Trump believed at the time that Kashyap Patel, a longtime Nunes staffer who joined the White House in February and had no discernible Ukraine experience or expertise, was actually the NSC’s top Ukraine expert instead of Vindman.
Vindman also testified that he was told Patel had been circumventing normal NSC process to get negative material about Ukraine in front of the president, feeding Trump’s belief that Ukraine was brimming with corruption and had interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Democrats.
Patel joined the National Security Council’s International Organizations and Alliances directorate in February and was promoted to a senior counterterrorism role around the same time as Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky, in which he urged the newly elected leader to investigate Biden and “get to the bottom of” Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election.
Patel had previously served as Nunes’ top staffer on the House Intelligence Committee and worked to discredit the FBI and DOJ officials investigating Russia’s election interference.
IC and military getting repeatedly cucked by King of the Oompa Loompas as he replaces them one by one with Russian assets effectively kills all of the JFK conspiracy theories.
The NYT might have out NYT-ed itself. Here is a tranquil take on the future of Afghanistan from the deputy leader of the Taliban.
I am confident that, liberated from foreign domination and interference, we together will find a way to build an Islamic system in which all Afghans have equal rights, where the rights of women that are granted by Islam — from the right to education to the right to work — are protected, and where merit is the basis for equal opportunity.
There’s essentially no other option but to include the Taliban in what happens next in Afghanistan. Moreover without foreign troops leaving then expecting them to be anything other than the main resistance is idiotic (unless ISIS continues its rise there, the actual reason The Taliban are so concerned with ‘peace’ at this moment). But, letting The Taliban publish this nonsense, clearly timed to support Trump’s virtually content free exit plan? I mean… fucking hell.
In a way it’s pretty funny that even the Taliban, a bunch of Medieval motherfuckers if ever there were any, can nevertheless effortlessly figure out the debased language of centrism and ape it so perfectly. I can imagine the editorial meeting now. “I know what they’ll say on twitter, but when it’s all said and done, these guys are reasonable. They deserve a voice!”
If we fade the end of democracy in America and the good guys write the history books and do the documentaries, they’ll still be figuring out crazy new stuff that happened like 50+ years from now. Imagine being a foreign country, hostile or not, you’d have to just be stupid to not be trying to get people around him to influence foreign policy and/or get intel, right? Think about how easy it is to grift yoru way right on in, whether it’s Mar a Lago or the freaking west wing.
At this point it’s a reasonable take that a significant percentage of the idiots are cosplaying at the highest level as stupid dyed-in-the-wool MAGA believers.
Current polling shows Trump with a healthy lead in Wisconsin vs all challengers, Dems up in MI and PA. I think PA is close and MI is a similar sized lead to what Trump has in Wisconsin. Forget standard liberal/conservative slants for each state…
Michigan 79% white
Pennsylvania 82% white
Wisconsin 86% white
It’s possible that we have a better shot in Arizona (73% white) than Wisconsin.
Basically from ~2015 to present and it’s ongoing, there’s a realignment of the parties and it’s not along a traditional left-right axis. If you try to picture political alignments as more than a simple left-right graph, and more along the lines of an X and Y axis, that helps… Imagine the two parties twisting and turning at the same time trying to find opposite positions to attract the largest amount of supporters.
The Democratic Party, at least at the base/ground level, is turning towards left-wing populism in the form of Sanders. The Republican Party has turned already towards right-wing populism in the form of Trump.
Right-wing populism is a ton of racism, left-wing populism is about working class versus the 1%. So whiter states are tougher for us in this alignment, thus it changes the map and it changes what we think of as a typical safe/lean/swing state and the tipping point order of those states.
Like more on this, think of the positions Trump has taken that are not free-market positions that the establishment on the right HATES. They’re just stuck going along with it because they want to keep their jobs.
So the battle in 2020 if it’s Trump vs. Sanders is the right wing populist trying to divide and conquer against the left wing populist trying to unify the working class. Neither side is going to be espousing as many free market positions as either party was 10 years ago, and it’s because the vast majority of people are sick of getting screwed and want the elites held accountable in some way - even if the average voter can’t really put that into words/policies.
Also, if you look around the world you’ll see similar re-alignments happening and populists winning elections or doing better than usual - a lot like the 1930’s, which is terrifying and part of the reason I was so shook as soon as Trump won. I feel like this gets discussed “here” (air quotes cause here = exiled and 2p2 as well) to various depths, and sometimes we gloss over it because it’s sort of understood by those of us who have had the discussion before… But it’s important to keep in mind.
I tell a lot of friends who don’t like Sanders that we need to run a populist because that’s what this moment calls for - Brexit is another great example. That was a populist movement. The working class all over the Western world has been getting shitted on a little too much for a little too long and they’ve had enough, so I think running someone like Biden on returning to the glorious status quo of 2015 is a horrible strategy. The voters will take the shitty populism over the status quo, because they don’t really understand what’s going on in detail and they want a major change… They’ll throw any brick through any window if they think it has any chance of fixing the problem.
With that in mind, I think appealing to the better angels of the American voter can only work right now if it’s in a populist way. I think if you give them a choice of positive, unifying populism versus divisive, hateful populism, they’ll make the right choice… hopefully… if the election is free and fair enough to even find out.
Dems taking MI and PA and Rs getting WI is a tough map for Rs, they would have to get both AZ and NC and FL. PA is an essential swing state right now. If Dems bing all three Midwest swing states, it’s game over.