House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff blasted former national security adviser John Bolton on Sunday, for failing to appear for testimony in the impeachment inquiry while teasing a forthcoming memoir.
Related: Not just the facts: Republicans' top six impeachment falsehoods
Continue reading...Michael Bloomberg will not accept political donations if he runs for president and will not take a salary if he wins, according to senior aides discussing the New York billionaire’s plans as he marches toward a formal 2020 announcement.
Related: 'No one out there': could Democrats' lack of star power see Trump re-elected by default?
Continue reading...President sounded off on public hearings on Fox & Friends, praised Giuliani as ‘one of the great crime fighters’ and called Pelosi ‘crazy as a bedbug’
Joe Biden had harsh words for his former Senate colleague Lindsey Graham, who has emerged as one of the president’s most prominenet defenders against the House impeachment inquiry.
“Lindsey is about to go down in a way that I think he’s going to regret his whole life,” Biden in a CNN interview. “I say Lindsey, I just -- I’m just embarrassed by what you’re doing, for you. I mean, my Lord.”
Biden tells @donlemon he's "embarrassed by" Graham's actions after senator asks Pompeo to turn over docs related to Hunter and Ukraine
"Lindsey is about to go down in a way that I think he’s going to regret his whole life," Biden says, adding Trump is "holding power" over him pic.twitter.com/sjNjQV7Ogp
John Hendrickson, who wrote the incredible Atlantic article on Joe Biden’s history with stuttering, said in an MSNBC interview that he has received dozens of emails thanking him for exploring the topic.
Hendrickson, who also stutters, said it was his “nightmare” to be doing a television interview and acknowledged he admired Biden for for participating in presidential debates despite his history of stuttering. “I admire his courage,” Hendrickson said.
.@JohnGHendy thought this conversation would be his nightmare.
He explained to me why his new piece in @TheAtlantic about how Joe Biden is handling the challenge of stuttering is so personal to him.
Watch this: pic.twitter.com/lNlqpovnJI
Maybe you’ve heard Biden talk about his boyhood stutter. A non-stutterer might not notice when he appears to get caught on words as an adult, because he usually maneuvers out of those moments quickly and expertly. But on other occasions, like [the July debate] in Detroit, Biden’s lingering stutter is hard to miss. He stutters—if slightly—on several sounds as we sit across from each other in his office. Before addressing the debate specifically, I mention what I’ve just heard. ‘I want to ask you, as, you know, a … stutterer to, uh, to a … stutterer. When you were … talking a couple minutes ago, it, it seemed to … my ear, my eye … did you have … trouble on s? Or on … m?’
Biden looks down. He pivots to the distant past, telling me that the letter s was hard when he was a kid. ‘But, you know, I haven’t stuttered in so long that it’s hhhhard for me to remember the specific—’ He pauses. ‘What I do remember is the feeling.’
Continue reading...Joe Biden boasted about his support among African American voters during the fifth Democratic presidential debate in Atlanta on Wednesday. 'I come out of the black community in terms of my support,' Biden said and listed 'the only black African American woman who had ever been elected to the United States Senate' as one of his endorsements, at which the candidate and senator Kamala Harris threw her hands in the air, laughing: 'Nope. That's not true. The other one is here.'
Continue reading...Democratic presidential contenders backed the Donald Trump impeachment inquiry during the fifth televised debate on Wednesday, saying his efforts to press Ukraine to investigate the former vice-president Joe Biden was an example of his administration's corruption. The debate came hours after a senior US diplomat gave explosive testimony that directly implicated the president in a quid pro quo deal with Ukraine
Continue reading...A surging Pete Buttigieg avoided major criticism while Tulsi Gabbard reinforced her outsider status in Atlanta debate
Some of the candidates used the explosive congressional testimony from the ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, earlier in the day as a launchpad to renew calls for Donald Trump’s impeachment.
Continue reading...The US ambassador to the EU has delivered bombshell testimony that deals serious blows to Trump’s defense of his role on Ukraine
Nunes is up first. “Once again the Democrats have seen the preposterous failure of their conspiracy theory,” he says.
Nunes notes that Democrats have said Sondland’s other two amigos – Rick Perry and Kurt Volker – have left him behind.
And a late-stage zinger from Sondland. Krishnamoorthi notes he had been referred to by NSC officials as “the Gordon problem.”
“That’s what my wife calls me,” Sondland said, to ready laughter. “Maybe they’re talking. Should I be worried?”
Continue reading...Secretary of state announces major shift in US foreign policy, while House investigating whether Trump lied to Robert Mueller – follow live
The US official who overheard a key phone conversation between Eu ambassador Gordon Sondland and Donald Trump will testify publicly as part of the House impeachment inquiry, according to CNN.
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Continue reading...House speaker pushes back against president’s accusations that process is stacked against him as Schumer echoes her suggestion
Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi has invited PDonald Trump to testify in front of investigators in the House impeachment inquiry ahead of a week that will see several key witnesses appear publicly.
Pushing back against accusations from the president that the process has been stacked against him, Pelosi said Trump is welcome to appear or answer questions in writing, if he chooses.
Continue reading...‘I’m not tearing down the system,’ Bernie Sanders says in response to former president’s message
Democratic 2020 presidential candidates have rejected criticism from former president Barack Obama, after he warned the field of White House hopefuls not to veer too far to the left because it would alienate voters.
Though Obama did not mention anyone by name, the message he delivered before a room of Democratic donors in Washington on Friday was a clear word of caution about the candidacies of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who are seen as two of the top-tier candidates in the crowded field.
Continue reading...As growing numbers of Latinos are voting, Sanders has gained their support in California simply by outworking the competition
It’s Friday night, and the moments before US Senator and 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is due to appear at Fresno City College feel more like a rock festival than a political rally.
Vendors hawk swag – hats with “Feel the Bern” and “Eat the Rich” slogans, T-shirts featuring the photo of the young Sanders being arrested at a protest – while an already raucous crowd nods to songs about revolution and wave signs reading: “Unidos con Bernie.”
Continue reading...Young people are getting Bernie Sanders tattoos and Andrew Yang even has his own ‘Yang Gang’ – but at Biden rallies, the youth vote is conspicuously absent
Young people like Bernie Sanders. They flock to his rallies and tattoo his spectacles on to body parts. Young people like Elizabeth Warren – just take a look at the memes. Pete Buttigieg, despite his unradical, centrist policies and general air of clean-shirtedness, draws out the youth. Andrew Yang’s “Yang Gang” are an often youthful phenomenon of their own.
Joe Biden? Not so much.
Continue reading...Beyond the tussle between Democrat Adam Schiff and Republican Devin Nunes is the big question – will party interest reign supreme?
The battle for American hearts and minds in the unfolding impeachment drama is, at its core, a battle between two very different Californian congressmen.
In the red corner is Devin Nunes, a Republican former dairy farmer from the state’s agricultural Central Valley, who long ago threw his lot in with Fox News talking-point orthodoxy and has never hesitated to defend Donald Trump, no matter how much the rest of the political establishment – and the factual record – was arrayed against him.
Continue reading...Donald Trump cared more about investigating his political rival Joe Biden than the fate of Ukraine, according to dramatic testimony from a key witness in the first impeachment inquiry hearing before the American public. As Adam Schiff, the Democratic chair, gaveled the House intelligence committee into session, cameras from every major network carried the proceedings to millions of Americans, some of whom were encountering the allegations against Trump for the first time
Continue reading...Bill Taylor and George Kent testify in first day of public impeachment inquiry – follow for live updates
Some non-impeachment news courtesy of The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani:
The Guardian’s Washington correspondent David Smith:
Continue reading...House begins public hearings with testimonies from Bill Taylor and George Kent as president struggles to prevent investigation
Donald Trump cared more about investigating his political rival Joe Biden than the fate of Ukraine, according to dramatic testimony from a key witness in the first impeachment inquiry hearing before the American public.
Related: Lights, camera, impeachment: TV phase of inquiry carries pluses and pitfalls
Continue reading...Given what’s at stake next year, the effort to prevent people voting will be fierce. We’ve been here before – and we can stop it
America hangs in the balance. The elections in November next year will determine whether the United States continues down the road of authoritarian dynastic rule or reclaims the work of expanding and improving our democracy. Those are the choices.
That expansion was born out of the civil war, which left 1.2 million dead or wounded, but resulted in the 15th amendment, which made clear that the right to vote could not be denied or hampered because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The subsequent struggles led to women’s right to vote, opening the franchise to those 18 and over, and the “single most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever passed by Congress,” the Voting Rights Act, which protected the franchise from states with a demonstrated history of racial and linguistic discrimination.
Continue reading...The House intelligence chair, Adam Schiff, pushed back against Republicans’ defense of the president in an interview with NPR
Tune in tomorrow morning for live coverage of the first public impeachment hearings.
Related: Trump fumes as Democrats get ready for 'sober and rigorous' public hearings
In the memo, posted on CNN, Democrats rebut each of the four arguments the Republicans put forth in their internal memo in the impeachment inquiry.
The July 25 call summary — the best evidence of the conversation — shows no conditionality or evidence of pressure;
President Zelensky and President Trump have both said there was no pressure on the call;
Continue reading...Only three times in the history of the American republic has Congress initiated public testimony that could result in the removal of the president by impeachment. The tally will rise to four on Wednesday.
Related: Lights, camera, impeachment: TV phase of inquiry carries pluses and pitfalls
Continue reading...It’s Veterans Day, Donald Trump is back in Manhattan and Washington is getting ready for more momentous events
The announcement of Republican representative Pete King’s retirement once again throws a spotlight on the high number of departures and defeats in the House GOP caucus since Trump took office.
When President Trump took office in January 2017, there were 241 Republicans in the House.
Since then, 101 have either been defeated/retired/otherwise left office or are retiring in 2020. (h/t @Dchinni)
One name under discussion for Rep. Peter King's seat: Democratic Suffolk County District Attorney Tim Sini.
Demonstrators who protested Trump’s Veterans Day speech in New York criticized the president’s treatment of veterans and called for his impeachment.
Continue reading...