform (that would make the US less litigious and cut into ambulance chasers’ bank accounts) the “British system”, making it sound like only the UK has it, trying to hide the fact that most of the rest of the world uses the loser pays system.
Sondland: ‘Was there a quid pro quo? The answer is yes’
Sondland: “Everyone was in the loop,” he said. “It was no secret.”
These are direct quotes from Sondland's sworn testimony before congress. He name checks Pompeo, Pence, Mulvaney, Bolton, Fiona Hill, and Morrison being in the loop with marching orders directly from Giuliani. That Trump would tell Sondland there was no quid pro quo AFTER he became aware of the whistleblower report is irrelevant for obvious reasons. Check the timeline.
So again: sworn testimonies of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, Bill Taylor, Tim Morrison, Fiona Hill, Laura Cooper, AND Sondland all make crystal clear there was a quid pro quo. Both Mulvaney and Johnson also admitted before backtracking. Everyone Sondland name checks being in the loop who was allowed to testified confirmed it. So according to you, it is Sondland you blame as the mastermind behind the "quid pro quo" conspiracy to undermine Trump? Why do you think Sondland tried to undermine the boss he paid a million bucks to work for? This is really fascinating.
"It's been firmly established that the Ukrainians didn't even know about the aid pause, so there was no quid pro quo."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/world/europe/ukraine-impeachment-military-aid.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/us/politics/ukraine-aid-freeze-impeachment.html
False. This undercuts your central argument.
"that numerous reporters, mostly liberals, have written about the apparent Biden corruption over the years"
Again false, all stories about "Biden's shady Ukrainian dealings" (your words) were originally sourced from Solomon's right wing conspiratorial propaganda that Solomon's own former publisher at the Hill has repudiated and distanced themselves from. Check your sources. Even a Fox News internal memo bashed Solomon for spreading disinformation and warned hosts not to trust him. Your praise for the discredited Svengali reveals you're under his spell.
LOL! You just completely ignored the evidence I posted refuting your debunked claims, like Sondland (whose rumor mongering the others you listed based their false claims on, claims contradicted by several other witnesses more in a position to know the truth) repeatedly admitting under oath that his claim about a quid pro quo was "pure guesswork" on his part.
Sondland (1:07:30) : "No one told me directly that the aid was tied to anything."
Turner (1:08:07): "Is it correct that no one on this planet told you that Donald Trump was tying this aid to the investigations? Because if your answer is 'yes', then the chairman's wrong and the headline on CNN is wrong. No one on this planet told you that President Trump was tying aid to investigations. Yes or no?"
Sondland: "Yes."
Turner: "So...you really have no testimony today that ties President Trump to a scheme to withhold aid from Ukraine in exchange for these investigations?"
Sondland: "Other than my own presumptions."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtWYg0mU9b8&feature=youtu.be&t=3905
Boom. It's over. The Democrats lost because they had no case.
The fact that the Ukrainians didn't know about the aid pause is well established. Dem claims otherwise were blown away by the presentation I already linked to above.
You're proving you're just a blind partisan and it's hilarious that you're still stuck clinging to this battle your party lost both substantively and politically.
“I now do recall a conversation on September 1, 2019, in Warsaw with” Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Sondland said in his updated evidence. “I said that resumption of the US aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.”
So why won't you answer a simple question? I'm interested in hearing how and why you think the president's point man on the Ukraine pressure campaign, along with the entire UKR diplomatic coterie, was operating for months under the wrong presumption that aid was tied to announcing a Biden investigation? You seem to be suggesting he was the sole source behind all the career civil servants testifying to their knowledge of a quid pro quo, but we know that's not true since it was confirmed to Fiona Hill by Bolton. It was also admitted by Mulvaney before he backtracked.
I'm simply asking you to present a plausible theory of the case for why Sondland's testimony should be believed when he says he was never told directly of a quid pro quo, yet had been pressuring Ukraine as if he had?
You also keep ignoring the evidence that debunks your claims that Ukrainians didn't know about the aid pause.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/world/europe/ukraine-impeachment-military-aid.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/us/politics/ukraine-aid-freeze-impeachment.html
Boom.
“I now do recall a conversation on September 1, 2019, in Warsaw with” Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Sondland said in his updated evidence. “I said that resumption of the US aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.”
You seem to be suggesting he was the sole source behind all the career civil servants testifying to their knowledge of a quid pro quo, but we know that's not true since it was confirmed to Fiona Hill by Bolton. It was also admitted by Mulvaney before he backtracked.
I did cite specifics. I'll cut and paste what I wrote originally:
Sondland: ‘Was there a quid pro quo? The answer is yes’
Sondland: “Everyone was in the loop,” he said. “It was no secret.”
The sworn testimonies of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, Bill Taylor, Tim Morrison, and Laura Cooper said the same. Even Republican Senator Ron Johnson according to the Wall Street Journal said he was told by Sondland of a quid pro quo between Trump and the Ukrainian president.
Why are you still pushing lies I've already debunked with linked source evidence above on a battle your party already lost both substantively and politically? Three years of emotional investment in the conspiracy theory hoax? Oh well. If you want to play the role of a moth repeatedly ramming headfirst into the light fixture at least it's occurring on a worthwhile thread.
Yes you've made it quite clear YOU believe Sondland's claim he was never told directly of a quid pro quo.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, Bill Taylor, Tim Morrison, and Laura Cooper said the same. Even Republican Senator Ron Johnson according to the Wall Street Journal said he was told by Sondland of a quid pro quo between Trump and the Ukrainian president.
That's why I'm asking you to present a plausible explanation for why Sondland's denial of being instructed by the president should be believed when he had been pressuring Ukraine as if he had?
"They and Fiona Hill all heard the rumor Sondland made up and spread around, but it was based on nothing."
Thank you for finally answering the question. See was that so hard? But this goes back to what I had asked you originally. Why would Sondland try to undermine the boss he paid a million bucks to work for by making up and spreading a malicious lie that aid was tied to announcing investigations of Democrats? When aid was paused, why did he explicitly tell Ukrainian officials in two separate meetings on July 10th that Zelensky's desire for a White House meeting was contingent on announcing investigations if in fact it wasn't? Doesn't that just prima facie defy logic? Why would Ukrainians be reminded in a text message that aid was predicated on announcing investigations just before the infamous Trump-Zelensky July 25th call if in fact it wasn't?
What's more plausible, that he pressured Ukrainian officials to announce Biden investigations for aid because he was instructed by his boss to do so or because he made it up to undermine himself, his team, and his boss?
This is why you Solomon conspiracy cabalists can't be taken seriously. No reasonable person can possibly be expected to exert the sheer mental gymnastics you endure to convince yourself that Trump's own trusted and hitherto loyal subordinate would inexplicably act on his own to undermine the boss he was so proud and constantly boasting about working for.
Thank you for finally answering the question. See was that so hard?
"You keep saying things that aren't true. Sondland didn't "tell" the Ukrainians that aid was contingent on an investigation."
Of course he did. That's why this fact was confirmed by every State official in attendance who testified. It's also why Bolton abruptly ended the meeting, he wanted no part of the "drug deal". The fact you're not even aware of this proves how you're just reading off your right wing talking points from that long discredited propaganda vid you keep pushing. Here's Vindman:
“Ambassador Bolton cut the meeting short when Ambassador Sondland started to speak about the requirement that Ukraine deliver specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with President Trump,” he said.
“Following this meeting, there was a short debriefing during which Ambassador Sondland emphasized the importance of Ukraine delivering the investigations into the 2016 elections, the Bidens, and Burisma. I stated to Ambassador Sondland that this was inappropriate and had nothing to do with national security. Dr. Hill also asserted his comments were improper.
"You keep saying things that aren't true. Sondland didn't "tell" the Ukrainians that aid was contingent on an investigation."
Of course he did. That's why this fact was confirmed by every State official in attendance who testified....Here's Vindman:
“Ambassador Bolton cut the meeting short when Ambassador Sondland started to speak about the requirement that Ukraine deliver specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with President Trump,” he said.
"You're conflating two different issues (you're wrong on both)."
You need only scroll up to see I've often mentioned both aid AND meetings interchangeably and sometimes both in the same sentence. Apparently you're unaware a Zelensky White House meeting is a form of "aid". I've quoted testimony to both meetings and security assistance being withheld as means to try to coerce Ukraine to announce Biden investigations. Both had been used as quids in efforts to extract a quid pro quo.
But I'll cut and paste this exact quote from Sondland's updated testimony I already gave you that refers explicitly to US aid:
“I said that resumption of the US aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.”
Boom. Got that? This is what he admitted telling top Zelensky aide Andriy Yermak in a supplemental declaration only after learning other diplomats were going to contradict his original testimony that he never said aid was conditional. In other words, this is Trump's handpicked and closest UKR diplomat testifying he informed Zelensky's top advisor there was a quid pro quo on security assistance they'd been discussing for "many weeks". Again, how plausible is it that he'd just make this up when just weeks earlier he'd received all sorts of pushback from Bolton and State officials on the inappropriateness of his attempted "drug deal" tying Biden investigations to a WH meeting? You expect anyone to believe he was now going to jeopardize himself and undermine the president by upping the quid to security assistance without his boss's explicit blessing? I've only cited evidence from transcripts and corroborated witnesses testimony you remain unable to refute.
When your only response is to point to a propaganda vid whose central claim had already been debunked by Ukraine's deputy foreign minister Olena Zerkal in articles I've already cited you make clear you're not even playing with a full deck of cards. You can't fault me for noting your repeated praise for a journalist-turned-conspiracy-hack discredited by his former publisher on his entire body of Ukraine reporting to explain your disconnect from reality and overall lack of coherency. Nothing you've said or could say materially changes any of Sondland's widely corroborated convos with Ukrainians tying aid (WH meeting and later US security assistance in case you're still confused) to Biden investigations. That you'd keep pretending like you have demonstrates how you're not quite right in the head.
Since Solomon has no answer as to why Sondland informed people close to Zelensky of a quid pro quo, neither does krl. That is probably the biggest weakness with Solomon's talking points that I've seen posted on here, so kudos to you. The only way out is to pretend that Sondland never did it. Yet Solomon and his tribe know that Sondland did it, or at the very least suspect it. It really makes you wonder what their purpose is in pretending.
shareThe lack of original thought and inability to think for himself is striking. Especially when I'm simply asking whether his conspiracy theory is even plausible in light of what we know from congressional testimony.
And that's just what Sondland admitted to after changing his testimony when learning he'd be outed by Ambassadors Taylor and Morrison along with some pretty damning text messages. It's not hard to imagine what other "forgotten" memories might have joltled loose had key players like Rick Perry, Pence, Giuliani, and of course Bolton been allowed to testify. Sondland had name checked all of them as being in the loop of the quid pro quo.
And if Sondland made this all up as krl would have us believe, it begs the question why Trump blocked them from testifying. They could have cleared him by implicating Sondland as having made it all up "based on nothing". You'd have to have some pretty large screws loose (krl in a nutshell) not to see that the only reason Sondland would dare keep pressing for Biden investigations and say it was conditional despite being castigated by the entire US UKR diplomatic wing that observed him doing it is because he knew he was acting under express orders of the president he was working so slavishly to please.
But as a Solomon cabalist with a demonstrable inability to think for himself, I'd expect nothing less from krl. He's a brainwashed automaton of the right wing fringe who can't figure out on his own whether what he's claiming even passes the basic smell test of plausibility. It's really sad.
Agreed.
shareYou need only scroll up to see I've often mentioned both aid AND meetings interchangeably and sometimes both in the same sentence.
Apparently you're unaware a Zelensky White House meeting is a form of "aid".
(Sondland): “I said that resumption of the US aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.”
Boom.
You can't fault me for noting your repeated praise for a journalist-turned-conspiracy-hack discredited by his former publisher on his entire body of Ukraine reporting to explain your disconnect from reality and overall lack of coherency.
"plus it's about a generic anti-corruption statement, not even Burisma or the Bidens."
You keep lying. Taylor testified being briefed by Morrison that Sondland had told Yermak security aid was being conditioned on "Burisma investigation" for which he immediately confronted Sondland via text:
"Very concerned, on that same day—September 1—I sent Ambassador Sondland a text message asking if “we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?”
Ambassador Sondland responded asking me to call him, which I did. During that phone call, Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelenskyy to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling Ukrainian officials that only a White House meeting with President Zelenskyy was dependent on a public announcement of investigations—in fact, Ambassador Sondland said, “everything” was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelenskyy “in a public box” by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.
Crap, you're a stubborn, lying dimwit. You get mixed up between a July meeting and a one on one personal conversation in September on a different topic (for which I'll continue to mock you), but you refuse to cop to it. You falsely call me a liar for citing your own Sondland quote posted above and you toss out a diversionary straw man about whether Trump mentioned "Burisma" in a phone call in which the transcript the President released includes him asking if the "Biden" deal was kosher (let alone Burisma), a legitimate question and something he's not afraid to publicly talk about. The aid wasn't even mentioned in that phone call, nor in any of the meetings with Ukrainians through July or August until the hold went public, according to your own touted witnesses.
You keep trying to distort the truth by cherry-picking comments....and even those keep undermining your own position. In your new quote Taylor is demonstrating that he didn't think there was any quid pro quo for aid prior to Sep. 1, near the end of this whole thing, and was only asking for clarification because of rumors spread by Sondland, who repeatedly testified that he was just guessing.
In the part you omitted Taylor says he contacted Sondland due to hearsay from Morrison about what Morrison allegedly heard from Sondland.
Sondland's testimony contradicts Taylor's claim, but either way Taylor's claim about Trump's comment is admittedly hearsay...from Sondland, not directly from Trump. Sondland's testimony that when he finally spoke directly to Trump the President told him "no quid pro quo", and never said anything contradicting that, is what's truly confirmed by the recovered text exchange:
Sondland testimony: “On September 9, 2019, Acting Charge de Affairs/Ambassador William Taylor raised concerns about the possibility that Ukrainians could perceive a linkage between U.S. security assistance and the President’s 2020 reelection campaign. (based on hearsay from Morrison about Sondland’s comments, which prompted Taylor to contact Sondland directly) Taking the issue seriously, and given the many versions of speculation that had been circulating about the security aid, I called President Trump directly. I asked the President: ‘What do you want from Ukraine?’ The President responded, ‘Nothing. There is no quid pro quo.’ The President repeated: ‘no quid pro quo’ multiple times. This was a very short call.”
Sondland text to Taylor on Sep. 9: “Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The president has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s of any kind. The president is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during the campaign.”
While we don’t know exactly what Sondland and Taylor said to each other in that Sep. 1 phone call you referenced, we know the Sept. 9 exchange happened as Sondland relayed because we have the text confirming it.
Why would Sondland say what he did in that text if, as Taylor alleged, Sondland had previously claimed that Trump had directly told him he DOES want a quid pro quo? The text corroborates Sondland’s testimony that he never heard the President demand a quid pro quo. Taylor’s recollection doesn’t make any sense given the text’s wording. The most charitable explanation is that Taylor either misinterpreted Sondland’s earlier comments or misremembered. As part of that anti-Trump swamp rat cabal that’s proved prone to hysterically assume the worst about the President, his mind might have wrongly filled in some blanks.
Here’s the layout:
Not one witness testified that they directly heard from Trump tying aid to investigations. Two, Sondland and Senator Johnson, are on record saying Trump directly told them the opposite, that he wanted “no quid pro quo.”
A few officials like Taylor and Morrison came to believe aid was tied to investigations purely from comments made by Sondland, the EU ambassador who wasn’t even the main guy involved in Ukrainian dealings. Sondland was the source of that rumor, which didn’t float around even in US circles until news of the aid hold went public on August 29.
Morrison:“I have no reason to believe the Ukrainians had any knowledge of the review until August 28, 2019.
Ambassador Taylor and I had no reason to believe that the release of the security-sector assistance might be conditioned on a public statement regarding the Burisma investigation until my September 1, 2019, conversation with Ambassador Sondland.
Even then, I hoped that Ambassador Sondland’s strategy was exclusively his own and would not be considered by leaders in the administration and Congress who understood the strategic importance of Ukraine to our national security. I am pleased our process gave the President the confidence he needed to approve the release of the security-sector assistance. My regret is that Ukraine ever learned of the review and that, with this impeachment inquiry, Ukraine has become subsumed in the U.S. political process.”
Morrison was at the Sep. 1 Warsaw VP Pence meeting with Zelensky and helped the Vice President’s team prepare.
Meadows: “And so there was no indication from the Vice President at all that the aid was being held up, waiting for an investigation into the Bidens or Burisma or—he didn’t bring that up at all?”
Morrison: “Not at all, sir.”
Meadows: “And you’re confident of that?”
Morrison: “One hundred percent, sir.”
…
Meadows: “So, in that, with that same degree of precision, do you think that there is any way that President Zelensky left the meeting with the Vice President with an understanding from the Vice President that the aid was somehow conditioned upon investigation into Burisma or the Bidens at all?”
Morrison:“No, sir.”
Meadows: “And you’re 100 percent confident of that?”
Morrison: “One hundred percent, sir.”
What about other officials like special envoy Keith Volker, the top diplomat dealing with Ukraine at the time?
Volker: “…at no time was I aware of or took part in an effort to urge Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden. As you will see from the extensive text messages I am providing, which convey a sense of real-time dialogue with several different actors, Vice President Biden was never a topic of discussion.”
…
Turner: “You had a meeting with the President of the United States, and you believed that the policy concerns he raised concerning Ukraine were valid, correct?”
Volker: “Yes.”
Turner: “Did the President of the United States ever say to you that he was not going to allow aid from the United States to go to Ukraine unless there were investigations into Burisma, the Bidens, or the 2016 elections?”
Volker: “No he did not.”
Turner: “Did the Ukrainians ever tell you that they understood that they would not get a meeting with the President of the United States, a phone call with the President of the United States, military aid or foreign aid from the United States unless they undertook investigations of Burisma, the Bidens, or the 2016 elections?”
Volker: “No, they did not.”
Ambassador David Hale, a high ranking Obama holdover in the State Department involved in the Iran deal testified:
MEADOWS: “All right. And so, as a person who would know at the seventh floor, no matter how informed The Washington Post Editorial Board may or may not be -- and I would put the emphasis on the "may not be" -- as a person who should know, you're saying your sworn testimony today is that you were not aware of connections to withhold foreign aid to Ukraine. Is that correct?”
HALE: “Not aware of any what?”
MEADOWS: “Any nefarious motivations to withhold aid to Ukraine.”
HALE: “That's correct. I did not know that. We did not know why this had occurred. It was not explained to us. The context, of course, as we knew, A, the President was skeptical of assistance, generally, and, B, he was skeptical of the corruption environment in Ukraine.”
(earlier)
Question: “…then the -- foreign aid, for a variety of reasons, is subject to holds. Is that not a true statement?”
Hale: “That's true.”
Q: “And the holds come from a variety of places. Sometimes they are generated from the Hill; sometimes not. But as a general matter, aid is often held?”
Hale: “It happens. As I said, it was happening on Lebanon as well. As I said earlier, there was speculation in an email between Assistant Secretary -- well, the Assistant Secretary got back to me and said that he and his OSD counterpart had been speculating on the Lebanon aid and the fact that this was having on Ukraine, whether this was a new normal in terms of -- I think the context was, is this the way we are going forth with our foreign assistance review? But we didn't know.”
Q: “And oftentimes the holds or the freezes, whatever you want to call it, gets resolved?”
Hale: “Right. Correct.”
Q: “And in this particular instance, were you hopeful or confident that the hold would be resolved?”
Hale: “I very much hoped so…I was hoping -- very hopeful that the Secretary of State would be persuasive and convince the President that this was the right thing to do, to release the money.”
Q: “And ultimately it was?”
Hale: “It was.”
Q: “And to your knowledge, there was no strings attached to that aid?”
Hale: “Right.”
George Kent is another high ranking, career bureaucrat in the State Department with a clear disdain for Trump. Yet here’s his testimony:
Q: “…did you think that the aid might in any way be linked to the investigations that were being pushed by Mr. Giuliani or that were discussed by the President in the July 25th call?”
Kent: “I personally did not associate them, no.”
No one seemed to be associating them except for Sondland, and even he didn’t do so until weeks after the July 25 phone call Democrats seized on to launch the impeachment effort. And what about Sondland, the ultimate source on whom the entire Democrat case is based?
Q: “What about the aid? (Ambassador Volker) says that they weren’t tied, that the aid was not tied -“
Sondland: “And I didn’t say they were conclusively tied either. I said I was presuming it.”
Q: “Okay. And so the President never told you they were tied.”
Sondland: “That is correct.”
Q: “So your testimony and (Volker’s) testimony is consistent, and the President did not tie aid to investigations.”
Sondland: “That is correct.”
…
Sondland: “Again, I recall no discussions with any State Department or White House official about former Vice President Biden or his son.”
…
Sondland: “I do not recall any discussions with the White House on withholding U.S. security assistance from Ukraine in return for assistance with the President’s 2020 reelection campaign.”
As for the Ukrainians themselves…
President Zelensky: “We didn’t speak about this”; “There was no blackmail.”; “I never talked to the President from the position of a quid pro quo.”; “We had, I think, [a] good phone call. It was normal. We spoke about many things”; “Nobody pushed me.”
Taylor, Volker, Sondland, and others confirmed in testimony that in their meetings that followed the Ukrainians felt good about the call.
Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko: “I have never seen a direct link between investigations and security assistance. Yes, investigations were mentioned, you know, in a presidential conversation. But there was no clear connection between these events”.
Chief Presidential Advisor Andriy Yermak (after finding out about the aid pause at the end of August): “We were told that they would figure it out. And after a certain amount of time the aid was unfrozen. We did not have the feeling that this aid was connected to any one specific issue.”
Yermak on the much hyped Sep. 1 Sondland conversation in Warsaw: “Gordon and I were never alone together…We bumped into each other in the hallway next to the escalator, as I was walking out (with some others nearby, though Yermak doesn’t know if they could overhear the exchange)…And I remember – everything is fine with my memory – we talked about how well the meeting went. That’s all we talked about.”
That supports the theory that Sondland was clearly just briefly giving his own speculative advice, if anything, as his own testimony is worded, not relaying a vital demand from the US President. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been brushed off and forgotten.
Taylor, Morrison, Volker, Sondland, and Kent all agree that the Ukrainians didn’t even know about the aid pause until it went public with the Politico story on August 29. The Ukrainians say that too. It’s also documented that the Ukrainians never raised the issue in any of the various summer meetings with US officials. Yermak said they certainly would have raised it if they had known about the pause. That’s supported by the text/call evidence showing an energetic flurry of Ukrainians contacting US officials asking questions when the Politico story came out.
You stupidly accuse me of pushing conspiracy theories? You spent years pushing an insane conspiracy theory in the Russian Trump/spy hoax, and now you’re pushing another insane conspiracy that was debunked at the outset by Trump releasing the call transcript, and has been further debunked by the mountain of Democrats’ own evidence since.
The fact is that no witness says Trump directed him to make demands of Ukraine in exchange for aid. None of the diplomats dealing with Ukraine say they ever connected the aid with such demands, except Sondland, and he only did so near the end as his own speculative advice. That was before he talked to the President directly and Trump told him “no quid pro quo”.
The witnesses you’ve touted all say they weren’t aware of the notion of aid being tied to something like investigations until hearing Sondland’s speculations near the end. If the President was making such demands of Ukraine wouldn’t at least some of them have known?
What’s your theory? That Sondland was single handedly carrying out a secret mission for Trump that those doing most of the actual diplomacy with Ukraine didn’t even know about? And that the Ukrainians also deny knowing anything about? (guess Sondland should have spoken more loudly)
You’d have to believe that everyone on all sides was lying at least part of the time, including the Ukrainians.
What’s more likely? That insane scenario or that Sondland was actually telling the truth when he said tying aid to investigations was his own “guesswork”, and not an order from the President?
You’ve got nothing. The aid quid pro quo narrative has been completely debunked. As for the trivial meeting quid pro quo narrative, I’ll quote Sondland’s testimony:
“Given the various misstatements in the press, I want to take this time to clarify several issues, including questions, involving the Ukraine public statement, the involvement of former Mayor Giuliani, and other alleged issues. First, I knew that a public embrace of anti-corruption reforms by Ukraine was one of the preconditions for securing a White House meeting with President Zelensky. My view was, and has always been, that such Western reforms are consistent with U. S. support for rule of law in Ukraine, going back decades under both Republican and Democrat administrations. Nothing about that request raised any red flags for me, Ambassador Volker, or Ambassador Taylor. Consequently, I supported the efforts of Ambassador Volker to encourage the Ukrainian Government to adopt the public statement setting out its reform priorities. My recollection is that the statement was written primarily by the Ukrainians, with Ambassador Volker’s guidance, and I offered my assistance when asked…The fact that we were working on this public statement was no secret.
More broadly, such public statements are a common and necessary part of U.S. diplomacy. Requesting that parties align their public messaging in advance of any important leadership meeting is a routine way to leverage the power of a face-to-face exchange.”
Exactly what I said earlier, and what anyone who actually understands and follows international relations knows: agreeing on shared talking points isn’t a “quid pro quo”, certainly not in the sinister sense Democrats mean.
Regardless of the much hyped effort to develop shared talking points, Trump sent a letter on May 29 to Zelensky suggesting a meeting without preconditions. Trump repeated this invitation for a White House meeting on the July 25 phone call, again, without preconditions. Zelensky suggested they meet instead at Warsaw in September since they were both going there anyway. Trump agreed. He only canceled because the hurricane demanded his attention, sending Pence to Warsaw instead. Trump soon after had the meeting with Zelensky at New York. Like the aid flowing, all this happened without any statement or investigation that was supposedly being demanded ever happening. The soap opera drama over statement wording playing out behind the scenes seems to be a case of bureaucrats making a mountain out of a molehill.
No wonder Democrats lost on the impeachment gambit politically as well as substantively. They had no case.
You’ve had your brains beaten out, BreakbeatSavant. Janitors will have to come clean up the pile of crushed skull fragments and tissue chunks from the spot on the concrete where your head used to be. Metaphorically.
"While we don’t know exactly what Sondland and Taylor said to each other in that Sep. 1 phone call you referenced"
Yes we do. Because Bill Taylor, a man with impeccable and unassailable credentials, took contemporaneous notes of the call that as a career diplomat he's trained to do. He testified under oath to exactly what Sondland told him. Meanwhile Sondland's dubious memory had him revising his original testimony that there was no quid pro quo after he saw Taylor would expose him. This alone makes Taylor the far more credible witness to what was said. He also informed Morrison at the time what Sondland told him about Trump's demand of a quid pro quo, which also gives his account more credibility. Nor did Sondland dispute Taylor's testimony. When given opportunities to dispute Taylor he would say he didn't remember and other times defer to Taylor's contemporaneous notes over his dubious recollections. Again, why do you think Team Trump refused to turn over Taylor's notes even upon subpoena? Try to think for yourself for once when you try to answer this question.
Taylor testified under oath Sondland had informed Yermak of the quid pro quo and told Taylor it was conditioned on Burisma. That exposes your lie.
"Why would Sondland say what he did in that text if, as Taylor alleged, Sondland had previously claimed that Trump had directly told him he DOES want a quid pro quo?"
Because if you were familiar with Taylor's testimony, you'd know Sondland called Trump at Taylor's urging to inquire about a proposed modification to the quid pro quo that had been worked out the week before during the American delegation's trip to Warsaw. But you're clearly not familiar with this in the least and have no idea what you're even talking about. Please read his entire testimony front to back instead of wasting my time with such obvious questions. And again, Trump telling Sondland there was no quid pro quo after learning of the whistleblower is irrelevant for obvious reasons.
"Not one witness testified that they directly heard from Trump tying aid to investigations."
Irrelevant since every individual outside Sondland who interacted directly with Trump was blocked from testifying. Again, why do you think he would block their testimony if they could have cleared him? Your refusal to answer this question speaks for itself.
There is no dispute Trump used the powers of his office to try to coerce a foreign state into investigating a domestic political rival, nor is there dispute that the Ukrainians were informed by the Trump administration that the hold on security assistance would not be lifted until this investigation was publicly announced. Multiple witnesses testified Sondland had told them that, in his conversations with the president, Trump had described his requirement for Zelensky to publicly announce the investigations into Biden and 2016. Sondland was Trump's handpicked toady in Ukraine and the only one with a direct relationship with Trump who testified and he admitted to telling Zelensky's top aide that aid release was conditional. And you think anyone would believe the president's toady didn't get his marching orders straight from the president?
Like I've said, you just can't expect any reasonable person to believe that. It's just your capacity for ignorance and self delusion as a John Solomon conspiracy cabalist is just too great for you to overcome.
Bill Taylor testified that's what Sondland told him, and he has far more credibility than the president's toady whose selective memory and changing testimony makes it obvious he was all about protecting the president until it came to facing potential perjury charges because of Taylor's testimony and contemporaneous notes.
And I realize part of the problem here is you're so brainwashed you believe a quid pro quo Biden investigation required for a WH meeting is entirely legitimate because that's what Solomon told you to think. I even had to explain to you what a quid pro quo was because you insisted leveraging a WH meeting for Biden investigations was not a quid pro quo. But again, it's clearly not ok at all when Bolton referred to it as a "drug deal", wanted nothing to do with it, and told Fiona Hill to report it to White House counsel. That you can't even understand how it's obviously inappropriate proves how deeply indoctrinated you are in the Solomon cabal.
But tell me more about your conspiracy theory. Don't you think if Sondland had really made the whole thing up Trump would be pissed and scapegoat Sondland for getting him in so much trouble instead of flying him around on Air Force One during the impeachment hearings? People who aren't brainwashed Solomon cabalists like you see that and instantly recognize witness tampering by the president to ensure his toady is on the same page to protect him. The defendant would never be allowed to confer with the star witness in his own judicial trial for that reason; it's called "witness tampering".
You missed this gem from your touted witness:
Democrat counsel: “And you understood that President Trump was insisting and conditioning the White House meeting on, I think, quote, “everything,” which was both the security assistance and the White House meeting.
Taylor: “That’s what Ambassador Sondland said. He said that they were linked. They were linked.”
Democrat counsel: “Right.”
Taylor: ”I don’t remember him saying President Trump said that they had to be linked.”
😄 So much for your “impeccable” witness with “unassailable credentials” on whose shaky hearsay you based your entire argument.
Taylor testified under oath Sondland had informed Yermak of the quid pro quo and told Taylor it was conditioned on Burisma. That exposes your lie.
Then there’s this:
Taylor: “The same day that I sent my cable to the Secretary, August 29, Mr. Yermak contacted me and was very concerned, asking about the withheld security assistance. The hold that the White House had placed on the assistance had just been made public that day in a political story. At that point, I was embarrassed that I could not give him any explanation for why it was withheld. It had still not occurred to me that the hold on security assistance could be related to the investigations."
That’s basically what all the witnesses we’ve discussed say. So we’ve established that no one was talking about aid allegedly being tied to any demands through almost this entire multi-month saga, even then Sondland’s own speculations were the only reason that notion was being discussed those last several days, and the Ukrainians weren’t even aware of the aid pause until soon before the pause was lifted.
So what’s your conspiracy theory? Trump didn’t demand anything from Ukraine in exchange for aid from the start of this in May….through and long past the perfectly fine phone call on July 25 that Democrats launched the impeachment farce over but that Taylor and the other witnesses all report the Ukrainians were pleased with afterward….all through August with it never being mentioned in all those meetings….until Politico broke the story of the aid pause publicly on August 29, after which he sent Sondland, and only Sondland (not Volker who was actually the top diplomat in charge of talks), on a secret mission to relay this demand to Yermak in one brief, casual exchange after a real meeting with VP Pence had ended, an alleged demand that Yermak doesn’t even remember? A secret demand that Sondland immediately walked over and reported to Morrison for some reason? Except that Morrison echoed Sondland’s testimony by characterizing Sondland as saying he had given his own opinion to Yermak, not necessarily a demand from Trump.
Why would Sondland talk to Morrison at all just to lie to him with an almost truth when he didn’t have to say anything? Or do you feel Morrison was in on it?
They were only talking about it at all because Politico broke the story.
So you believe Trump was just sitting around waiting for news of the aid pause to go public before making any demands of Ukraine for it? What if the story hadn’t broken? Either the fiscal year would have ended in a few weeks and the aid would have been withdrawn, in which case it would have been too late to make any demands, or the aid would have been released when it was following the internal review without the Ukrainians ever knowing it had been paused. Either way there’s no room for any quid pro quo.
No, you’re the one violating Occam’s Razor by multiplying entities without necessity. The most simple, plausible explanation is that Sondland, described by other witnesses as a somewhat loose cannon in general, really was just giving his own opinion as he testified and Morrison indicated.
As for you slathering Taylor with blind praise, he demonstrated the same memory lapses other witnesses did and was caught contradicting himself on multiple occasions, apparently failing to remember what he had testified earlier that same day let alone solid details from months earlier. You repeat a particularly stupid DNC talking point puffing up his note taking. Pretty much everyone takes notes, though it’s probably better to do so after a conversation unless you’re a transcriber because doing so during a call can impair your listening ability. And most notes aren’t remotely transcriptions but rough summaries of a few takeaways at best.
Under oath Taylor couldn’t even recall who initiated his key calls with Morrison, let alone the exact wording of his conversations with Sondland or anyone else.
Taylor couldn’t even say whether Morrison was a witness to the conversation between Sondland and Yermak (he wasn’t) or whether he was told about it later.
Meticulous notes?
In fact Lee Zeldin destroyed Taylor’s worth as an anti-Trump witness with just a few minutes of questioning near the end, drawing out key facts Dems overlooked, highlighting Taylor’s hypocrisy on various issues (like whether it’s ok to look into foreign interference in the 2016 election), and revealing him to be an incompetent who was ignorant of basic, crucial facts someone in his position should have known.
Taylor confessed that he wasn’t even aware of the documented anti-Trump election interference by various Ukrainian officials in 2016, like that reported on in Politico in 2017 by liberal reporters, one of whom went on to work for the NY Times (not “John Solomon”, you obsessed clown 😄)….
"Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire"
"Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton."
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446
…and admitted it was “disturbing”.
Aside from Leshchenko and other officials working with the DNC to generate dirt on Trump, including leaks of disputed documents that ultimately got Manafort removed from the campaign, you’ve got the Ukrainian Internal Affairs Minister Arsen Avakov tweeting out numerous insults, calling Trump everything from a “dangerous misfit” to a “clown” and warning that he was a bigger danger “than terrorism”.
The freaking Ukrainian ambassador to the US, Valeriy Chaly, wrote an op ed in The Hill attacking then candidate Trump during the campaign!
The entire Ukrainian regime was basically working with Democrats to campaign for Clinton and against Trump. Yet somehow Taylor claimed he never heard about any of this until the hearing. However, he did recognize the reporter’s name, Vogel, and knew he by then worked for the NY Times. He also recognized the Ukrainian officials named, and agreed they were “power player(s)”. Despite pleading ignorance, he was repeatedly quick to insist that only a “few” Ukrainians were involved, and that they were all gone from power under the Zelensky regime, the implication being that whatever legitimate concerns the Trump administration might have had should have instantly evaporated overnight with the recent election.
A Republican had to correct Taylor by pointing out that Avakov, one of the worst turds involved, was actually still in office, and the government had not, in fact completely changed overnight any more than ours does after an election.
Taylor also conceded under questioning that he had made no effort to find out Rudy Giuliani’s motive for pressing Ukraine to look into 2016 election interference or corruption, and that his view on that was shaped (apparently entirely) by a NY Times hit piece predictably characterizing Giuliani as trying to impact the 2020 election in sinister fashion. Taylor uncritically swallowed this one sided fake news drivel and claimed it alarmed him.
But the truth is that sifting through the testimony shows that Taylor and some others were primarily just career bureaucrats caught up in petty turf wars. They were angered by the existence of what they called the “irregular channel” led by Volker and including Sondland and others, as opposed to only the so called “regular channel”, as if the pride and power of unelected bureaucrats is more important than the Constitution or the President setting his own policy agendas.
This whole farce was small. The concrete facts remain that there was no quid pro quo, not that it would have been impeachable even if there was. Aid flowed. Meetings happened. Without the much cried over statement or investigations announced. You clearly don’t, but I and millions of other Americans still want to get to the full truth about Ukrainian interference in our election, their collusion with the Democratic Party (which, unlike the Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy theory, actually happened), and why Biden allowed his son to receive and hold an exorbitantly paid job with a corrupt Ukrainian energy outfit he wasn’t remotely qualified for while the VP was tasked with leading US energy policy in Ukraine and used a billion dollars of tax payer money to extort the firing of the chief Ukrainian prosecutor.
But what sparked this thread tangent was me correcting your false claim that Trump demanded Ukraine investigate his political opponents under “threat” of withholding military aid. You have ZERO proof of that. Not one fact witness testified that.
"Not one witness testified that they directly heard from Trump tying aid to investigations."
Irrelevant since every individual outside Sondland who interacted directly with Trump was blocked from testifying. Again, why do you think he would block their testimony if they could have cleared him? Your refusal to answer this question speaks for itself.
I even had to explain to you what a quid pro quo was because you insisted leveraging a WH meeting for Biden investigations was not a quid pro quo.
"In fact Taylor wasn’t even at the Sep. 1st Warsaw meeting and only heard about the Sondland/Yermak discussion third hand from Morrison."
Which is what I told you the first time a few posts up that you wrongly called "hearsay". We have two sworn witnesses testifying to discussing with Sondland firsthand the quid pro quo being conditioned on "Burisma". Morrison when Sondland briefed him after he observed the discussion with Yermak AND Taylor when he confronted Sondland. That's not "hearsay", that's firsthand testimony on what Sondland said that exposed your lie that it wasn't about Burisma. So again, here's Taylor:
Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling Ukrainian officials that only a White House meeting with President Zelenskyy was dependent on a public announcement of investigations—in fact, Ambassador Sondland said, “everything” was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelenskyy “in a public box” by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.
Taylor (about his talk with Sondland): ”I don’t remember him saying President Trump said that they had to be linked.”
😄 So much for your star witness tying Sondland's personal speculations to a mythical Trump demand to the Ukrainians (which never happened). Though he was resentful of the guy's involvement for petty turf reasons, your hero Taylor did call Volker "a man of integrity", and Volker certainly testified that there was no quid pro quo for aid, as I educated you above.
Morrison, Taylor's actual source for the Sondland/Yermak meeting, testified that Sondland told him he had said to Yermak that he "believed" the statement might "help" get the aid, consistent with what Sondland testified. Here's testimony from the only direct US witness:
"Q: “What about the aid? (Ambassador Volker) says that they weren’t tied, that the aid was not tied -“
Sondland: “And I didn’t say they were conclusively tied either. I said I was presuming it.”
Q: “Okay. And so the President never told you they were tied.”
Sondland: “That is correct.”
Q: “So your testimony and (Volker’s) testimony is consistent, and the President did not tie aid to investigations.”
Sondland: “That is correct.”
……..
Sondland (1:07:30) : "No one told me directly that the aid was tied to anything."
Turner (1:08:07): "Is it correct that no one on this planet told you that Donald Trump was tying this aid to the investigations? Because if your answer is 'yes', then the chairman's wrong and the headline on CNN is wrong. No one on this planet told you that President Trump was tying aid to investigations. Yes or no?"
Sondland: "Yes."
Turner: "So...you really have no testimony today that ties President Trump to a scheme to withhold aid from Ukraine in exchange for these investigations?"
Sondland: "Other than my own presumptions."
And the other witnesses don’t even contradict him. That cherry-picked Taylor quote you keep posting is a conflation of different things you’re trying to use to mislead. We know it wasn’t about the Yermak meeting because Taylor explicitly testified that he didn’t talk with Sondland about that. The “officials” (plural) referred to the people Sondland had been talking to for months working on the statement, which wasn’t a secret and had nothing to do with the aid (as you own quote states). Taylor’s word was that Sondland now “recognized” that the statement might help the aid too, which is quite different from stating that the President had told him that, and is consistent with Sondland’s testimony that he was just guessing. It was no secret that Trump preferred the Ukrainians reopen an investigation into Burisma (heck, I still want one). He also wanted and frequently talked about things like other European nations paying more of the aid (echoing similar Trump pushes on NATO and UN funding) and was concerned about general corruption. It’s not much leap for Sondland to make the guess he did, though he shouldn’t have gone around talking out of turn as he did. None of your conspiracy theories required.
You’re finished, BreakbeatSavant. You’ve been demolished and owned. You can go now.
But if you want to hang around, at least answer my question you dodged:
They were only talking about it at all because Politico broke the story.
So you believe Trump was just sitting around waiting for news of the aid pause to go public before making any demands of Ukraine for it? What if the story hadn’t broken? Either the fiscal year would have ended in a few weeks and the aid would have been withdrawn, in which case it would have been too late to make any demands, or the aid would have been released when it was following the internal review without the Ukrainians ever knowing it had been paused. Either way there’s no room for any quid pro quo.
If a quid pro quo demand for aid had been Trump’s plan, why didn’t Trump ever make that demand to Ukraine?
Isn’t it more likely that the aid pause was actually just for an internal review, not something the Ukrainians were supposed to know about, just as Trump and everyone else involved says it was, and is overwhelmingly more realistic given the evidence?
PS -
"In fact Taylor wasn’t even at the Sep. 1st Warsaw meeting and only heard about the Sondland/Yermak discussion third hand from Morrison."
Which is what I told you the first time a few posts up that you wrongly called "hearsay".
we know Zelensky got the message loud and clear since he was scheduled to go on Fareed Zakaria's CNN show on Sep 13th to announce the Biden investigations and was saved from Trump's extortion scheme in the nick of time by the heroic whistleblower report going public on the 9th. This forced Trump's hand to release the aid on the 11th and allowed Zelensky to cancel his appearance announcing bogus investigations into the Bidens. Zakaria explained all of this himself as was widely reported at the time.
So you're saying is this was all a Deep State plot to frame the president by Taylor? And how did he manage to get Fareed Zakaria to play along again? New York Times would have to be in your conspiracy too since they were the ones to first break the story on Zelensky's CNN scheduled appearance to announce Biden investigations. You'd know that if you were familiar with the story instead of learning about it for the first time when I just told you. Your conspiracy just gets more complex and implausible every time you post!
But that's not what you said originally when you said Sondland made it all up. So which one is it? When you keep contradicting yourself and can't keep your own story straight, why would you expect anyone else to take you seriously?
And again, why did Trump refuse to hand over Taylor's notes? Your new conspiracy theory still fails to make sense.
It's not even clear who you think you're kidding trying to insist Morrison didn't inform Taylor of the quid pro quo when Sondland already revised his testimony and admitted to it. All you're doing is engaging in ritual self delusion that invites mockery. I stopped reading after that since you're retreading ground that's already been covered. Meanwhile you're so insulated from the real world and verbally and logically impaired you can't even seem to get the timeline and basic legal terminology right. Hearsay is a rule of evidence that applies to testimony made by witnesses who are unable to appear in court to offer their testimony. Taylor testifying to his firsthand conversation with Sondland telling him what conditions need to be met for releasing aid is not hearsay. Same goes for Morrison. Nor would any discussion of what Sondland says Trump told him be inadmissible as "hearsay" in a judicial trial because there's a "co-conspirator" exception for when statements are made "during the course and in furtherance of the conspiracy." [Rule 801(d)(2)(E) of the Federal Rules of Evidence] I can tell you're not very bright when you reflexively parrot Solomon talking points without checking to see it's actually true.
Bottom line Morrison grew so alarmed of the quid pro quo after being briefed again by Sondland on the 7th where Sondland affirmed the quid pro quo after Trump rejected the proposed modification suggested by Taylor that Morrison reported what he heard to NSC lawyers "I wanted to make sure, in going to the lawyers," Morrison said, “that there was a record of what Ambassador Sondland was doing, to protect the President.” Morrison said he felt the need to document Sondland's September 7th call with the NSC lawyers because Sondland had represented to him that President Trump was behind the quid pro quo scheme: "[P]art of what I’m trying to do here in talking to the lawyers is making sure they’re aware of what Mr. Sondland is doing. And he's saying the President is aware, but I’m still not entirely certain that he is." (Morrison Depo. at 224) Morrison later acknowledged it was also possible that Sondland was telling the truth about his conversations with Trump.
So was Morrison in on the Deep State conspiracy with Taylor to lie about Sondland to take out Trump in a coup? Or did Sondland make it all up based on nothing to get his boss impeached? You need to make up your mind and try to make sense of your conspiratorial babble.
Has anyone ever told you that you ramble excessively while not saying much of anything? You really need to work on being more concise, because you really can't expect anyone's going to bother to read a convoluted four reply diatribe while you never get around to making a coherent point. I made that mistake earlier reading your unbearably long cut and paste of Kent, who was never name checked by Sondland as in the loop so irrelevant, and Morrison prior to being informed by Sondland of the quid pro quo so also irrelevant. I won't make the mistake of reading your meandering and irrelevant drivel again. But just so you know, babbling pointlessly does make you come across as unhinged. If you desire legitimacy you must be more concise.
Meanwhile, you should study up on the meaning of hearsay. It doesn't mean in court what John Solomon told you it means.
I love how you typed all that BS after admitting that you didn't even read most of my post. Maybe you missed this vital question designed to flesh out your conspiracy theory and hopefully get you to apply some critical thinking:
So you believe Trump was just sitting around waiting for news of the aid pause to go public before making any demands of Ukraine for it?
No communication with the Ukrainians tying aid to a statement is even alleged apart from the brief, impromptu Sondland/Yermak conversation, which Sondland describes as his own speculative advice and Yermak doesn't even remember happening apart from casual pleasantries. That didn't happen until after the aid pause went public. The witnesses, including Taylor, and the Ukrainians themselves agree that Ukraine didn't know about the aid pause until the August 29 Politico story made it public.
So in your conspiracy theory, if Trump's plan was to hold aid to force the Ukrainians to do something, why was no message along those lines communicated until after a liberal media outlet broke the story just days before aid was lifted anyway? That story was the only reason why Sondland and the other officials were talking about the aid to the Ukrainians at all over that few days span, and trying to answer their questions. Why did the Trump administration not even inform Ukraine about the pause?
How does your conspiracy theory get around that?
Your post was just a mix of stupid straw man arguments and false claims that have already been debunked. I do give you points for doubling down on the self deprecating clown bit by not only repeating your rant about "John Solomon" (😄 while cravenly dodging the Politico and ABC stories I linked for you on Ukrainian election interference and the Bidens’ corruption) but by citing the NY Times as a credible source even after I mocked you for it and quoted the Ukrainians debunking the CNN talking point.
You're a partisan moron. You weren't familiar with most of this evidence until I educated you on it, or else you wouldn't have based so much on Taylor or made the various false claims you did.
You don’t know what “hearsay” means, the misapplied definition you quickly googled up notwithstanding. Taylor’s testimony about what Sondland allegedly said to Yermak (which failed to make your case anyway as I showed), a conversation he didn’t witness and was told about third hand, is classic hearsay and was widely described as such by reasonably honest legal observers regardless of party. In fact much of the entire House impeachment farce was gossipy hearsay, speculations, hypotheticals, personal feelings, and policy disagreement. I and others criticized it as such at the time while following it on this board and elsewhere. When I first watched/read the hearings months ago I kept wanting to say “Objection, Your Honor!”, but the hearings didn’t follow court rules.
We don’t have the exact wording of whatever Sondland said to Morrison or any of these people said to each other. All the witnesses had memory failings and it’s quite possible there were nuanced misinterpretations even in the moment, which is common.
That’s why it’s vital to cut through cherry-picked weeds and get to the overarching, concrete facts of the case as my question does above.
The whole exercise was just designed to hurt Trump politically, a fact various Democrats openly acknowledged. Fortunately the treasonous effort backfired.
As for your posting advice, I do just fine thank you and know exactly what I’m doing. ;) I vanquish you in the substantive argument lest any third party read this at some point and be misled. I post as expansively or concisely as the situation calls for. Sometimes I respond effectively with a single emoticon.
You were blindly dismissing the evidence I linked to so I posted some of it for good measure. My advice to you would be to stop relying on rabid leftist outfits to spoonfeed you tidbits and shape your worldview. And to cut your losses. Your weak replies which fail to address salient points, your dumb repetitions, and meandering rambling on diversionary nonsense about stuff like “John Solomon”, along with your admission of not even reading the full posts anymore show you’ve surrendered on the intellectual front and are still replying out of petty pride. That’s fine with me though. If nothing else it gives the op about Biden’s disgusting meltdown more exposure.
"So you believe Trump was just sitting around waiting for news of the aid pause to go public before making any demands of Ukraine for it?"
Who cares besides you? No one. In light of the fact that Sondland testified to delivering the message to Yermak it's irrelevant. I just educated you about how Zelensky got the message loud and clear by booking and cancelling on Zakaria as the NY Times broke details how his inner circle debated for days whether to make the bogus announcement when the aid was going to disappear by fiscal year Sep 30th. If you were familiar with the Times article you'd know this, but now I remember your complaining in another thread a long time ago about not being able to read a Times article because of their paywall. That does give you a better excuse why you never read the links I gave your earlier that debunks your Solomon talking points. You're too inept. You'll just have to take my word for it that the article effectively moots all the time you spend on timelines and such. Of course Yermak is going to publicly downplay the delivery of the quid by Sondland when their country is engaged in a hot war with Russia and not exacerbating a tense relationship with Trump is an existential matter of life and death. But we know the Ukrainians knew because Sondland told them himself, Ukraine's deputy foreign minister Olena Zerkal confirmed they knew, internal Pentagon emails turned over via FOIA request also indicate they knew, and their scheduling and canceling on Zakaria's show and reasons they gave Zakaria and the NY Times article that broke the story proved that they knew. If you weren't too technically inept to figure out how to read NY Times and WSJ articles that reported this then you wouldn't have wasted your time posting a propaganda vid that had long been debunked six times since Sunday. You put too much faith in a right wing conspiracy peddler.
"admitting that you didn't even read most of my post."
Well yeah, because you were retreading old ground insisting Morrison didn't communicate the quid to Taylor when we have the proof in an electronic text message turned over to the House of Taylor confronting Sondland over the quid after Morrison briefed him. I'm not going cover old ground just because you're slow on the uptake. You'll need to make the effort to read his testimony instead of cutting and pasting from your right wing talking points. I know that's hard for you since you can't think for yourself but you'll have to do better if you want me to read your posts.
But first you need to answer my questions you keep avoiding. Morrison grew so alarmed of the quid pro quo after being briefed again by Sondland on the 7th where Sondland affirmed the quid pro quo after Trump rejected the proposed modification suggested by Taylor that Morrison reported what he heard to NSC lawyers "I wanted to make sure, in going to the lawyers," Morrison said, “that there was a record of what Ambassador Sondland was doing, to protect the President.” Morrison said he felt the need to document Sondland's September 7th call with the NSC lawyers because Sondland had represented to him that President Trump was behind the quid pro quo scheme: "[P]art of what I’m trying to do here in talking to the lawyers is making sure they’re aware of what Mr. Sondland is doing. And he's saying the President is aware, but I’m still not entirely certain that he is." (Morrison Depo. at 224) Morrison later acknowledged it was also possible that Sondland was telling the truth about his conversations with Trump.
So did Sondland make up everything he told Morrison AND Taylor? Because Sondland briefed Taylor to the same thing on the 7th and their testimonies corroborate one another. And why would Morrison grow so alarmed by what Sondland told him that he'd report it to NSC lawyers? And if Sondland made up what he told both of them, do you really expect anyone to believe your conspiracy theory?
And why won't you answer my question why Trump would refuse to hand over Taylor's notes? Why would Trump refuse to allow any testimony from key witnesses like Giuliani, Pence, and Pompeo all of whom Sondland name checked as in the loop and in some cases involved in pushing the quid pro quo message onto the Ukrainians?
"So you believe Trump was just sitting around waiting for news of the aid pause to go public before making any demands of Ukraine for it?"
Who cares besides you? No one.
In light of the fact that Sondland testified to delivering the message to Yermak it's irrelevant.
Zelensky got the message loud and clear by booking and cancelling on Zakaria as the NY Times broke details how his inner circle debated for days whether to make the bogus announcement when the aid was going to disappear by fiscal year Sep 30th. If you were familiar with the Times article you'd know this, but now I remember your complaining in another thread a long time ago about not being able to read a Times article because of their paywall.
While I've demolished your Trump "quid pro quo" claims, you still haven’t addressed the Ukrainian 2016 election interference laid out by liberal reporters in the Politico expose (also lied about in your NY Times articles, which called the verified facts and direct public statements “unproven”, while tacking on a childishly stupid false dichotomy that only Russia or Ukraine could have interfered, not both) or the Bidens’ ethically dubious behavior reported on by liberal reporters at ABC.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446
https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/news/story/biden-sidesteps-questions-sons-foreign-business-dealings-promises-63820806
But please, while you continue dodging this like the coward you are, also be the stupid clown you are and mention “John Solomon” yet again. That would be awesome. 😄
"And just like that your conspiracy theory collapses. You have no answer."
What conspiracy theory? Now you're not even making sense. You're the one begging me to engage in speculation that no one but you is even asking. That makes you the conspiracy theorist. Trying to accuse me of your MO further affirms your incoherency.
"Sondland repeatedly testified that he only delivered his own "presumptions""
Yes, and as I've repeatedly asked is it even plausible Sondland would undermine the president and himself by placing conditions on aid based on 'presumptions' rather than direct orders from the president? Is it even plausible Sondland would tell Ron Johnson Trump ordered a quid pro quo if it was only his 'presumption'? Is it plausible he'd tell Taylor he was previously mistaken about the quid that in fact "everything" was on the table including security assistance based on a presumption? Sondland asserting he was acting on presumption is so outrageous it's unbelievable. You're just too brainwashed by Solomon to understand this. Nothing you say changes the material fact Sondland testified delivering conditions to Yermak as if he spoke for the president. It also doesn't change the material fact that instead of blaming him for making false presumptions and getting him impeached, Trump was witness tampering flying him around on Air Force One. You can't answer for any of this. Sondland's asserted "presumptions" don't change the fact that his actions speak louder than words. There were multiple witnesses who testified to Giuliani conducting shadow foreign policy in Ukraine making the quid pro quo demands to their Solicitor General and Trump blocked him from testifying. What exactly do you think Giuliani, Parnas, and Fruman were doing over there?
"I quoted Yermak shooting down the CNN talking point"
I already told you why Yermak's public protestations aren't credible seeing as how losing Trump's support is a matter of national life and death. You're like the guy who points at a hostage praising his treatment by his captors in a hostage video and believes him. :]
"It's apparently based on zero evidence."
Hard to refute the scheduling and canceling of the Biden announcement on CNN I just educated you over isn't it? That you'd just ignore the citation of Alexander Danyliuk part of Zelensky's inner circle because it effectively lays your conspiracy in smoldering ruin is proof of this. Same with your false smear of Klimkin whose rep was so solid parliament rejected his first attempt to resign. Resorting to false smears and omission of two on the record sources refuting your conspiracy theory tells me you know you're full of it. 🤯 You also have no answer:
Either way, Mr. Klimkin said, Ukrainian officials were at the least keenly aware of the stakes — a trade of United States assistance for political favors, even as Mr. Trump’s supporters have insisted they should not have viewed relations in this light.
“We are not idiots, or at least not all of us,” Mr. Klimkin said.
Nothing you say changes the material fact Sondland testified delivering conditions to Yermak as if he spoke for the president.
"And just like that your conspiracy theory collapses. You have no answer."
What conspiracy theory? Now you're not even making sense. You're the one begging me to engage in speculation that no one but you is even asking
Your strange obsession with constantly citing other posters as if it proves anything except they take up space rent free in your head is more proof you've got screws loose.
too brainwashed by Solomon
For me the most significant aspect of the last 3 - 4 years is that President Trump's opposition talks about nothing but him.
All day. Everyday. Day after day after day after day...
The aggressive way Trump goes through a debate combined with Quid Pro Joe's deteriorating control...
I'd be willing to bet President Trump is looking forward to going head-to-head.
Quid Pro Joe! 😂😂
President Trump would LOVE to go head to head with Joe!
All of them together are no competition for the President. That's not exaggeration or speculation.
Trump can win on the economy alone, not to mention all the gains he's made and promises he's kept in spite of the corrupt demtards and garbage fuckin' media lying, cheating and stealing.
Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see the truth. The numbers are all the proof anyone needs.
Absolutely, Cruz. Absolutely!
shareFeisty old Joe!
Dissing the guy as fat was not a smart move, considering how many US voters fit that description.
Joe is not calculated with his responses. Keeps it real!
Yes Biden was a bit touchy. He is being attacked. Can I assume you are a Trump voter? If so, how on earth can you call out another politician as "a little touchy" when Trump is the most thin-skinned man alive. I mean, c'mon. Pot, meet kettle. -B. Swope.
share