[image_credit]REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque[/image_credit][image_caption]As the John Bolton book starts to come out, President Donald Trump is asserting that Bolton is in big trouble because he, Trump, considers everything he says in a “conversation” to be highly classified.[/image_caption]
I mentioned on Wednesday his bizarre/ignorant/frightening stated belief that Article II of the Constitution, which lays out the powers of the president, give him “the right to do whatever I want.” Here’s a link to the full text of Article II. I suspect Trump has never read it, but you can, and see if you find the bit in there about the “the right to do whatever I want.” (If you take me up on it, I think you’ll be surprised at how few powers the Constitution actually assigned to the president.)
Now, as the John Bolton book starts to come out (various media outlets have received pre-publication copies and are writing about them, despite Trump’s efforts to stop the book’s release), Trump is asserting that Bolton is in big trouble because he, Trump, considers everything he says in a “conversation” to be highly classified.
There is no such law. There is no such rule. There is not even such a “norm,” outside of Trump’s imagination.
[raw][/raw]
Anyway, the New York Times and Washington Post (newspapers are rumored to have certain freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment to publish things) have divulged a few such things from Bolton’s book. For example, from the Times:
Mr. Bolton describes several episodes where the president expressed willingness to halt criminal investigations “to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked,” citing cases involving major firms in China and Turkey. “The pattern looked like obstruction of justice as a way of life, which we couldn’t accept,” Mr. Bolton writes, adding that he reported his concerns to Attorney General William P. Barr.
Mr. Bolton also adds a striking new allegation by saying that Mr. Trump overtly linked trade negotiations to his own political fortunes by asking President Xi Jinping of China to buy a lot of American agricultural products to help him win farm states in this year’s election. Mr. Trump, he writes, was “pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win. He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.”
President Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 U.S. election, telling Xi during a summit dinner last year that increased agricultural purchases by Beijing from American farmers would aid his electoral prospects, according to a damning new account of life inside the Trump administration by former national security adviser John Bolton.
During a one-on-one meeting at the June 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan, Xi complained to Trump about China critics in the United States. But Bolton writes in a book scheduled to be released next week that “Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats. Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats.
“He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes. “He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”
In that last little bit, you can see that Bolton is abiding by limitations imposed on him by the prepublication review by Trump’s own White House. Still, Trump is now claiming that Bolton has no right to report anything Trump ever said to him.
The question in my mind is: which of these men are more of a liar in support of their self-importance?
That Bolton is held up by those who despise Trump as some fountain of truth is more emblematic of Democrats and the media generally, than Bolton’s description of Trump. Bolton is perhaps the most vehement inciter of warmongering Washington has seen since the 80’s.
Whatever you think of Trump, unlike his predecessors, he has not started any new wars. That may be the ultimate source of this book, Bolton with an axe to grind because he couldn’t get Trump to invade or bomb into oblivion, in particular, Venezuela, Iran and North Korea. And then he got fire by tweet, quite the indignity.
Typical right-wing spin. Attack the messenger, ignore the message.
You can say that about Democrats, about Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, or any of those whistleblowers during Obama’s admin who were prosecuted under the espionage act for revealing war crimes etc – the message doesn’t matter, how dare you question Obama/Sec Clinton!
My message is, Trump is indeed a liar with bloated self-importance, but treating Bolton like he is some righteous man of good word just because he attacked Trump is like embracing a demon’s minion, or putting lipstick on a (war) pig.
Good grief, nobody is deluding himself or herself about the character of John Bolton. Would be nice if just once you could stop beating your drum of finding weird equivilance in anything written about Trump. Would think a person can see the difference between a loathsome, self-absorbed character who has no power and is regarded as a clown by many and a loathsome, self-absorbed character who has the power to keep inflicting damage to our nation and its citizens. Sidenote: Trump is also a clown.
If Democrats were as passionate about policing their own as they are of Trump, I wouldn’t bother.
Do you mean like FDR did after 1933? Oh, I forgot how he whipped Huey Long, and the rest of the Southern Democrats into line during the Great Depression.
he DemocratIC Party has never been a “top down” authoritarian party. As Will Rogers, Jr. famously said: ” I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat.”
It is not 1933. The Democratic Party elite of today would treat FDR like they treat Bernie or AOC. The New Democrat progeny of Clintonism don’t associate with the rabble working class, nor do they have FDR like empathy for them, they hobnob with the meritocracy, and are as keen to institute austerity for the mass of deplorables as are Republicans.
The Democratic Party of 2020 serves capital first, the 1%, and then the professional urban classes serving capital, or the top 10%. The rest of us working people might as well not really exist, except insofar as we are expected to vote Democrat, no matter that our wages and benefits have been depressed every Admin Dem or Republican for 40+ years.
The Democratic Party is no more organized today than it was in 1933 and is no better position to “police their own” than FDR was in the 1930’s when he exercised what some considered dictatorial powers. The “Democratic party elite” do control a lot of money and that money also talks. I disagree with the “Democratic Party elite” and with so-called Blue Dog Democrats. I don’t believe they are disqualified from lambasting Trump and the Republican Party and I don’t understand why anyone else would either.
Actually FDR (unlike Bernie) started out very middle of the road. He set the economy way back in 1937 when he decided that the Depression was over and pulled the string on recovery.
It was the beginning of WWII manufacturing in the thirties (we were arming Britain several years before we entered th3e war) that really ended the recession. Then the draft ended unemployment.
I mostly agree with your comment but will not fault FDR for causing the Depression on 1937. He did all he could within the powers allowed by the US Supreme Court at the time to bring the country out of Depression. The idea of Keynesian-type fiscal, deficit spending to lift up the economy was understood by few economists and accepted by even fewer. FDR, like his predecessors and most other elected officials believed in balancing the budget. It took WWII to convince them otherwise.
Well, sure, Assange and Snowden are terrible, dishonest people like Bolton, but again, no one is claiming Bolton is anything other than who he is. You are making a straw man argument.
Assange at least was beloved of Dems when he was offering up info that proved many in the GWBush admin to be war criminals. Snowden too, even after his move to Russia, one of the only countries that would not turn him over to the rapacious US Federal government – that is, until the “Resistance” decided Putin installed Trump President, and anyone associated with Russia (or even skeptical of the Resistance and Russia-gate generally) as enemies of America.
Daniel Ellsberg categorically disagrees with you, BTW.
I’m glad Ellsberg disagrees with me – that guy has become a total joke. He’s defending fascists like Assange and Snowden.
Tossing out names and labels is something you and Trump have in common. To call Snowden and Assange fascists is beyond ridiculous.
Okay, how’s about calculated opportunists more interested in self aggrandizement than actually changing anything and self appointed martyrs with hero complexes?
I think that’s too generous, given Assange’s anti-semitism. But in any case, I’m not sure why anyone from the left still gives these guys the time of day.
No, its thinking that there is anything noble about about Assange a Snowden is delusional. Assange is a hardcore anti-Semite (and a rapist) and the “whisteblowing” these guys did was solely to help elect right-wing governments.
As to making a straw man argument, I did not prop up any straw man to attack in lieu of not talking about his argument, I merely pointed out that Bolton is not exactly a credible or honest character. You might have said that it was an Appeal to Hypocrisy, because I point out too how Dems are treating Bolton like he is an honest dealer when they have of late treated Julian Assange and Edward Snowden as enemies of the State, and stood by during the Obama admin when Obama treated whistleblowers like spies. Except then I go on to expand on my point, Bolton is a far less credible creature than Assange or Snowden.
If you say I am distracting from the point that Trump should be removed from office because of Ukraine, then I will just say the not-Trump party putting up the practically-a-nonentity Biden as their standard-bearer, should think about a platform to inspire support, rather than relying on Bolton to, um, be the next Bombshell to bring down this President.
“The question in my mind is: which of these men are more of a liar in support of their self-importance?”
I would never try to get on the side arguing against that either of these guys are consumed by their sense of self importance: They certainly are.
Trump is a documented liar. Bolton? Who knows? A crazy fringe character? You bet. A suck up and kick down autocrat? Bingo again. To debate whether Trump would try to use his office to gain electoral advantage through illegal and illicit means or if Bolton is just making this up out of spite should not be a difficult decision to make.
How do catch and prosecute a criminal? You often have to work with other criminals.
It is time for Trumpian “What Aboutism” to simply go away. We need to move on. We must move on. Is Joe Biden the perfect vehicle for that? Probably not. Who would be? Maybe, as Lindsey Graham told us in a rare moment of reflective truth, a simple nice guy is a good way forward:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g0fSLNDegY
Trump’s conversations are ‘classufied’ he claims (incorrectly) yet he puts his every convoluted, deranged though on public Twitter, which let me remind everyone is ‘evidence’ to be used once he exits the White House. His rampant use of NDAs (lifelong) are not legal in DC; that was determined in his early days of presidency. Lastly, I think he’s confusing attorney-client privilege with ‘classified’. He does get confused on a regular basis! And he has relied on lawyers, fixers & NY mafia techniques (they long controlled concrete there and he’s a supposed builder.) And he’ll be even more involved with lawyers once he exists the WH cuz of the extremely long and growing list of lawsuits awaiting him. And of course beyond the position of power and authority the presidency has brought him briefly, and the fact that he’s a high level Narcissist (Me, Me, Me), he most wants to remain in office for life as a way to avoid all of those lawsuits and his taxes finally becoming public as well. ‘Cuz once he’s out the sycophant REPs blind loyalty to him no matter what egregious things he says and does will quickly also dusappear. Not a one will be visiting him in his padded hail cell. Trust me, he will fade from their memories fast, because they’ve used him every bit as much as he’s used and manipulated them. And this is the sad place the once excellent America finds itself. Vote differently in Nov, everyone, and take back your personal & collective power!
You are forgetting that for a confirmed anti-(anti-Trumpist), defeating Trump’s opponents is more important than defeating Trump himself. WE are much worse than Trump to such folks. And Biden is simply no different than Trump, as can be proven with geometric logic, as Captain Queeq would say.
As though leftists want to read Bolton’s account of “Life with an Idiot” in order to be persuaded that Bolton’s record of consistent bellicose militarism is the correct path for policy….
As long as Bolton is treated like a war criminal too, fine. But I do not expect that from most Democrats, as the Democratic party has supported every increase in the eternal war complex since Clinton, including during Trump’s admin.
Just like GWBush is now treated like an honorary saint in the Democratic firmament just because he is no friend to Trump (and he was nice to Michelle Obama).
“Just like GWBush is now treated like an honorary saint in the Democratic firmament just because he is no friend to Trump (and he was nice to Michelle Obama).”
And the Google says:
Straw man
Description
A straw man fallacy occurs when someone takes another person’s argument or point, distorts it or exaggerates it in some kind of extreme way, and then attacks the extreme distortion, as if that is really the claim the first person is making.
I never claimed you made that statement, nor implied it. I am just commenting on a tremd among many democrats, people they see as awful human beings, suddenly they become good people just because they criticisize Trump.
GWB Is 12 years out of office.
We should never forget the mistakes of the Iraq War
Do we have to maintain a burning hatred?
He has shown a little folksy charm and kept his head down and avoided frequent criticism of subsequent people and events.
Is it OK if I move to tolerance? Maybe some folks get to good. Only you have gotten to “honorary saint”?
Maybe a little straw man exaggeration?
Trump has led a war against the American people.
By screwing up the Covid response he has resulted in more American deaths than any war since WWII, and it’s not over yet.
While I agree Trump’s response to Covid has been like an exercise in Holy Market Thinking, Covid rampaging through America was pretty much guaranteed by the fact that we spend 4 trillion a year on health care, far more than any other nation per capita, with some of the worst health care outcomes in the developed world, except in one factor where we lead the world – profits.
True but irrelevant.
If testing and spacing had started even a week or two earlier, not to mention January when Trump was first told about it, there would have been hundreds of thousands of fewer deaths. This is true even given the limitations of the American health nonsystem.
There haven’t yet been “hundreds of thousands of deaths” in America from Covid. That would be like blaming all of the next 100,000+ deaths on Trump and Tump alone, and every death so far. Had Trump acted more quickly, yes, we could have mitigated things. Blaming Trump for everything however is just a pass for this racketeering exercise we euphemistically call a health care system.
I haven’t seen any Democrats hold up Bolton as a fountain of truth. They may want to hear what he has to say, but I don’t think anyone is under any delusions about who Bolton really is.
Your comment is pure right-wing spin. Trump apologia.
An exercise in Western dualism: if you don’t parrot the righteous of my side, then you are obviously a demon of the other side.
No. You are just making false claims about Democrats that support Republicans. Its not complicated.
According to you, almost every argument I have ever made is false (often categorically), nonsense (usually absolute -), disconnected from any truth, without logic or reason or facts of any kind, a straw man etc logical fallacy and/or just plain wrong. I’m pretty sure no one in the history of the world is as wrong etc as you claim I am every time, but maybe I am just being sensitive 🙂
William:
You are the Picasso of Straw Manism.
In this increasingly Liberal Dem fish bowl, any argument not in line with neoliberal New Democrat ideology is met not with facts nor argumentation, just cast aside with casual accusations of fraud or worse.
It is quite obvious too, increasingly a colossal waste of time. Have fun swimming in circles.
The Trump/Bolton conflict is about as entertaining as two rats fighting over a half-eaten Whopper.
That is surely the most accurate comment in response to mine! Cheers…
The rat carrying bubonic plague needs to lose to the more benign rat.
Lets see who is the liar? Well got one guy that we know (proven and documented) lies 70% of the time and over embellishes 30%, and the other, well, seems to have a far right militant response perspective but is not know as a 24-7-365 liar. I’ll put the bet on the proven BS’r Trump, he has quite the perfect Track record as BSr and chief!
On the contrary, Bolton is known for taking detailed notes. He never seemed deceptive about his hawkishness.
Bolton’s politics make him abhorrent and not fit for public life but that doesn’t make him a liar. We know who the liar is. Bolton has a loyal slice of the RW pie that may take this seriously
They’re both schmucks.
Bolton is a competent if misguided schmuck.
So Bolton’s been saving this stuff up until he can personally profit from it, instead of spilling it under oath to a congressional committee, when it could have actually done the country some good. So much for public service.
Whatever Mr. Bolton’s motives are, they are sure to be less than noble. Is it a fit of pique because he thought he was unduly restrained by Trump? Maybe. Was he waiting until he could leverage his memoirs into a seven figure book deal? Maybe. Should he have come forward to House impeachment investigators earlier? Yes, although it wouldn’t have made a dime’s worth of difference to the final result of the proceedings (Senate Republicans may have been more shamefaced while doing it, but they would have voted to acquit).
Regardless of his motives, there seems to be considerable truth there (at least, in the excerpts I’ve read). It’s been well-known that Trump is a colossal ignoramus, so the revelation that he didn’t know Great Britain is a nuclear power, or that Finland is not a part of Russia, come as no particular surprise. His affinity for strongmen and his general pattern of grifting are also old news.
The real question, such as it is, is what the public will make of this book. Those who are already disposed to vote against Trump will not have their opinions shaken. Will it have any impact on his supporters? Will any of them be so moved that they will sit this election out? Or will they conclude that it’s all fake news, and it’s Bolton’s revenge for being fired by tweet or not being allowed to invade Iran?
Any guesses?
I wonder if there have been any court tests of the legality of ‘firing by tweet’?
I suspect that the tweets are backed up by legal documents backing up the tweets (and obviously not written by Trump).
Without trying to get too snarky, Issue 1, do you think the average Trumpie reads things like this? Issue 2, If it isn’t spoon fed by FOX, Trump tweets, right wingnuts or conspiracy theorists do you think those folks even know, or want to know? Me thinks, none of the above, Unless a pallet of these books fall off a cargo plane and crash through their roof, they won’t even know the book exists!
Issue 1: Of course not. That’s a given.
Issue 2: They know of the book, because the Great Helmsman has been railing against it, and I can only assume that Hannity and Tucker Carlson are getting ready to call down lashes of fire on Bolton for publishing it. They neither know, nor care, exactly what Bolton is saying. They just know it is not adoration, so it must be bad.
It happens whenever a book is controversial. The number of people who are all in a lather about it far outnumber the people who have actually read it.
So Trump didn’t know that Great Britain was a nuclear power. Hmmm… what else has Jared been keeping from him?
This is a really important story no matter how terrible a person Bolton is.
First, it’s simply more corroboration that Trump ceaselessly is suborning foreign leaders to openly aid his election. Russia, Ukraine, now China. One wonders who Trump hasn’t suborned? And whining to Xi[!] that Trump’s election might be at risk as result of Trump’s Trade Wars? As though China wants more of the Trump Trade Wars? Just how stupid is Trump?
Second, Trump’s attempts to stop publication of Bolton’s book is an enormous First Amendment violation, utterly unprecedented.
Third, there are reports that Trump has gotten Barr to order an investigation into criminally charging Bolton for “leaking” classified info in this book, so it is very clear that Barr will now engage in politically motivated prosecutions (or threats of them) against Trump’s political opponents.
This is open fascism.
“Second, Trump’s attempts to stop publication of Bolton’s book is an enormous First Amendment violation, utterly unprecedented.”
Well, if it were firstly an enormous Second Amendment violation, there might be some critics from the right. But given their selective respect for the Constitution’s bill of rights, I won’t expect a peep of criticism.
Trump thinks he is the boss and that everyone works for him. I think he would fire the American people if he could.
We’ll know in a few months if the feeling is mutual.
“I think he would fire the American people if he could.”
By Tweet, of course…
It seems like he hates all of us, even his supporters.
It says a lot about Trump when he insists his blatherings are “highly classified” instead of just “classified”.
Tremendously highly classified will be next…
Classified as what, exactly?
As the best foreign policy thoughts, with the best words, ever!
Naturally!
Only Trump thinks that he has class.
If you’re Xi Jinping, how do you play this?
Do you help Trump, and buy US agricultural products?
Do you tell him to take a hike?
Do you play him, and promise to buy, then not follow through, thereby potentially getting a successor who’s not virulently anti-china?
??
Well the first thing Xi is going to do is make China the dominant player in the WHO, now that our incompetent ignoramus playing president childishly pulled the US out of the organization, recklessly endangering the health of every American.
Bolton, if had a patriotic bone in his body, could have used:
The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(8)-(9), Pub.L. 101-12 as amended, is a United States federal law that protects federal whistleblowers who work for the government and report the possible existence of an activity constituting a violation of law, rules, or regulations, or mismanagement, gross waste of funds, abuse of authority or a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety.
And could have still cashed in with:
“The Whistle Blower in the Room”
Thankfully the Washington Post acquired a copy of the book and released it’s contents before any court could rule that the contents couldn’t be released. I’m shocked, absolutely shocked, that something like this could ever happen. And the Washington Post no less. Unbelievable!
I expect that they had their lawyers look at it and quickly determined that Trump’s arguments have no merit whatsoever.
The Mockingbirds @ WaPo would never print anything so important without the say-so of their connections in the Intelligence Community, and Jeff Bezos doing cloud computing for the CIA pretty much assures he is not afraid of either the CIA or Trump. The Lawyers are just the go-betweens.
A conspiracy behind every tree…
Funny, the 1974 WAPO was essentially an enemy of the state and brought down a President at great risk to their own longevity.
Now their just another deep state, undercover, government co-conspirator.
They are a lot closer to the 1974 WAPO than the deep state fiction you describe.
It seems that they and the NY Times are the only print media outlets that still have the resources to actually deploy real journalists in some number to cover some very interesting times.
They are held to standards of journalistic integrity that you may mock, but still FAR exceed the rabble of the internet that folks toss up around here as being a resource.
Help me out here Eric: Give us the EB “perceived” spectrum of journalistic integrity. From bright white truth to pure black lies.
Even Ronald Reagan’s best friend, Walter Annenberg, who left millions to fund his public policy center at the PENN and its’ FACTCHECK.ORG still can’t be accepted as a place to go for truth.
https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/
America has changed. President Trump has clearly articulated his America first vision. People like John Bolton had been left behind by these new changes. Bolton is displaced man trying hard to be relevant. The world order cemented after the Second World War, which people like John Bolton were part of is now gone. And even enthusiasm for “World Organizations” like the United Nations and multi-lateral groups’ organizations like the NATO have lost the people’s support. Instead, this is the age of bilateral agreements between nations. Multilateral organizations like UN losing American people’s support. But what American people want seem to be in conflict with what the elite fancies. Weary of China’s rise and Globalism American people want their integrity of their nation restored and their language, culture, undiluted and celebrated. But the neo-conservative bureaucrats like John Bolton lases at President Trump, but still hanging on to the deadwood of the past, still struggling to find relevance in America that’s has discarded his ideas and schemes, which have already proven to be costly disasters for America.
Assange was never charged with rape in Sweden, was only wanted for questioning, and even the questioning phase was closed. Your wild accusations mirror those of Trump.