So many big whoppers in Coulter’s Oct. 1 column, you’d think her avatar, Trump, was Burger King, rather than president.
Start with: No, Ann, the Ukraine scandal isn’t about the whistleblower. It’s about the president. It doesn’t matter whether Christine Blasy Ford, Coulter’s choice (to raise the spectre, to the base, of a uncorroborated accusation), or Lassie’s ghost (can a dog?) uncovered it.
Trump demands to meet his accuser face-to-face. Any mirror will do. Trump’s own redacted transcript of the Zelenskiy call and his personal lawyer’s admissions establish that Trump withheld millions in military aid for Ukraine authorized by Congress(!), and used the withholding period to repeatedly pressure Zelenskiy to find dirt on Biden, Trump’s front-running political rival, and for Ukraine to claim responsibility for the 2016 Russian election interference. No more is needed to merit a Congressional investigation.
It gets worse. Trump stalwart Tom Bossert, his top homeland security adviser, repeatedly told Trump that the Ukraine-not-Russia notion was “completely debunked,” but Trump was unable to let that go, or the equally unsupported notion of a Ukraine/Biden scandal.
Corruption and a lack of ethical constraints are compounded by delusional obsessions by the guy with the nuclear codes. Trump knew his behavior was wrong; he avoided formal State Department channels, using Guiliani instead to pressure Zelenskiy; he immediately tried to hide the transcript of the call.
Coulter starts a theme with: “Trump said there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son … Biden went around bragging he stopped the prosecution.”
We’ve seen from Sarah Sanders with her statement that “countless” FBI agents told her they had lost confidence in Comey, that phrases like “lots of people have told me” are White House jargon for “I made it up.”
Coulter, however, immediately assumes not only that Trump was actually told that, but also that Biden actually said what Trump attributes to him, and even further, that it is true that Biden stopped a Ukraine corruption investigation. Ann, a lawyer who called Ford’s claims against Kavanaugh “mere accusation” even after hours of sworn testimony and cross-examination, accepts double- and triple-hearsay as irrefutable.
Back to whoppers.
The Russian election interference scandal was not hatched by Hillary Clinton; this is a wholesale, pants-on-fire fabrication, designed to feed upon another of Trump’s obsessions popular with his base.
The government was already investigating, even prior to the Steele Dossier; the agent Steele talked with was familiar with his concerns. Obama, before the election, discussed Russian interference with Congressional leaders, but McConnell strenuously protested making it public before the vote. Coulter’s viewing the election scandal as a Democratic gambit to explain “how Americans could put this boob in the White House” (her words) puts an effect before the supposed cause.
Several different intelligence agencies, some in coordination and others independently, using highly sophisticated electronic intelligence methods, concluded that Russia was behind the 2016 election interference. That conclusion was not, as Coulter insists, solely based on the word of one cybersecurity firm.
Mueller, a lifelong Republican and prosecutor, did not obtain indictments against a dozen or so Russian operatives on so flimsy a basis, but could trace the false social media accounts, trolls, postings and emails to specific Russian computers. A whopper with cheese and fries!
Coulter claims the Mueller investigation turned up “goose eggs.” Beyond the indictments and convictions arising from the investigation, the report detailed many improper contacts by the Trump campaign with Russian operatives; these fell short of prosecutable criminal conduct only through campaign incompetence and, where knowledge of the law is an element of the crime, ignorance.
The report discussed more than a half-dozen instances for which sufficient evidence existed to prosecute once presidential immunity lapsed, or for Congress to follow up on. Golden goose eggs for the Trump resistance?
I fully respect Ann Coulter’s right to lie in support of her political favorites. That is an historic American tradition, a right within the penumbra of the First Amendment. But, Ann, don’t sell horse meat as beef. Respect our intelligence.
•••
Jed Somit is a resident of Kapaa.
You’re asking for a lot, Jed. Ann Coulter is incapable of showing respect — especially if you happen to be a woman. She’s uttered such gems as, “I think women should be armed but should not vote … women have no capacity to understand how money is earned,” and “The reason propaganda works is that most people are too involved or too stupid to recognize it as propaganda,” and, “If kids had been carrying guns, they would have gunned down this one gunman,” referencing a high school mass shooting in Kentucky. Finally, this revealing quote: “I am emboldened by my looks to say things Republican men wouldn’t.”
No, Ann, like the Orange blimp are too much in love with themselves to show any kind of respect for others.
Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies?
Jed, clearly you are not someone that can be reasoned with. There is televised video of Biden bragging. Not somebody heard from somebody who thinks they heard something. The video is readily available online if you want to look it up….but don’t let verifiable facts get in the way of your anger and insanity. No sense reading any further into your rant.
Really TGI? Was this mess worth printing? Well, I guess it was amusing in some respects…on second thought, please print more of these. Start a new section titles, “The Isle of Insanity”
Note: neither Coulter nor Trump, in his explanations, talks about seeing a video, so my comments remain accurate. Further, the only video I can find refers to a prosecutor, and says nothing about a prosecutor investigating him or his son. So, again, I think you put together a defense out of tissue paper.
All good points and well said. For those of us who have not drunk the orange Kool aid, we know Trump will do ANYTHING to get reelected because otherwise he may see jail time! That’s what he is worried about, not what he is doing to Muslims, Immigrants, transgender, FBI agents, and countless others he has attacked to further his own dangerously selfish agenda. Let’s just hope this will make America strong again and not lead us down a road to an America never seen before.
Trump may have his faults (after all he is a businessman not a politician) but it’s nothing compared to what the Democrats do to get reelected. Free everything for everyone if you just vote for me! Lying and cheating seem to be their recent playbook. Pelosi is the queen star of lying! The stories they have made up just to smear a man who has worked non stop to get our economy back in shape. Rather than working on important matters, they want to sling mud creating a hogmire just to keep the President from getting reelected. It’s easy to see through their shenanigans!
“Trump may have his faults . . .”
MAY have?
“The stories they have made up just to smear a man who has worked non stop to get our economy back in shape.”
“Nonstop”?
Since becoming President, Donald Trump has played golf 237 times, at a cost of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to the American taxpayer. He is on a pace of spending over 370 days playing golf over his 4-year presidency. Hello . . . is anybody home?
Yeah, I suppose it is easy to see through the “shenanigans” when you have your head up your . . . oh, never mind.
Now, Russia is set aside, and we have Ukraine….And the circus continues….as evidenced above.
All of the assertions above are nothing but misperception driven by propaganda meant to stage a crime.
Wow, the author has been intellectually compromised by the fake news media to the point he sounds like the little children soldiers in Hitler’s Youth Corps! Big bad Trump for giving us the best economy in many decades, manufacturing jobs exploding with more factories being developed than any time over the past 20 years, unemployment the lowest in 50 years for women, the lowest in History for minorities, money flowing back into the United States from off shore by the Trillions, Trade deals finally getting done that help our Country save Trillions of dollars a year in outflow of our currency, ILLEGAL immigrants finally stopped in their invasion treks coming for free food, clothing, housing, health care, and welfare (at the expense of our exploding “Democrat policies” suffering homeless citizens and veterans who have been forgotten by the liberal dimwits in charge of our worst American cities). Oh I could go on and on, but the little fascist children among us will still have their panties in a twist. Poor, depressed, angry, stupefied creators of ridiculous pap right out of the MSNBC, and CNN propaganda machine. A tool of the Deep State under Obama and Hillary who, in their quest for riches sold all of us out to the worst villains of corruption in Russia, Ukraine and anywhere else they could make a buck. Hillary who claimed to be broke before she became Secretary of State and is now worth BILLIONS of dollars through her “fake” Foundation because of Russian and Ukrainian donations for Uranium. And Barack who never made a dime outside of the Politicians domain, but is now worth tens of millions. How did they do that?? Let’s find out.
You remind me of the crew member of the Titanic, who said to an embarking passenger, “God himself couldn’t sink this ship.” Well, Gordon, your ship is sinking.