| | | | Lindsey Graham's Ukraine explanation will blow your mind |  | | Defending President Donald Trump's oft-repeated claims that there was no quid pro quo in his relationship with Ukraine becomes more difficult by the day. Which forces Republicans to bend over backward -- and crush logic -- to do so.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, whose transformation from Trump critic to Trump confidant is one of the most remarkable things I have ever witnessed in politics, may have set the bar impossibly high Wednesday with his defense of Trump (and the broader administration) on charges of a quid pro quo.
Take it away, Lindsey!
"What I can tell you about the Trump policy toward Ukraine: It was incoherent, it depends on who you talk to, they seem to be incapable of forming a quid pro quo, so no I find the whole process to be a sham and I'm not going to legitimize it."
OK, OK. So what we have here is this argument: The Trump White House is so disorganized that they couldn't possibly have quid pro quo'ed it! They are too incompetent! So therefore, this whole thing is a sham!
(Sidebar: We heard this same argument from Republicans privately during the Mueller probe into Russia. The Trump campaign was too disorganized to collude!)
Here's the problem for Graham: We now know, thanks to US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland's, uh, memory recovery that he told a top Ukrainian government official in September that US military aid was likely being held up due to the fact that an official announcement launching an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden had not yet been made.
And that comes within weeks of acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney telling reporters that, yes, a desire to see Ukraine announce an investigation into the 2016 election was a reason why $400 million in American military aid was being withheld. "We do that all the time with foreign policy," Mulvaney said. "Get over it."
So whether or not Trump made the quid pro quo explicit in his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky -- and any neutral reading of that rough transcript suggests he came very close -- it's clear that by earlier this fall, the Ukrainians knew the deal: Open the required investigations or don't get the money. (The money was finally released on September 11.)
The Ukrainians had no way of knowing that the White House was, in Graham's formulation, too disorganized to push a quid pro quo. All they knew was that Sondland told a top aide to Zelensky what he believed the way to get the aid released was.
Graham's argument is a classic attempt to spin past events in a way that none of the players could have reasonably expected to understand in the moment. And incompetence, even if it's not fully known, is no excuse anyway.
The Point: Call Graham's "explanation" what it really is -- bad spin that directly contradicts known facts.
-- Chris | | "I don't see this as a catastrophic election night. But you know wake-up calls sometimes come in a midterm or a primary. This is probably a wake-up call for us to find our way back to that suburban voter."
-- Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, reacting to Election Day losses for Republicans in Virginia and Kentucky. | | | House impeachment investigators released a transcript from the testimony of top US diplomat in Ukraine Bill Taylor, which showed a damning account of how he testified that a quid pro quo was established with Ukraine.
Taylor testified that Rudy Giuliani was pressing Ukraine to "intervene in US domestic policy or politics" by launching investigations into President Trump's political rivals. He also said that it was his "clear understanding" that US aid to Ukraine wouldn't be released unless that country's President announced he would investigate Trump's political rivals.
Follow along for live updates as CNN wades through the transcript and posts highlights. | | Nathan Gonzales' lessons from the 2019 elections
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"Kicking and Screaming" is criminally underrated on this list | | | NBD: Just Lana Del Rey and Ben Gibbard singing "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" | | 🍿COMING TO YOU LIVE: IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS | | Buckle up. Public impeachment hearings will begin next week. For a while now, House investigators had been hearing from more than a dozen witnesses behind closed doors.
The three witnesses who will be publicly testifying next week: - US diplomat Bill Taylor
- State Department official Bill Kent
- Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch
| |
YOUR CAMPAIGN TRAIL LATEST | | Elizabeth Warren: Has been endorsed by Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, the lone "Squad" member not to back Bernie Sanders.
Tulsi Gabbard: Qualified for the next Democratic debate later this month, thanks to a new Quinnipiac poll in Iowa.
Amy Klobuchar: Qualified for the Democratic debate in December, also thanks to today's Quinnipiac poll.
Michael Bennet: Officially filed for the New Hampshire primary. | | That's the number of House lawmakers -- Democrats and Republicans -- retiring at the end of their terms in 2020.
Rep. Pete Visclosky of Indiana, who served more than three decades in Congress and chairs the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, today became the eighth House Democrat so far to announce they won't seek reelection. | | | | | | |
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