#last i heard of his political opinions was in 2016 when he straight up told me 'i havent been paying attention to the candidates

[bbeelzemon]

I havent really sat down and really talked to (texted) my brother in a while BUT i found out hes playing animal crossing (hes usually not much of a gamer, especially for nintendo games), which im very surprised about because i was literally wondering earlier today if he would even like this game, AND i found out that both him and his girlfriend hold the same political revolutionary ideals that i do! Neat!

[grubbyduck]

No Man’s Land - an essay on feminism and forgiveness

I have always proudly named myself a feminist, since I was a little girl and heard my mum proudly announcing herself as a feminist to anyone who would listen.

But I believe the word 'feminist' takes on a false identity in our collective imagination - it is seen as hard, as baked, severe, steadfast, stubborn and rooted. From a male perspective, it possibly means abrasive, or too loud, or intimidatingly intolerant of men. From a female perspective, though, these traits become revered by young feminists; the power of knowing what you think and never rolling over! My experience of being a feminist throughout my life has been anything but - it has been a strange and nebulous aspect of my identity; it has sparked the familiar fires of bravery, ambition, rage, sadness and choking inarticulacy at times, sure, but at other times it has inspired apathy, reactionary attitudes, bravado and dismissivness. And at other, transitive times, it caused me to rethink my entire outlook on the world. And then again. And then again.

In primary school, I read and re-read Sandi Toksvig’s book GIRLS ARE BEST, which takes the reader through the forgotten women of history. I didn’t feel angry - I felt awed that there were female pirates, women on the front line in the world wars, women at the forefront of invention, science and literature. I still remember one line, where it is revealed that NASA’s excuse for only hiring six women astronauts compared to hundreds of men was that they didn’t stock suits small enough. 

When I was 13, I tried to start a girl's rugby team at my school. I got together 15 girls who also wanted to form a team. We asked the coaches if they would coach us - their responses varied from 'maybes' to straight up 'no's. The boys in our year laughed at us publicly. We would find an old ball, look up the rules online, and practise ourselves in free periods - but the boys would always come over, make fun of us and take over the game until we all felt too insecure to carry on. I shouted at a lot of boys during that time, and got a reputation among them as someone who was habitually angry and a bit of a buzzkill. Couldn't take a joke - that kind of thing.

When I was around 16, I got my first boyfriend. He was two years older (in his last year of sixth form) and seemed ever so clever to me. He laughed about angry feminists, and I laughed too. He knew I classified myself as a feminist, but, you know, a cool one - who doesn't get annoyed, and doesn't correct their boyfriends' bulging intellects. And in any case, whenever I did argue with him about anything political or philosophical, he would just chant books at me, list off articles he'd read, mention Kant and say 'they teach that wrong at GCSE level'. So I put more effort into researching my opinions (My opinions being things like - Trump is a terrible person who should not be elected as President - oh yeah, it was 2016), but every time I cited an article, he would tell me why that article was wrong or unreliable. I couldn't win. He was a Trump supporter (semi-ironically, but that made it even worse somehow) and he voted Leave in the Brexit referendum. He also wouldn't let me get an IUD even though I had terrible anxiety about getting pregnant, because of his parents' Catholicism. He sulked if he ever got aroused and then I didn’t feel like having sex, because apparently it ‘hurts’ men physically. One time I refused sex and he sulked the whole way through the night, refusing to sleep. I was incensed, and felt sure that my moral and political instincts were right, but I had been slowly worn down into doubting the validity of my own opinions, and into cushioning his ego at every turn - especially when he wasn't accepted into Oxford.

When I was 17/18, I broke up with him, and got on with my A Levels. One of them was English Literature. I remember having essay questions drilled into us, all of which were fairly standard and uninspired, but there was one that I habitually avoided:

'Discuss the presentation of women in this extract'

It irritated me beyond belief to hear the way that our class were parroting phrases like 'commodification and dehumanisation of women' in order to get a good grade. It felt so phony, so oversimplified, and frankly quite insulting. I couldn't bear reading classic books with the intent of finding every instance that the author compares a woman to an animal. It made me so sad! I couldn't understand how the others could happily write about such things and be pleased with their A*. As a keen contributor to lessons, my teacher would often call on me to comment in class - and to her surprise, I think, my responses about 'women's issues' were always sullen and could be characterised by a shrug. I wanted to talk about macro psychology, about Machievellian villains, about Shakespreare's subversion of comic convention in the English Renaissance. I absolutely did not want to talk about womb imagery, about men’s fixation and sexualisation of their mothers or about docile wives. In my application for Cambridge, I wrote about landscape and the psyche in pastoral literature, and got an offer to study English there. I applied to a mixed college - me and my friends agreed that we’d rather not go if we got put into an all female college. 

When I was 19, I got a job as an actor in a touring show in my year out before starting at Cambridge. I was the youngest by a few years. One company member - a tall, handsome and very talented man in his mid-twenties - had the exact same job title as me, only he was being paid £100 more than me PER WEEK. I was the only company member who didn’t have an agent, so I called the producers myself to complain. They told me they sympathised, that there just wasn’t enough money in the budget to pay me more - and in the end, I managed to negotiate myself an extra £75 per week by taking on the job of sewing up/fixing any broken costumes and puppets. So I had more work, and was still being paid 25% less. The man in question was a feminist, and complained to his agent (although he fell through on his promise to demand that he lose £50 a week and divide it evenly between us). He was a feminist - and yet he commented on how me and the other woman in the company dressed, and told us what to wear. He was a feminist, only he slept with both of us on tour, and lied to us both about it. He was a feminist, only he pitted me against and isolated me from the only other woman in the company, the only person who may have been a mentor or a confidante. He was a feminist, only he put me down daily about my skills as a performer and made me doubt my intelligence, my talent and my worth. 

When I was 20, I started at Cambridge University, studying English Literature. Over the summer, I read Lundy Bancroft’s book ‘Why Does He Do That’ which is a study of abusers and ‘angry and controlling men’. It made me realise that I had not been given the tools to recognise coercive and controlling behaviour - I finally stopped blaming myself for attracting controlling men into my life. I also read ‘Equal’ by Carrie Gracie, about her fight to secure equal pay for equal work at the BBC in 2017-2019. It was reading that book that I fully appreciated that I had already experienced illegal pay discrimination in the workplace. Both made me cry in places, and it felt as though something had thawed in me. I realised that I was not the exception. That ‘women’s issues’ do apply to me. In my first term at Cambridge, I wrote some unorthodox essays. I wrote one on Virginia Woolf named ‘The Dogs Are Dancing’ which began with a page long ‘disclaimer for my womanly emotions’ that attempted to explain to my male supervisor how difficult it is for women to write dispassionately and objectively, as they start to see themselves as unfairly separate, excluded and outlined from the male literary consciousness. He didn’t really understand it, though he enjoyed the passion behind my prose. 

The ‘woman questions’ at undergraduate level suddenly didn’t seem as easy, as boring or as depressing as those I had encountered at A Level. I had to reconcile with the fact that I had only been exposed to a whitewashed version of feminism throughout my life. At University, I learned the word Intersectionality - and it made immediate and ferocious sense to me. I wrote an essay on Aphra Behn’s novella ‘Oroonoko’, which is about a Black prince and his pursuit of Imoinda, a Black princess. I had to get to grips with how a feminist author from the Renaissance period tackled issues of race. I had to examine how she dehumanised and sexualised Imionda in the same way that white women were used to being treated by men. I had to really question to what extent Aphra Behn was on Imionda’s side - examine the violent punishment of Oroonoko for mistreating her. I found myself really wanting to believe that Behn had done this purposefully as social commentary. I mentioned in my essay that I was aware of my own white female critical ingenuity. For the first time, I was writing about something I didn’t have any personal authority over in my life - I had to educate myself meticulously in order to speak boldly about race.

As I found myself surrounded by more women who were actively and unashamedly feminist, I realised just how many opinions exist within that bracket. I realised that I didn’t agree with a lot of other feminists about aspects of the movement. I started to only turn up to lectures by women. I started to only read literary criticism written by women - not even consciously; I just realised that I trusted their voices more intrinsically. I started to wish I had applied to an all female college. I realised that all female spaces weren’t uncool - that is an image that I had learned from men, and from trying to impress men. The idea that Black people, trans people, that non binary people could be excluded from feminism seemed completely absurd to me. I ended up in a mindset that was constructed to instinctively mistrust men. Not hate - just mistrust. I started to get fatigued by explaining basic feminist principles to sceptical men.

I watched the TV show Mrs America. It made my heart speed up with longing, with awe, with nerves, sorrow, anger - again, it showed me how diverse the word Feminism is. The longing I felt was for a time where feminist issues seemed by comparison clear-cut, and unifying. A time where it was good to be angry, where anger got stuff done. I am definitely angry. The problem is, the times that feminism has benefitted me and others the most in my life is when I use it forgivingly and patiently. When I sit in my anger, meditate on it, control it, and talk to those I don’t agree with on subjects relating to feminism with the active intent to understand their point of view. Listening to opinions that seemed so clearly wrong to me was the most difficult thing in the world - but it changed my life, and once again, it changed my definition of feminism. 

Feminism is listening to Black women berating white feminists, and rather than feeling defensive or exempt, asking questions about how I have contributed to a movement that excludes women of colour. Feminism is listening to my mother’s anxieties about trans women being included in all-female spaces, and asking her where those anxieties stem from. Feminism is understanding that listening to others who disagree with you doesn’t endanger your principles - you can walk away from that conversation and know what you know. Feminism is checking yourself when you undermine or universalise male emotion surrounding the subject. Feminism is allowing your mind to change, to evolve, to include those that you once didn’t consider - it is celebrating quotas, remembering important women, giving thanks for the fact that feminism is so complex, so diverse, so fraught and fought over. 

Feminism is common ground. It is no man’s land. It is the space between a Christian housewife and a liberated single trans woman. It is understanding women of other races, other cultures, other religions. It is disabled women, it is autistic women, it is trans men who have biologically female medical needs that are being ignored. It is forgiveness for our selfishness. It feels impossible.

The road to feminism is the road to enlightenment. It is the road to Intersectional equity. It is hard. It is a journey. No one does it perfectly. It is like the female orgasm - culturally ignored, not seen as necessary, a mystery even to a lot of women, many-layered, multitudinous, taboo, comes in waves. It is pleasure, and it is disappointment. 

All I know is that the hard-faced, warrior version of feminism that was my understanding only a few years ago reduced my allies and comrades in arms to a small group of people who were almost exaclty like me and so agreed with me on almost everything. Flexible, forgiving and inquisitive feminism has resulted in me loving all women, and fighting for all women consciously. And by fighting for all women, I also must fight for Black civil rights, for disabled rights, for Trans rights, for immigrant rights, for homeless rights, for gay rights, and for all human rights because women intersect every one of these minorities. My scoffing, know-it-all self doing my A Levels could never have felt this kind of love. My ironic jokes about feminists with my first boyfriend could never have made any woman feel loved. My frustration that my SPECIFIC experience of misogyny as a white, middle-class bisexual woman didn’t feel related to the other million female experiences could never have facilitated unity, common ground, or learning to understand women that existed completely out of my experience as a woman.

My feminism has lead me to becoming friends with some of those boys who mocked me for wanting to play rugby, and with the woman that was vying with me over that man in the acting company for 8 months. It is slowly melting my resentment towards all men - it is even allowing me to feel sorry for the men who have mistreated me in the past. 

I guess I want to express in this mammoth essay post that so far my feminist journey has lead me to the realisation that if your feminism isn’t growing you, you aren’t doing it right. Perhaps it will morph again in the future. But for now, Feminism is a love of humanity, rather than a hatred of it. That is all. 

[qqueenofhades]

I have a question about your opinion as a historian about how to deal with problematic past. I am French, not American, so not quite as aware of what is happening right now in the US regarding statues as I probably should. My question is the following: many of the politicians who promoted (admittedly white) social equality in France, worked on reforming labor laws, etc, in the 19th / 20th century were certainly not anti-colonialist. How to deal with this "mixed legacy" today? Best wishes to you!

First off, I am honoured that you would ask me this question. Disclaimer, my work in French history is largely focused on the medieval era, rather than modern France, and while I have studied and traveled in France, and read and (adequately?) speak French, I am not French myself. So this should be viewed as the perspective of a friendly and reasonably well-informed outsider, but not somebody from France themselves, and therefore subject to possible errors or otherwise inaccurate statements. But this is my perception as I see it, so hopefully it will be helpful for you.

(By the way if you’re interested, my post on the American statue controversy and the “preserving history!” argument is here. I originally wrote it in 2017, when the subject of removing racist monuments first arose, and then took another look at it in light of recent events and was like “WELP”.)

There’s actually a whole lot to say about the current crisis of public history in a French context, so let me see if I can think where to start. First, my chief impression is that nobody really associates France with its historical empire, the same way everyone still has either a positive or negative impression of the British Empire and its real-world effects. The main international image of France (one carefully cultivated by France itself) is that of the French Revolution: storming the Bastille, guillotining aristocrats, Liberté, égalité, fraternité, a secular republic overcoming old constraints of a hidebound Catholic aristocracy and reinventing itself as a Modern Nation. Of course, less than a generation after the Revolution (and this has always amused/puzzled me) France swung straight back into autocratic expansionist empire under Napoleon, and its colonialism efforts continued vigorously alongside its European counterparts throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. France has never really reckoned with its colonialist legacy either, not least because of a tendency in French public life for a) strong centralization, and b) a national identity that doesn’t really allow for a hyphen. What I mean by that is that while you can be almost anything before “American,” ie. African-American, Latino-American, Jewish-American, Muslim-American, etc, you are (at least in my experience) expected to only be “French.” There is a strong nationalistic identity primarily fueled by language, values, and lifestyle, and the French view anyone who does not take part in it very dimly. That’s why we have the law banning the burka and arguments that it “inhibits” Muslim women from visually and/or emotionally assimilating into French culture. There is a very strong pressure for centralization and conformity, and that is not flexible.

Additionally, the aforementioned French lifestyle identity involves cafe culture, smoking, and drinking alcohol -- all things that, say, a devout Muslim is unlikely to take part in. The secularism of French political culture is another factor, along with the strict bureaucracy and interventionist government system. France narrowly dodged getting swept up in the right-wing populist craze when it elected Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen (and it’s my impression that the FN still remains relatively popular) but it also has a deep-grained xenophobia. I’m sure you remember “French Spiderman,” the 22-year-old man from Mali who climbed four stories of a building in Paris to rescue a toddler in 2018. He was immediately hailed as a hero and allowed to apply for French citizenship, but critics complained about him arriving in France illegally in the first place, and it happened alongside accelerated efforts to deny asylum seekers, clear out the Calais migrant camp, and otherwise maintain a hostile environment. The terror attacks in France, such as 2015 in Paris and the 2016 Bastille Day attack in Nice, have also stiffened public opinion against any kind of accommodation or consideration of non-French (and by implication, non-white) Frenchpeople. The Académie Française is obviously also a very strong linguistic force (arguably even more so than the English-only movement in America) that excludes people from “pure” French cultural status until they meet its criteria. There really is no French identity or civic pride without the French language, so that is also something to take into consideration.

France also has a strong anti-authority and labor rights movement that America does not have (at least the latter). When I was in France, the joke was about the “annual strike” of students and railway workers, which was happening while I was trying to study, and we saw that with the yellow jacket protests as well. Working-class France is used to making a stink when it feels that it’s being disrespected, and while I can’t comment in detail on how the racial element affects that, I know there has been tension and discontent from working-class, racial-minority neighborhoods in Paris about how they’ve been treated (and during the recent French police brutality protests, the police chief rejected any idea that the police were racist, despite similar deaths in custody of black men including another French Malian, Adama Traoré.) All of this adds up to an atmosphere in which race relations, and their impact on French history, is a very fraught subject in which discussions are likely to get heated (as discussions of race relations with Europeans and white people tend to get, but especially so). The French want to be French, and feel very strongly that everyone else in the country should be French as well, which can encompass a certain race-blindness, but not a cultural toleration. There’s French culture, the end, and there isn’t really an accommodation for hybrid or immigrant French cultures. Once again, this is again my impression and experience.

The blind spot of 19th-century French social reformers to colonialism is not unlike Cold War-era America positioning itself as the guarantor of “freedom and liberation” in the world, while horrendously oppressing its black citizens (which did come in for sustained international criticism at the time). Likewise with the American founding fathers including soaring rhetoric about the freedom and equality of all (white) men in the Constitution, while owning slaves. The efforts of (white) social reformers and political activists have refused to see black and brown people as human, and therefore worthy of meriting the same struggle for liberation, for... well, almost forever, and where those views did change, it had to come about as a process and was almost never there to start with. “Scientific” white supremacy was especially the rage in the nineteenth century, where racist and imperialist European intellectuals enjoyed a never-ending supply of “scientific” literature explaining how black, brown, and other men of color were naturally inferior to white men and they had a “duty” to civilize the helpless people of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and so on, who just couldn’t aspire to do it themselves. (This is where we get the odious “white man’s burden” phrase. How noble of them.) So the nineteenth-century social reformers were, in their minds, just doing what science told them to do; slavery abolitionists and other relief societies for black and brown people were often motivated by deeply racist “assimilationist” ideas about making these poor helpless people “fit” for white civilization, at which point racial prejudice would magically end. This might have been more “benevolent” than outright slave-owning racism, but it was no less damaging and paternalistic.

If you’re interested in reading about French colonialism and postcolonialism from a Black French perspective, I recommend Frantz Fanon (who you may have already heard of) and his 1961 magnum opus The Wretched of the Earth/ Les Damnés de la Terre. (There is also his 1952 work, Black Skin, White Masks.) Fanon was born in Martinique, served in World War II, and was part of the struggle for Algerian liberation from France. He was a highly influential and controversial postcolonial theorist, not least for his belief that decolonialization would never be achieved without violence (which, to say the least, unnerved genteel white society). I feel as if France in general needs to have a process of deep soul-searching about its relationship to race and its own imperial history (French Indochina/Vietnam being another obvious example with recent geopolitical implications), because it’s happy to let Britain take the flak for its unexamined and triumphalist imperial nostalgia. (One may remark that of course France is happy to let Britain make a fool of itself and hope that nobody notices its similar sins....) This is, however, currently unlikely to happen on a broad scale for the social and historical reasons that I discussed above, so I really applaud you for taking the initiative in starting that conversation and reaching out for resources to help you in doing it. Hopefully it will help you put the legacy of these particular social reformers in context and offer you talking points both for what they did well and where their philosophy fell short.

If there does come a point of a heightened racial conversation and reckoning in France (and there have been Black Lives Matter protests there in the last few weeks, so it’s not impossible) I would be curious to see what it looks like. It’s arguably one of the Western countries that has least dealt with its racial issues while making itself into the standard-bearer for secular Western liberalism. France has also enthusiastically joined in the EU, whereas Britain has (rather notoriously....) separated from all that, which makes Britain look provincial and isolated while France can position itself as a global leader with a more internationalist outlook. Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel are currently leading the effort for the $500 billion coronavirus rescue package for the EU, which gives it a sense of statesmanship and stature. It will be interesting to see how that continues to change and develop vis-a-vis race, or if it does.

Thanks so much for such an interesting question, and I hope that helped!

[itslmdee]

Fic: No Pride in Exlusionism

This month's theme is 'gatekeeping'. Today's piece looks at gatekeeping within the LGBTQ+ community.

"You're home early," Roger said. Mae sat heavily on the sofa next to him, kicking off her heels. She leaned over to kiss his cheek and then leaned back, staring at the ceiling.

Roger muted the tv. "You okay?"

"I dropped out of the planning committee."

"Why?"

Mae shook her head, took a deep shuddering breath. "This party...Gays for Halloween. I wanted a different name from the start. What does that even mean? Gay people support a holiday that many people think is an American import? Pumpkins in pride colours?"

Roger shifted to look at her. "Actually I can see paper pumpkins in pride colours."

Mae gave a wry smile. "Me too. That's not why I quit. It was Josie mostly, her and Jane and Peter. I was filling up the urn in the kitchen before we got started and I heard Josie talking by the serving hatch. Saying they were so glad John had joined us, an actual gay. She was feeling the committee was being overrun by bihets."

"She said that?" Roger took Mae's hand.

"I had three serious relationships with women before we got married," Mae said. "I'm bisexual. Marrying you doesn't change that."

"I know." He squeezed her hand. "I know."

Mae squeezed back. "Me and Tim and Desiree are all bi. Laura's lesbian but Josie is suspicious of anyone who's ever dated a man though she gives Dan a pass for a past girlfriend. Anyway Jane was giggling and agreeing because I think she fancies Josie - only reason she agreed to be vice chair when Rachel said she needed fewer responsibilities this year. And Peter...my God."

Roger waited patiently. One of the cats wandered over to inspect Mae's discarded shoes.

"I'm not that much older than most of them," Mae said. "But they don't seem to know anything about the history of the gay rights movement. Queer history, except Josie says queer is a slur despite it being reclaimed and used to push for greater awareness. And so they're trying to force out anyone who isn't a gay man or a good enough lesbian. Peter had a lot of opinions on the right kind of trans people who should be allowed to participate. The group has become increasingly exclusionary."

"So you quit?"

"Yes. I will not gatekeep," Mae said. "I will not tolerate bihet being thrown around to try and exclude bisexuals, or cishets to exclude asexuals, or get involved in the dysphoria debate to try and debate the rights of trans people. Josie doesn't want LGBT let alone Q, I, and A. Josie and Peter want L and G and screw everyone else."

Roger sighed. "Maybe there's another group you can join. A more inclusive one."

"Maybe." Mae let go of Roger's hand and got to her feet. "I'm making coffee, want one?"

"Please."

Roger knew Mae had found kinship, friendship, and purpose over the last six years she'd worked with the LGBT+ community group. She'd miss it. But he also knew she was principled and wouldn't regret quitting rather than supporting exclusionism.

"Did you talk to Maggie about this?" he asked when Mae returned with their drinks.

"I told her I quit, apologised that she'd probably have to pick up my role in organising the Halloween party."

"What about Peter? Is Maggie the right kind of trans woman according to him?"

Mae shrugged. "Maggie can take care of herself," she said. "My only regret is that if Peter talks out of turn like I heard him doing with Josie is I won't get to watch Maggie rip him a new one."

Notes and further reading

A lot of this gatekeeping takes place online; people say they've only experienced being excluded from online spaces and not groups in real life. However there are some people reporting being harassed at Pride for being seemingly straight while being bisexual, trans, or nb in a heterosexual relationship. The people who say the A in the LGBTQA is for ally not asexual to gatekeep are probably the same ones trying to gatekeep anyone who doesn't look 'gay' enough from participating in Pride.

"With the advent of queer theory and the launch of Queer as Folk, “queer” became used online as a more concise umbrella term than the full LGBT+ acronym (which, depending on who you ask, is LGBTQQIP2SAA). Today, interpretations of “queer” go a step further, and its acceptance generally splits along generational lines. Many young people — myself included — view “queer” as a term defining all nonstraight, nonbinary identities. “Queer” addresses the fluidity of gender and sexual orientation" - https://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2017/8/02/21-words-queer-community-has-reclaimed-and-some-we-havent#media-gallery-media-2

3 Differences Between the Terms ‘Gay’ and ‘Queer’ — and Why It Matters - https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/03/difference-between-gay-queer/

"The word "queer" has only recently been identified as a slur because of TERFs and exclusionists. Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERF) and radical gender/sexuality bianarists are flooding social media and blogging sites with propaganda smearing the word queer in the hopes of silencing all of us who don’t identify with their hate politics. Queer is the one word that doesn’t worship exclusion." - https://aminoapps.com/c/lgbt-1/page/blog/history-of-the-word-queer/BQ4p_GxRHwu5Xz35RWB31oKMLp8XJ8r7Ybo

Tumblr repsonse to "What does bihet mean" - https://bisexual-community.tumblr.com/post/93798259302/this-probably-sounds-stupid-but-what-does-bihet

On ace discourse and exclusionism on the internet vs in real life - https://medium.com/@meganhoins/the-rhetoric-of-digital-ace-discourse-4a690792f0bc

"According to 2013 Pew Research Center data, about 84 percent of bisexual adults who are in “committed relationships” are with “opposite-sex partners.” Within a broader LGBT community that too often guesses someone’s sexual orientation based on who they happen to be with at the moment, that statistic means many bisexual people get read as “straight”—or, at least, something less than fully queer." https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-bisexuals-feel-ignored-and-insulted-at-lgbt-pride

"Transmedicalism is a term for a wide range of beliefs in the transgender community that are critical of transgender people who haven't medically transitioned and/or don't experience major dysphoria. Many transmedicalists (or "transmeds" for short) focus on gatekeeping....Although the debate has been going since the '60s, it has gained more notoriety in the Internet age, particularly on Tumblr. Transmedicalists may be called "transmeds" or "truscum," while anti-transmedicalists may be called "tucutes" or (often erroneously) "transtrenders." " - https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Transmedicalism

[bountyofbeads]

It Might Be Unethical or Even Illegal, but Not if You’re the President https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/us/politics/trump-g7-ethics.html

As Inquiry Widens, McConnell Is Said to See Impeachment Trial as Inevitable

By Carl Hulse | Published Oct. 18, 2019 Updated 9:31 PM ET | New York Times | Posted October 18, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — It was only a few weeks ago that the top Senate Republican was hinting that his chamber would make short work of impeachment.

But this week, Senator Mitch McConnell sat his colleagues down over lunch in the Capitol and warned them to prepare for an extended impeachment trial of President Trump.

According to people who were there, he came equipped with a PowerPoint presentation, complete with quotes from the Constitution, as he schooled fellow senators on the intricacies of a process he portrayed as all but inevitable.

Few Republicans are inclined to convict Mr. Trump on charges that he abused his power to enlist Ukraine in an effort to smear his political rivals. Instead, Mr. McConnell sees the proceedings as necessary to protect a half a dozen moderates in states like Maine, Colorado and North Carolina who face re-election next year and must show voters they are giving the House impeachment charges a serious review.

It’s people like Senator Susan Collins of Maine who will be under immense political pressure as they decide the president’s fate.

“To overturn an election, to decide whether or not to convict a president is about as serious as it gets,” Ms. Collins said.

Mr. McConnell is walking a careful line of his own in managing the fast-moving impeachment process. On Friday, the senator wrote a scathing op-ed criticizing the president’s decision to pull back troops from northern Syria, calling it a “grave strategic mistake.” But Mr. McConnell views it as his role to protect a president of his own party from impeachment and in a recent fund-raising video, he vowed to stop it.

The mood among Republicans on Capitol Hill has shifted from indignant to anxious as a parade of administration witnesses has submitted to closed-door questioning by impeachment investigators and corroborated central elements of the whistle-blower complaint that sparked the inquiry.

They grew more worried still on Thursday, after Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, undercut the president’s defense by saying that Mr. Trump had indeed withheld security aid from Ukraine in order to spur an investigation of his political rivals. Mr. Mulvaney later backtracked, but the damage was done.

“I couldn’t believe it — I was very surprised that he said that,” said Representative Francis Rooney, Republican of Florida, who mocked Mr. Mulvaney’s attempts to take back comments that had been broadcast live from the White House briefing room.

“It’s not an Etch A Sketch,” Mr. Rooney said, miming the tipping movement that erases the toy drawing board. “There were a lot of Republicans looking at that headline yesterday when it came up, I certainly was.”

Senator Lisa Murkowski — an Alaskan Republican who is seen as potentially open to removing Mr. Trump from office — told reporters that a president should never engage in the kinds of actions that Mr. Mulvaney appeared to acknowledge.

“You don’t hold up foreign aid that we had previously appropriated for a political initiative,” she said. “Period.”

Still, Republicans said they did not detect a significant shift that would pose a serious threat to the president in the Senate. It would require 20 Republicans to side with Democrats in convicting Mr. Trump, and few observers believe that will happen.

Mr. McConnell, his allies said, regards the impeachment fight in much the same way as he did the struggle last year to confirm Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, in which he was primarily concerned with protecting his Senate majority by insulating vulnerable incumbents. Then, as now, they said, Mr. McConnell is focused on keeping Republicans as united as possible, while allowing those with reservations about Mr. Trump’s conduct and their own political considerations to justify their decision to their constituents.

“I think he will play it straight,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a close McConnell ally, who noted his party’s narrow voting margin. “I don’t think he has any alternative. When you are operating with 53 you have thin margins and you can’t jam anybody or you end up with undesirable consequences.”

Mr. McConnell has told colleagues he expects the House to impeach Mr. Trump quickly, possibly by Thanksgiving, an educated hunch based on the pace of the inquiry so far and Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to keep the inquiry narrowly focused on Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. He plans to move swiftly too, he told colleagues, using the approach of Christmas to force the Senate to complete its work before the beginning of 2020.

Yet an impeachment trial is a spectacle that is by its nature unpredictable, and most of the senators who will act as jurors were not around for the last one, of Bill Clinton in 1999. Mr. McConnell reminded senators that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. would preside over the trial, and would have wide latitude in handling motions that might be made, including any motion to dismiss the charges that Republicans might try to put forward to short circuit the process.

Mr. McConnell’s declaration that the Senate would move forward was in part designed to show he had no choice, an effort to deflect criticism from conservatives outraged that the Senate would even consider impeachment.

On Wednesday, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, pushed for Senate Republicans to write a letter to Ms. Pelosi declaring that they would not remove the president. But some senators raised objections, worrying that some of their colleagues would not want to sign on, a result that would expose disunity among Republicans. Mr. Graham’s colleagues said they believe they staved off the letter, which they viewed as a mistake.

Mr. McConnell has made it clear that he plans to sit down with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, to see if they can find a mutually acceptable way to move forward as Democrats and Republicans did in 1999 when they unanimously agreed on the framework for the impeachment trial. The Senate is much more polarized now, though Mr. Schumer this week held out hope.

“We have to do this trial in a fair and bipartisan way and I hope that Leader McConnell would obey those strictures,” Mr. Schumer said. In the battle for Senate control, Democrats have their own political risks to consider since impeachment could prompt a backlash against some of their candidates if enough voters conclude that the president was pursued unfairly.

Just 15 senators remain in office from the time Mr. Clinton was put on trial. Mr. McConnell warned them of the weight of the trial, where they can be required to be on the floor all afternoon six days a week without speaking — a major challenge for senators who relish their chances to be heard.

“It will mean day after day sitting in chamber, listening to the two sides, writing questions for them to answer that go through the chief justice,” said Ms. Collins, one of the Republicans who voted to acquit Mr. Clinton 20 years ago. “Members who have not been through this before will find it is a great deal of work.”

Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.

*********

The Crisis of the Republican Party

The G.O.P. will not be able to postpone a reckoning on Donald Trump’s presidency for much longer.

By The Editorial Board | Published October 18, 2019 | New York Times | Posted October 18, 2019 |

The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

In the summer of 1950, outraged by Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist inquisition, Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican senator from Maine, stood to warn her party that its own behavior was threatening the integrity of the American republic. “I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny — fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear,” she said. “I doubt if the Republican Party could — simply because I don’t believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely, we Republicans aren’t that desperate for victory.”

Senator Smith surely knew her “Declaration of Conscience” would not carry the day. Her appeal to the better angels of her party was not made in the expectation of an immediate change; sometimes the point is just to get people to look up. In the end, four more years passed before the bulk of the Republican Party looked up and turned on Senator McCarthy — four years of public show trials and thought policing that pushed the country so hard to the right that the effects lasted decades. The problem with politicians who abuse power isn’t that they don’t get results. It’s that the results come at a high cost to the Republic — and to the reputations of those who lack the courage or wisdom to resist.

The Republican Party is again confronting a crisis of conscience, one that has been gathering force ever since Donald Trump captured the party’s nomination in 2016. Afraid of his political influence, and delighted with his largely conservative agenda, party leaders have compromised again and again, swallowing their criticisms and tacitly if not openly endorsing presidential behavior they would have excoriated in a Democrat. Compromise by compromise, Donald Trump has hammered away at what Republicans once saw as foundational virtues: decency, honesty, responsibility. He has asked them to substitute loyalty to him for their patriotism itself.

Mr. Trump privately pressed Ukraine to serve his political interests by investigating a political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, as well as by looking into a long-debunked conspiracy theory about Democratic National Committee emails that were stolen by the Russians. Mr. Trump publicly made a similar request of China. His chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said publicly on Thursday that the administration threatened to withhold military aid from Ukraine if it did not help “find” the D.N.C. servers.

These attempts to enlist foreign interference in American electoral democracy are an assault not only on our system of government but also on the integrity of the Republican Party. Republicans need to emulate the moral clarity of Margaret Chase Smith and recognize that they have a particular responsibility to condemn the president’s behavior and to reject his tactics.

Some have already done so. On Friday, John Kasich, the former Ohio governor, said that Mr. Mulvaney’s comments convinced him that the impeachment inquiry should move forward. Representative Justin Amash of Michigan had already called for impeachment, though he felt it necessary to leave the party as a consequence.

There was a time when Republicans like Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa said that soliciting foreign election assistance would be improper. But most congressional Republicans have taken to avoiding such questions as the evidence against Mr. Trump has piled up. Mr. Trump still feels so well-protected by his party that he has just named his own golf resort as the site for the next Group of 7 summit in 2020, a brazen act of self-dealing.

Yet Republicans will not be able to postpone a reckoning with Trumpism for much longer. The investigation by House Democrats appears likely to result in a vote for impeachment, despite efforts by the White House to obstruct the inquiry. That will force Senate Republicans to choose. Will they commit themselves and their party wholly to Mr. Trump, embracing even his most anti-democratic actions, or will they take the first step toward separating themselves from him and restoring confidence in the rule of law?

Thus far in office, Mr. Trump has acted against the national interest by maintaining his financial interests in his company and using the presidential podium to promote it; obstructed legitimate investigations into his conduct by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and Congress; attacked the free press; given encouragement to white nationalists; established a de facto religious test for immigrants; undermined foreign alliances and emboldened American rivals; demanded personal loyalty from subordinates sworn to do their duty to the Constitution; and sent his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, around the world to conduct what could most charitably be described as shadow foreign policy with Mr. Trump’s personal benefit as its lodestar.

Some Republicans have clearly believed that they could control the president by staying close to him and talking him out of his worst ideas. Ask Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — who has spent the last two years prostrating himself before Mr. Trump in the hope of achieving his political goals, including protecting the Kurds — how that worked out. Mr. Graham isn’t alone, of course; there is a long list of politicians who have debased themselves to please Mr. Trump, only to be abandoned by him like a sack of rotten fruit in the end. That’s the way of all autocrats; they eventually turn on everyone save perhaps their own relatives, because no one can live up to their demands for fealty.

The Constitution’s framers envisioned America’s political leaders as bound by a devotion to country above all else. That’s why all elected officials take an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. By protecting Donald Trump at all costs from all consequences, the Republicans risk violating that sacred oath.

Senator Smith’s question once again hangs over the Republican Party: Surely they are not so desperate for short-term victory as to tolerate this behavior? We’ll soon find out.

*********

Mulvaney, as Clouseau, Solves Mystery!

The acting chief of staff’s admission changes everything.

By Bret Stephen's, Opinion Columnist | Published Oct. 18, 2019, 8:45 PM ET | New York Times | Posted October 18, 2019 |

John Maynard Keynes may not have been the one who said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” But the line, often attributed to him, remains a good one. And it captures my shifting view of the impeachment inquiry.

That view shifted again this week with Mick Mulvaney’s hallucinatory press conference on Thursday, in which he appeared to admit a version of the quid pro quo the president and his minions have spent the past few weeks fervently denying. “Did he also mention to me in passing the corruption related to the D.N.C. server?” the acting chief of staff said of the president. “Absolutely. No question about that.”

He added: “That’s why we held up the money.”

Mulvaney clarified his comments — which is to say, contradicted himself — a few hours later, insisting in a carefully scripted statement, “There never was any condition on the flow of the aid related to the matter of the D.N.C. server.” For this, he offered as proof “the fact that the aid money was delivered without any action on the part of the Ukrainians regarding the server.”

True. Except, as everyone knows, the money was released only after several infuriated lawmakers, including Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham, pushed the administration to deliver the aid without ever being told the real story of why it had been delayed in the first place.

In other words, a White House that initially insisted it had nothing to hide was, in fact, hiding something. It then claimed that it didn’t intend to do what it clearly intended to do, based on the fact that it didn’t get away with doing it. Next, it compounded the prevarication by admitting to its intentions, and insisting there was nothing wrong with them. And, finally, it reverted to denying those intentions altogether.

What kind of fool is Mulvaney, to take the rest of us for such fools?

Mulvaney’s Inspector Clouseau routine follows a week of disclosures about the extent to which U.S. policy toward Ukraine became the province of Rudy Giuliani to the exclusion of the State Department and National Security Council. Giuliani, in turn, was paid $500,000 by the company of a shady business associate who was helping him dig for political dirt in Ukraine. That associate and his partner were recently pulled from a flight on one-way tickets and arrested on charges of campaign-finance violations connected to the ouster of the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. No wonder John Bolton described this shadow foreign policy as a “drug deal.”

Donald Trump’s inveterate defenders insist that the president is entitled to conduct foreign policy any way he wants, and delegate authority to whomever he pleases. That just isn’t true.

No president has the right, ever, to use the powers of his office to enrich himself, which is what Trump appears to be doing by designating his Florida golf resort as the site of the next G7 meeting. No president has the automatic right to impound congressionally appropriated funds, above all for nakedly political ends. No president may delegate foreign policy to anyone who abuses that trust for personal profit. No president should derail the career of a foreign-service officer because she would not violate the trust of her office to enable his political vendettas.

And no president should lie so wantonly about his public conduct or enlist the officers of government in the concealment of that conduct. This has been the story of the Trump administration from its first day.

For Democrats, the question is whether impeachment is the right response to indisputably outrageous acts. I’ve previously been skeptical for several reasons, not least that a party-line vote in the House would simultaneously diminish the stigma of impeachment while boosting the president’s re-election chances. And I was particularly skeptical if the entire case against Trump rested on that one phone call.

Now it’s clear that it doesn’t. Whatever the political calculus, the impeachment inquiry needs to press on, aggressively.

As for Republicans, a question they might usefully ask themselves is whether the standard of behavior they now either accept or embrace in this president is one they are prepared to condone in a Democratic administration. All of their casuistry in Trump’s defense today may, and probably will, be used against them in the future. The wretched bargain that partisans inevitably make with demagogues on their side is that they inspire, and license, the demagoguery of the other.

A suggestion for Nancy Pelosi: Offer the House a vote on censure, neither as a substitute for the impeachment inquiry nor for impeachment itself, but as an opportunity for members to go on record as to how they judge the president. It would give at least a few Republicans, for whom an impeachment vote is a political bridge too far, an opportunity to save a piece of their souls. History will judge the rest.

*********

It Might Be Unethical or Even Illegal, but Not if You’re the President

By Eric Lipton | Published Oct. 18, 2019, 8:14 PM ET | New York Times |

WASHINGTON — The rules are clear for nearly everyone who works in the executive branch: Officials are prohibited from playing even a minor role in a decision that directly creates a financial benefit for the employee or the employee’s immediate family.

But those rules do not apply to the president and vice president, the only executive branch officials who are exempt from a criminal statute and a separate ethics regulation that govern conflicts of interest.

That exemption is the reason President Trump could legally play a role in the selection of the Trump National Doral resort near Miami as the site of next year’s summit meeting of the Group of 7. If anyone in the executive branch other than Mr. Trump or Vice President Mike Pence tried the same thing, they would likely have been blocked by government lawyers, faced an ethics investigation and perhaps become the subject of a criminal inquiry, federal ethics lawyers from both parties said Friday.

Violating the law, which dates to 1962, is a felony punishable with a prison sentence of up to five years.

”Suggesting that your own business be used for an expensive government event over which you have control would violate the prohibitions,” said Trevor Potter, a Republican and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission.

Steven L. Schooner, who served as the administrator for procurement law in the Office of Management and Budget during the Clinton administration, said Mr. Trump’s actions — if he were not exempt — would have “at least lead to a referral to the Justice Department.”

Besides this conflict-of-interest law, picking the 643-room Doral resort near Miami for an event that will generate hotel room reservations and other related sales worth millions of dollars raises questions about whether other constraints might apply to the situation, the legal experts said. Those include federal competitive bidding requirements and provisions in the Constitution that ban even the president from taking certain kinds of payments from foreign governments and the federal government.

It also highlights how Mr. Trump has often swept aside the ethical standard he set for himself as he was preparing to take office in early 2017.

Nine days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, one of his lawyers, Sheri A. Dillon, released a document detailing how Mr. Trump would avoid conflicts of interest after he was sworn in, even if he was not prohibited under law from taking actions that would benefit his family financially.

“President-Elect Trump, as well as Don, Eric, and Alan are committed to ensuring that the activities of The Trump Organization are beyond reproach, and that the Organization avoids even the appearance of a conflict of interest, including through any advantage derived from the Office of the Presidency,” Ms. Dillon wrote in the six-page document, referring to Mr. Trump’s two oldest sons and Alan Garten, the chief legal officer at Trump Organization.

But that same day, Mr. Trump made clear he was aware that he had a legal exemption that provided him considerable flexibility to decide for himself what would be permissible.

“I have a no-conflict-of-interest provision as president,” Mr. Trump said. “It was many, many years old, this is for presidents. Because they don’t want presidents getting — I understand they don’t want presidents getting tangled up in minutia; they want a president to run the country. So I could actually run my business, I could actually run my business and run government at the same time.”

Bobby R. Burchfield, a lawyer who serves a the ethics adviser to the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust — which technically owns the family hotels and other properties that are now managed by his sons — said on Friday he is examining the matter.

“We are looking at the situation” he said. “The President, the Trump Organization and I are committed to ensuring that this is done in compliance with the ethics standards.”

Mr. Trump himself, in late August, at the end of the G7 summit in France, first confirmed publicly that the Trump family resort in Doral, Fla., was being considered for the June 2020 gathering.

“Having it at that particular place, because of the way it’s set up, each country can have their own villa, or their own bungalow,” Mr. Trump said in August, before continuing later in his remarks that “I think it just works out well.”

The acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said on Thursday that Mr. Trump was the first to recommend the Doral resort as a site for the G7.

“We were back in the dining room and I was going over it with a couple of our advance team,” Mr. Mulvaney said. “We had the list, and he goes, ‘What about Doral?’ And it was like, ‘That’s not the craziest idea. It makes perfect sense.’ “

These statements alone would likely be enough to create a conflict-of-interest problem for Mr. Trump if he were not president, ethics and procurement lawyers said.

“If this was the secretary of commerce who had the power to decide where an event like this would be held and he or she decides it should be held at a property he or she owns, and would generate income, that probably would be a conflict of interest” said Jan W. Baran, who served during President George Bush’s tenure on a presidential commission that studied federal ethics laws, and also previously served as general counsel at the Republican National Committee.

It is a violation of the law if an executive branch employee “participates personally,” in a “decision, approval, disapproval, recommendation, the rendering of advice, investigation, or otherwise,” in a matter that directly financially impacts a company owned by that employee’s spouse, children “or an organization that he is serving as officer, director, trustee, general partner,” the statue says.

A separate federal Standards of Conduct regulation issued by the Office of Government Ethics in 1992 says that ”employees shall not use public office for private gain,” although again these rules do not apply to the president.

The president and vice president are exempt, Mr. Baran said, because Congress generally cannot pass restrictions that apply to them as the president cannot be forced to recuse himself and delegate his constitutional powers to someone else.

Every president over the past four decades — with the exception of Mr. Trump — has placed his personal investments and assets in a blind trust while in the White House, or has sold everything and held cash equivalents, to avoid any potential conflicts, even though there has been no requirement to do this under the law.

Mr. Mulvaney on Thursday defended the approach the White House took in selecting the Doral, saying that a dozen locations were evaluated, which suggests that federal contracting rules might have been honored. But Mr. Mulvaney would not disclose the other locations or the process used to evaluate them.

He said the Doral would be the least expensive, because the Trump family will offer the hotel “at cost,” meaning it will not profit from the event.

Separately, the Trump Organization has vowed to “identify and donate profits derived from foreign government patrons” to the Treasury.

But a Trump Organization spokesman on Friday declined to explain how the company is going to determine what “at cost” means or how it will calculate what part of a hotel bill paid by a foreign government official is considered profit.

Mr. Schooner said the Doral, during the off-season in June when it is hot and muggy in Florida, has a low vacancy rate. So even if otherwise empty rooms are sold at a discount, it is still a major financial benefit to the company, as would be the global publicity from an event like the G7 meeting.

“The leaders of the free world walking around in someone’s resort: That is priceless advertising,” he said.

At least three different lawsuits are pending in federal court that are testing if Mr. Trump is violating the Constitution’s emoluments clauses by continuing to own, through a trust, the collection of hotels, golf courses and resorts that at times are taking payments from foreign government officials and the United States government.

After a series of decisions both for and against the president, a case brought by the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia will be heard by the full Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. It alleges that the Trump International Hotel in Washington has illegally siphoned off business from hotels and convention centers in which the local governments have a financial interest.

Democrats in Congress who filed one of these cases will now revise the lawsuit to include the plan by Mr. Trump to have the G7 meeting at the Doral.

“He is certainly digging deeper in his failing defense by violating the Constitution in plain sight, in real time,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, who is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that involves more than 200 House and Senate Democrats. “It is really absolutely striking.”

Steve Eder contributed reporting from New York

*********

[whenfrasermetbeauchamp]

“James,” said a hollow, sepulchral voice from the flue.

“What?” I said, sitting straight up in bed.

“James,” said the fireplace, impatiently. “James, James!”

“Sweet bleeding Jesus,” said Jamie, staring at the leaping flames on the hearth. I could feel the hair standing up on his forearm, stiff as wire. He sat frozen for a moment; then, a thought occurring to him, he jumped to his feet and went to the dormer window, not bothering to put anything on over his shirt.

He flung up the sash, admitting a blast of frigid air, and thrust his head out into the night. I heard a muffled shout, and then a scrabbling sound across the slates of the roof. Jamie leaned far out, rising on his toes to reach, then backed slowly into the room, rain-dampened and grunting with effort. He dragged with him, arms clasped about his neck, the form of a handsome boy in dark clothing, thoroughly soaked, with a bloodstained cloth wrapped around one hand.

The visitor caught his foot on the sill and landed clumsily, sprawling on the floor. He scrambled up at once, though, and bowed to me, snatching off his slouch hat.

“Madame,” he said, in thickly accented French. “I must beg your pardon, I arrive so without ceremony. I intrude, but it is of necessity that I call upon my friend James at such an unsocial hour.”

He was a sturdy, good-looking lad, with thick, light-brown hair curling loose upon his shoulders, and a fair face, cheeks flushed red with cold and exertion. His nose was running slightly, and he wiped it with the back of his wrapped hand, wincing slightly as he did so.

Jamie, both eyebrows raised, bowed politely to the visitor.

“My house is at your service, Your Highness,” he said, with a glance that took in the general disorder of the visitor’s attire. His stock was undone and hung loosely around his neck, half his buttons were done up awry, and the flies of his breeches flopped partially open. I saw Jamie frown slightly at this, and he moved unobtrusively in front of the boy, to screen me from the indelicate sight.

“If I may present my wife, Your Highness?” he said. “Claire, my lady Broch Tuarach. Claire, this is His Highness, Prince Charles, son of King James of Scotland.”

“Um, yes,” I said. “I’d rather gathered that. Er, good evening, Your Highness.” I nodded graciously, pulling the bedclothes up around me. I supposed that under the circumstances, I could dispense with the usual curtsy.

The Prince had taken advantage of Jamie’s long-winded introduction to fumble his trousers into better order, and now nodded back at me, full of Royal dignity.

“It is my pleasure, Madame,” he said, and bowed once more, making a much more elegant production of it. He straightened and stood turning his hat in his hands, obviously trying to think what to say next. Jamie, standing bare-legged in his shirt alongside, glanced from me to Charles, seemingly at an equal loss for words.

“Er…” I said, to break the silence. “Have you had an accident, Your Highness?” I nodded at the handkerchief wrapped around his hand, and he glanced down as though noticing it for the first time.

“Yes,” he said, “ah…no. I mean…it is nothing, my lady.” He flushed redder, staring at his hand. His manner was odd; something between embarrassment and anger. I could see the stain on the cloth spreading, though, and put my feet out of bed, groping for my dressing gown.

“You’d better let me have a look at it,” I said.

The injury, exposed with some reluctance by the Prince, was not serious, but it was unusual.

“That looks like an animal bite,” I said incredulously, dabbing at the small semicircle of puncture wounds in the webbing between thumb and forefinger. Prince Charles winced as I squeezed the flesh around it, meaning to cleanse the wound by bleeding before binding it.

“Yes,” he said. “A monkey bite. Disgusting, flea-ridden beast!” he burst out. “I told her she must dispose of it. Undoubtedly the animal is diseased!”

I had found my medicine box, and now applied a thin layer of gentian ointment. “I don’t think you need worry,” I said, intent on my work. “So long as it isn’t rabid, that is.”

“Rabid?” The Prince went quite pale. “Do you think it could be?” Plainly he had no idea what “rabid” might mean, but wanted no part of it.

“Anything’s possible,” I said cheerfully. Surprised by his sudden appearance, it was just beginning to dawn on me that it would save everyone a great deal of trouble in the long run, if this young man would succumb gracefully to some quick and deadly disease. Still, I couldn’t quite find it in my heart to wish him gangrene or rabies, and I tied up his hand neatly in a fresh linen bandage.

He smiled, bowed again, and thanked me very prettily in a mixture of French and Italian. Still apologizing effusively for his untimely visit, he was towed away by Jamie, now respectably kilted, for a drink downstairs.

Feeling the chill of the room seep through gown and robe, I crawled back into bed and drew the quilts up under my chin. So this was Prince Charles! Bonnie enough, to be sure; at least to look at. He seemed very young—much younger than Jamie, though I knew Jamie was only a year or two older. His Highness did have considerable charm of manner, though, and quite a bit of self-important dignity, despite his disordered dress. Was that really enough to take him to Scotland, at the head of an army of restoration? As I drifted off, I wondered exactly what the heir to the throne of Scotland had been doing, wandering over the Paris rooftops in the middle of the night, with a monkey bite on one hand.

The question was still on my mind when Jamie woke me sometime later by sliding into bed and planting his large, ice-cold feet directly behind my knees.

“Don’t scream like that,” he said, “you’ll wake the servants.”

“What in hell was Charles Stuart doing running about the rooftops with monkeys?” I demanded, taking evasive action. “Take those bloody ice cubes off me.”

“Visiting his mistress,” said Jamie succinctly. “All right, then; stop kicking me.” He removed the feet and embraced me, shivering, as I turned to him.

“He has a mistress? Who?” Stimulated by whiffs of cold and scandal, I was quickly waking up.

It’s Louise de La Tour,” Jamie explained reluctantly, in response to my prodding. His nose looked longer and sharper than usual, with the thick brows drawn together above it. Having a mistress was bad enough, in his Scottish Catholic view, but it was well known that royalty had certain privileges in this regard. The Princesse Louise de La Tour was married, however. And royalty or not, taking a married woman as one’s mistress was positively immoral, his cousin Jared’s example notwithstanding.

“Ha,” I said with satisfaction. “I knew it!”

“He says he’s in love with her,” he reported tersely, yanking the quilts up over his shoulders. “He insists she loves him too; says she’s been faithful only to him for the last three months. Tcha!”

“Well, it’s been known to happen,” I said, amused. “So he was visiting her? How did he get out on the roof, though? Did he tell you that?”

“Oh, aye. He told me.”

Charles, fortified against the night with several glasses of Jared’s best aged port, had been quite forthcoming. The strength of true love had been tried severely this evening, according to Charles, by his inamorata’s devotion to her pet, a rather ill-tempered monkey that reciprocated His Highness’s dislike and had more concrete means of demonstrating its opinions. Snapping his fingers under the monkey’s nose in derision, His Highness had suffered first a sharp bite in the hand, and then the sharper bite of his mistress’s tongue, exercised in bitter reproach. The couple had quarreled hotly, to the point that Louise, Princesse de Rohan, had ordered Charles from her presence. He had expressed himself only too willing to go—never, he emphasized dramatically, to return.

The Prince’s departure, however, had been considerably hampered by the discovery that the Princesse’s husband had returned early from his evening of gaming, and was comfortably ensconced in the anteroom with a bottle of brandy.

“So,” said Jamie, smiling despite himself at the thought, “he wouldna stay with the lassie, but he couldna go out of the door—so he threw up the sash and jumped out on the roof. He got down almost to the street, he said, along the drainage pipes; but then the City guard came along, and he had to scramble back up to stay out of their sight. He had a rare time of it, he said, dodging about the chimneys and slipping on the wet slates, until it occurred to him that our house was only three houses down the row, and the rooftops close enough to hop them like lily pads.”

“Mm,” I said, feeling warmth reestablish itself around my toes. “Did you send him home in the coach?”

“No, he took one of the horses from the stable.”

“If he’s been drinking Jared’s port, I hope they both make it to Montmartre,” I remarked. “It’s a good long way.”

“Well, it will be a cold, wet journey, no doubt,” said Jamie, with the smugness of a man virtuously tucked up in a warm bed with his lawfully wedded wife. He blew out the candle and pulled me close against his chest, spoon-fashion.

“Serve him right,” he murmured. “A man ought to be married.”

— Dragonfly In Amber

Photos: outlander-online.com, Season Two, Episode Four, April 30, 2016

Gifs: smartbitchestrashybooks.com,  Season Two, Episode Four, April 30, 2016

Book: Dragonfly In Amber, Diana Gabaldon, 1992

Tumblr: September 30, 2018, WhenFraserMetBeauchamp 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿❤️🇬🇧

WFMB’s Tags: #Outlander #Season Two Episode Four #S2E4 #La Dame Blanche #Dragonfly In Amber #Chapter Eleven #If I may present my wife, Your Highness? #Claire, my lady Broch Tuarach #A man ought to be married #Claire Fraser #Jamie Fraser #Prince Charles Edward Stuart #Louise de Rohan #Jules de Rohan #89 #093018

[ohcaptaintarthister]

Everyone Has Secrets by Ellaria

FridayFabFic No. 1

Despite my intent to find the positive in the negative, there were some people rubbed wrong about my FridayFabFic. There are only two apologies I’ll be making: I’m sorry I don’t like your stories, and I’m sorry most of the stories I like are old. I stand by what I said about the current state of A LOT of JB fanfics but you should REMEMBER it’s only my opinion–ONE PERSON! I have no wish to be queen bee or anything (unlike some people). I don’t encourage people to have troll accounts so they can leave awful comments on works they don’t like and happily report to others their success at shooting down an author who only wanted to write differently. That’s a well-known fact about quite a lot of people in the fandom that’s nevertheless hard to swallow–at least for me.  

As mentioned before, you might not like what I like, you might approve, or you might be curious enough to check out why I like some stories and find confirmation I’m a fucking kook. I’m willing to discuss but try not to be defensive. You want to be heard, I’ll listen. But when I do, do me the courtesy of hearing me out as well. If you think there are stuff I should check out, either comment on this post or message me. 

If you’re still reading, then maybe you’re curious to find out what I say. Yay! Again, you might be doing so to find further proof what a crazy ass I am. That’s okay too! But since you’re here, let me tell what I look for in the stories that will be in FridayFabFic:

1. COMPLETE. Thus, no WIPs.

2. MULTI-CHAPTERS. I’d like to include one-shots but that would mean considering a type of story under this category that I really don’t like. No, I’m not sorry. Guys, we’re not fascists. We’re allowed to have different opinions. You don’t like angst, you don’t like major character death, well I don’t like…FUCK. I’m shutting up now. People take things so personally, Jesus. Let me pour you some Valpolicella.

3. NO CATEGORIES. Meaning it can be canon-continuation, canon-divergent, crack, modern AU, and universes upon universes. I’ve read a lot of JB. More than I’d like to admit. I lurked around AO3 for a long time before writing fanfic. I would read practically anything. What matters is…

4. THEY’RE WRITTEN BEAUTIFULLY. Such as, despite the reader knowing what universe the fanfic is written in, the writing is not predictable. The depiction of Jaime and Brienne, even if OOC at times, still works in the universe of the story. The story is compelling, a page-turner, a nail-biter, swoony. It can be a lot of things but what I look for is characterization that has depth and whose journey takes me for a ride.

5. AND…THEY PUSH THE ENVELOPE. The joy behind reading fanfic is favorite characters are placed in different situations by the writers. I’m a sucker for anything where Jaime and Brienne go through an emotional, even physical beatdown. I like them when they start out broken, or halfway through the story a monkey wrench whams without warning onto them and things are just never the same. One of them may be die. Or both. As long as the writing prepares the reader, the events are justified and works in the world of the story, PLUS it’s done well, THAT’S the kind of writing I look for. So, don’t count on fluffy stories here. They’re just not my thing, ‘kay? Here. You could use another glass…hey, don’t throw that at me! That’s perfectly good wine!

And so, awesome people, let’s raise our glasses as I unveil the first FridayFabFic… 

Everyone Has Secrets by Ellaria

Summary: (from the author–always acknowledge, guys!)  Political journalist Jaime Lannister finds himself out of alternatives when Millennium, his magazine, becomes endangered by his reckless actions. Brienne Tarth, a professional hacker charged with the task of investigating him, will stumble upon more than she expected. The mystery of a disappearance ten years earlier will draw them to Winterfell, where more than one secret might be uncovered.Based on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.

Stuff I probably shouldn’t say but will anyway:

EHS is fucking better than the original. 

Why: 

I read this fanfic first before cracking open Stieg Larsson’s novel. I like EHS better because, and no offense to those who love The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, this fanfic delves deeper into the characters. Every sentence from Ellaria is a beating heart. I am lucky to have read this when it was already complete, and can only imagine the hell readers must have gone through waiting for updates. It’s not just a fantastic edge-of-your-seat thriller but the developing romance between Jaime and Brienne has the slow unraveling, if one can say, found in a Jane Austen novel, but also with a jagged, breath-taking sexiness. You read Everyone Has Secrets either with a cup of your favorite tea or a glass of pinot noir. 

Squee Moment/s: (I had to pick my two absolute favorites)

“Sighs turned into panting, blood mixed with sweat and water. She noticed his bleeding increased due to the motion, but it was not in her to stop anymore. He shifted his angle and shoved himself deeper inside, grazing a place that she had never known was there. With a whimper on her lips she was dragged into total whiteness, an absence of existence, a moment where their juncture was all there was. Letting go of the last of her control, she felt her walls grasp him tightly and dug her nails into his back, trying to keep herself grounded.”

                                     *********************************** “I agree now,” Jaime said, looking straight into her eyes, all traces of his amusement gone. “I should have fought for you, even if I had to fight against you. I should have brought you back, screaming and kicking, back with me, where you belong.”

Jaime Lurves Brienne:

“It will take you at least two whole days.” Lannister frowned and pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. “Not to mention that your ass is going to be flat as a board by the time you get there, and you’ll be walking like a cowboy.”

“My ass?” She shook her head in disbelief. “What do you even care about my ass?”

Brienne Lurves Jaime:

The movement caused the blanket to flap around her, and Lannister’s scent filled her nose. For some reason, it felt intoxicating.

Holy Shit Moment/s:

“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” he told her, placing his large hands on the desk. “You’re gonna get on the table and spread those ugly legs of yours, and I’m gonna fuck you until I’m well and pleased. Then I’ll sign the check for your allowance and pay you like the whore you are.”

                                 ***********************************  

It was fierce and loud, and came from the mouth of a big, wolfish mutt that ran towards him. Its yellow eyes regarded Jaime with rage, he barked again and again, slobber dripping from its open jaw. When the animal made to bite, baring his teeth fiercely, Jaime’s instincts took over—he pulled the stag’s antler out of the direwolf and struck the dog on the shoulder.  

Read it for:

1. The high emotional stakes. Every chapter ends on the right note, and long after it has, there’s still that lingering hum. Or purr. I won’t spoil the ending for you other than saying it ends pretty much on such notes, rather than with a bang. And the denouement is as smooth as scotch.

2. The action sequences. Jaime’s fight with a wolf is my favorite.

3. The HAWT sex that finally happened! From the time Jaime catches Brienne in her underwear outside her apartment, to their sexy online late-night chat (I kind of wanted to bang their heads together and order them to just get it on, damn it), until their very much anticipated first time and all the other times that got even more emotional and sexier. 

4. And the ending. It’s one of the most perfect endings in Modern AU JB fanfics. It’s a perfect ten!  

5. Here’s the link! http://archiveofourown.org/works/1126633/chapters/2271647

Oh, and one more thing, Everyone Has Secrets won Third Place in the 2016 All-Time Favourite Game of Thrones Fanfic at Fanatic Fanfics. It’s clearly a winner!

Sorry again that I was a little late. Migraine is an evil bitch fucker finally banished by the magic of a Thai oil whose name I can’t pronounce. I’ll be on time next Friday!

Thanks for reading!

[hammyhamimagines]

Fat Fingers part 1: Coffee

Note: I know that I am not that active and I am really sorry about that. I post more regularly on my main account, @hamiltontrashfam, if you’d like something more regular. Also, it will probably be a couple of days before part 2 of this is out, sorry. :/

Word count: 2302

Pairing: Daveed Diggs x Reader

Warnings: A bit of swearing, I guess. Do not read if you are a Trump supporter.

You had openly been supporting Bernie Sanders since the election began. But, when Hillary turned out to be the candidate for the Democrats, you felt that you had no other choice than to vote for her, as you never wanted Donald Trump near the presidency. You had often discussed this with your parents, as they were unable to understand, how you could possibly hate Donald Trump that much. You never really felt like any of them understood you. And unlike you, they wanted the country to be run by a Republican again and whether that was Trump or someone else, they did not care at all. And because of your family's opinion on politics and your lack of social interactions throughout your childhood and teen years, you did not have a lot of friends who agreed with you either and you felt very alone.

The only distraction from the fact that you had no one's accept or understanding of your political views, were the celebrities and online friends who felt the same way about Trump as you did. You never actually expected to meet anyone who felt the same as you and befriending them, because your family had gained quite the reputation after taking action in several demonstration that were against woman's rights and especially against rights for people of colour and queer people. You thought that no one could possibly feel that your views were any different from your family's. You found comfort in music, especially tracks against the Donald, like the song Fat Fingers by the California based experimental hip hop group clipping.

 You had just picked up your morning coffee from the small coffee shop on the corner of your street in downtown Sacramento and were on your way to work. You walked down the street with music in your ears while you sipped from your coffee. You had to look up when a police car passed by quickly on the street, with the deafening siren and the constant flashing of the red and blue lights on. You were unfocused for a short moment, which made you crash straight into someone's built chest, spilling your coffee all over the guy in front of you and knocking your headphones out in the process. It took a moment for you to gather what had just happened and when you did, you really could not help the embarrassed blush that spread across your cheeks. "Oh, God. I am so sorry. I should have watched out. Are you okay?" You rambled. You did not dare to look at the person in front of you and instead you stared straight at the grey pavement, feeling really embarrassed about spilling your coffee on a stranger.

"Shit. It's okay, man." You heard a very familiar voice answer softly. Your head snapped back up to look at the person in front of you and your mouth hang open slightly at the person in front of you. You knew who this was. Very well, actually. As a matter of fact, you were just listening to one of their songs on your phone. It was Daveed Diggs. Fucking Daveed Diggs. You had just spilled your coffee all over a man that you had developed somewhat of a celebrity crush on since you discovered clipping. when the election started.

Your mouth went dry as a desert for a second and you sort of forgot how to even function. You swallowed and took a moment to gather your thoughts before you answered. "I am so, so sorry. I hope I didn't ruin your shirt Mr. Diggs." You answered, unable to stop yourself from mentioning his name and your eyes grew wide with the realisation. You had just mentioned his name. Not creepy at all.

"Oh. You have an advantage, I see. You don't strike me like a musical kid. So, how do you even know who I am?" He asked curiously.

While it was true that you were not much of a musical kid, you still knew what he was referring to. Practically every person who was the slightest amount of clipping. fan, knew that he had been a member of the cast on the hit musical Hamilton. You had not listened to much of it, but you actually sort of liked the small bits that you had listened to.

"I hate Trump." You blurted. You felt another blush spread across your cheeks, as it did not offer much of a explanation as to how you knew who he was. "I mean.... I listened to Fat Fingers and I agreed with a lot of it and after that I sort of just became a fan of clipping." You added with a nervous chuckle, trying to explain how you knew who he was in a way that actually made sense. At least more than your first explanation did.

"Oh. Me too." He answered with a soft smile. You were very much aware that he did not like Trump and the fact that you had a lot of the same views as him made you really happy, because you thought that he was a pretty amazing human being and if you shared a lot of views, that made you a pretty decent one too, right?

"You don't really strike me as much of a hiphop fan, though?" He asked with an arched eyebrow.

It made you chuckle softly. "Yeah, no. I know....My family is very conservative." You admitted with a soft sigh. You then realised for the second time during the last couple of minutes that you had indeed spilled all of your coffee over him. You were actually about to offer him a new shirt, because there was no way in hell he was getting the coffee stain of off it. However, it seemed like he beat you to it.

"I see.... I am fine, by the way. It was an accident and just as much my fault as yours. How about I buy you a new cup of coffee?" He asked. You were actually sort of surprised that he thought that this was his fault too. You were the one focusing on the police car that drove by after all.

You chewed on your lower lip lightly, not really able to make up your mind. On one hand, you had to get to work. But, you always showed up really early anyway and what could it hurt to let him buy you a cup of coffee? On the other hand; If your family figured it out in anyway, they would probably murder you. You looked at him thoughtfully. "I.... I don't know." You answered honestly and lowered your gaze.

"Oh... I see. Is it because of your family?" He asked, hitting the nail right on the head.

You nodded. "Yeah." It was indeed about your family. Of course it was. It always was. They were always the once that fucked up everything for you. If they ever figured out that you had let a clearly democratic, black rapper buy you coffee, they definitely would not let you in their house ever again. You had discussed this with your parents several times. They even tried to send you to an all- white high school. However, that definitely did not work out.

He looked at you thoughtfully, before a soft sigh escaped his lips. "Right. Okay... No coffee then." He answered. You felt really bad for disappointing him, but you had to think about your relationship with your family after all. "Can I at least have your name?" He asked. It was a pretty simple request, but you still found yourself wondering whether you should tell him or not. Not because you did not want him to know. But, if he figured out just how racist, homophobic and close minded your family was, he probably would regret offering to buy you coffee.

"I am...-" You were about to answer, when of your dad's friend, Garrett pulled up beside you in his car. It felt like you were stuck in the middle of some terrible movie scene. Everyone who knew your family, knew who Daveed was, because you were unable to shut up about him when with your parents and they had obviously told their friends and no one approved of what they called your unhealthy obsession.

"Y/N? What a coincidence! What is a nice girl like you doing talking to a stranger like him?" Garrett asked through the window that he had just rolled down. You felt like a deer in the headlights in a way.  He could have just meant, that you were talking to a stranger and that was it, but you knew Garrett and that was definitely a racist remark. The sticker on his windshield of his car, a man resembling the confederate flag kicking another man resembling the rainbow flag with the lettering 'Trump 2016' made it very clear where this guy stood politically.

"Garrett. I um. I accidentally spilled my coffee on this nice young man's shirt." You shot back. You were already caught talking to someone you apparently should not and you knew that you were already screwed, so you might as well defend Daveed.

"Nice? Okay. Aren't you late for work young lady? I can drop you off at the office, if you'd like." The thing about dropping you off at the office might have sounded like an offer, but that was definitely not the case. You knew that you had to obey, because otherwise you would get even more shit from your family and that you definitely did not want.

"I am really sorry about this asshole, Daveed. I am Y/N. I hope that I get to take you up on that coffee some day." You finally decided to say, though not loud enough for Garrett to actually hear. While you hated the guy, you definitely did not want to get on his bad side. He could make your life hell after all and you really do not have any intention of letting him do so.

"I should go." Daveed answered, obviously completely disgusted. You had thought that it had been with you at the time, even if it had not. You had no chance to say anything, before he left and you could feel your mood fall even more. Another thing your family had managed to fuck up, again.  Your gaze followed him shortly, before you got into Garrett's car hesitantly, as he had told you to.

You knew that he was about to comment on what had just happened, so you simply held your hand up to cut him off. "Just go, Garrett." You sighed. You did not want to hear any of his disapproving and racist comments. You just wanted to get away from him as fast as possible.

On your way to the office, you passed Daveed in his coffee soaked Oakland hoodie and you felt really bad for not being able to make it up to him. You could practically feel the tears beginning to sting your eyes. Your family always managed to fuck up your every attempt to meet someone who had the same views as you. It was like they followed you day and night to make sure that you felt isolated and alone.

Once the car came to a stop outside your office, you did not even bother to thank Garrett for dropping you off, because he honestly did not do you a favour at all. You did not say goodbye either, instead you just left without a word. You knew that you had to make it up to Daveed somehow, you just had no idea how. It was not like you knew him at all. But, you felt like you had to apologize on behalf of your racist, homofobic, Trump supporting family, even if it really had nothing to do with you.

You spent the rest of the day knee deep in work, yet your mind kept wondering back to your run-in with Daveed earlier that day. It was on your mind pretty much all the time, inevitably distracting you from your work. You just felt so bad. Now that you had finally met someone who shared your views, you had to fuck it up. Not really you, but your family, but you somehow got into your head, that it was you who Daveed was mad at and not the racist asshole who had picked you up after you spilled your coffee all over him.

Nearing the end of your shift, you were feeling even more defeated than when you arrived. You wanted badly to contact Daveed somehow, but you thought that it was perhaps not th smartest idea after the incident earlier. You sat there, your head pounding from all the thinking you had done during the day and perhaps from your lack of morning coffee, when someone placed a soft hand on your shoulder. "Miss Y/LN. I have noticed that you have been very distant today. Are you alright?" Your boss asked.

You knew that he did not care at all, but you nodded half heartedly. "Yes, I am quite alright, sir." You managed as you gathered your things to leave. You were really not okay though, but you managed to hide it pretty well.

"Well, I want you to focus tomorrow, okay? We have an important meeting coming up." He said sharply. You knew that you had fucked up today, both with Daveed and your job. But, luckily you could actually do something about the later.

"Of course." You simply stated, as you got up from your office chair, stretching lightly from sitting down during most of the day. Then, you left without another word, just wanting to go home and go to bed early to forget everything about what had just happened.

[nickyschneiderus]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez parody accounts are all the rage on the right

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Of course, when the phrase first emerged in the 1700s, we didn’t have Twitter parody accounts.

By any measure, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has made an immediate and powerful impact on the American political scene. She has drawn the ire of the conservative media. She has sparred with Democratic politicians and media elites. As all true celebs must do, she appeared on a Twitch stream fundraiser for trans rights. And, oh yeah, she is working on policy.

In this day and age, it is difficult to point to one particular achievement that signals AOC has “arrived” in the pantheon of policial celebrity, but one way to tell that you’ve made it in 2019 is a rash of Twitter parody accounts using your picture as their avi.

Take, for instance, the emerging 2020 presidential field. There are a ton of Bernie Sanders parody accounts, thanks to his 2016 run. Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, and Joe Biden all have their fair share. However, also-rans like Julian Castro, Amy Klobuchar, Sherrod Brown, and John Hickenlooper have scarcely a parody account between them. No publicity is bad publicity, even terrible parodies.

Given Ocasio-Cortez meteoric rise to national prominence, it should come as no surprise that it takes little digging to find at least a dozen parody accounts that tweet regularly in the “voice” of AOC. Ocasio-Cortez parody accounts have become so prevalent that Twitter appears to have made a concerted effort to purge accounts that are being mistaken for AOC’s actual account by users. Two recent accounts were suspended yesterday by the social media giant.

The voice, as these conservative parodists would have it, is generally a conservative caricature of the left-wing lawmaker: communist, careless, and clueless.

You have @CortezOcasia, who uses their account to retweet other political parody accounts mocking liberal figures like Don Lemon and Nancy Pelosi. You’ve got the more straight-laced @RepOcasioNY14, who tries to make AOC seem even more left than she actually is by retweeting Cornell West videos and posting about doing socialism with Rihanna:

Nice work this election cycle @rihanna. We'll turn this place Socialist at all costs!! #workingman #struggles

— @Rep Ocasio-Cortez (@RepOcasioNY14) November 10, 2018

Then there’s @0casio2018 (that’s with a “zero” not an “O”) who imagines Ocasio-Cortez with a valley girl affect, adding “likes” and “umms” between airheaded comments and pie in the sky redistributive proclamations.

Lot's of talk about Trump like owning the gov't shutdown, how like arrogant, ugh! He's prez for 2 years and like thinks he OWNS gov't, I never like saw a receipt. I know he's rich, but I need like proof he owns the shutdown. #Ocasio2020 @BarrettBrief #socialismsaveslives

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@0casio2018) December 21, 2018

@2018_Ocasio doesn’t offer much actual parody, but rather uses the account to rehash the usual Fox News anti-socialist talking points: Venezuala, government overreach, and the rise of “PC culture.”

pic.twitter.com/4BURHBzfd2

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY14, PAC) (@2018_Ocasio) December 10, 2018

And of course, there’s @Crazy_AOC, who has amassed 12,000 followers with their wild-eyed AOC avi and non-stop shitposting of conservative memes.

Socialism. My precious. pic.twitter.com/M7Ye6HpnJC

— Crazy Ocasio-Cortez (@Crazy_AOC) January 21, 2019

pic.twitter.com/RntclnXVa2

— Crazy Ocasio-Cortez (@Crazy_AOC) January 21, 2019

pic.twitter.com/iav4STyald

— Crazy Ocasio-Cortez (@Crazy_AOC) January 15, 2019

For those not familiar with Twitter parody account culture, you might be asking yourself one key question: Why aren’t these accounts funny?

Unlike parody of accounts of fast food restaurants or meme hats, Twitter political parody accounts have other goals besides viral humor. On both sides of the aisle, many parody accounts are painfully unfunny. Instead, they offer an outlet for the user to anonymously complain about politics in opposition to their own. Not only does the user feel more comfortable posting under their parodic nome de plume, but like-minded users feel more comfortable sharing these posts, as evidence by their massive follower counts.

There are probably a number of reasons that an account named @PelosiLuvsDebt69 could garner orders of magnitude more followers than some random person tweeting political screeds as themselves. But the most obvious (next to mistaken identity) is that even if there are no jokes, the guise of parody makes the posts seem less angry.

It is also undeniable that satirical posts online have the power to sway this discourse. Jokes about AOC’s proposed 70 percent marginal tax rate on those who make over $10 million have morphed the discourse so much that many Trump supporters believe that she actually proposed a 70 percent tax rate on all income of all citizens.  

This betrays the real purpose of political parody accounts: it’s about ideology, not jokes.

Parody accounts prioritize politics over humor on the right and the left. Throughout the last two years, Democrats have gleefully spread tweets from accounts mocking President Donald Trump. Like their conservative counterparts, these are more about political point scoring than joke telling.

Nancy Pelosi is being controlled by the RADICAL LEFT who want to end family separation, pay federal workers and give people healthcare! I'm just waiting for permission to end the shutdown from my dominatrix Ann Coulter.

— Donald J. Drumpf (@RealDonalDrumpf) January 20, 2019

Generally, tweets from these accounts have more in common with an Aaron Sorkin “Have you no decency sir” monologue than a stand-up comedy set.

The tradition of political parody accounts being more about partisanship than punnery dates back well before Donald Trump or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the national stage. From @MexicanMitt to @InvisibleObama parody accounts have been a way for partisans to take shots at politicians for years.

Popular parody accounts of our current moment follow the same tack of fiery opinion rather than actual humor.

Trump era favorites like @RoguePotusStaff, @AltHomelandSec, and @HoarseWisperer have followed a similarly dry playbook and have been rewarded with similarly outsized follower counts. (Disclosure: The author has been blocked by @HoarseWisperer on Twitter).

If you want further proof that political parody accounts aren’t just about being funny, look at the people who run them. Non-political parody accounts are often thought of as an outlet or even a potential opportunity for professional comedians. The man behind @LosFelizDaycare is a professional comedy writer and the alter-ego of @Seinfeld2000 is a TV producer. By contrast, political Twitter parodists come from all walks of life, including airline copywriters and government bureaucrats. The goal often seems to be blowing off a little political steam than gaining writerly esteem.

All of this is also true of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez parody accounts. Though the form of the tweets varies from “dank” memes to tossed off one-liners to vitriolic Fox News links, the critiques are the same. An AOC parody account tends to take the same lines of political attack that you see on Fox News. They go after the freshman congresswoman for being too far to the left, too unrealistic, too young, and too female.

The accounts share the same distrust and distaste for socialism, progressivism, and the stereotypical hallmarks of the millennial generation. For these tweeters, AOC stands in for a generation of people looking for a free hand out who don’t yet comprehend the sophisticated machinations of the world around them. 

The Daily Dot interviewed @AlexandraOcasi6 and @aocpress (both user prefers to remain anonymous) about what motivates them to maintain their version of an AOC parody. Since this interview, @AlexandraOcasi6 has been suspended by Twitter, along with other AOC parody accounts including @Cortez4Prez2020. The Daily Dot reached out to Twitter for comment but has not heard back.

With their account, @AlexandraOcasi6 posted a mix of jokes and conservative criticism of the congresswoman. While more explicitly rightwing accounts like @Crazy_AOC often delve into racial and gendered memes, @AlexandraOcasi6 preferred to critique Ocasio-Cortez on policy. Their account often made jokes about Ocasio-Cortez’s tax policies, redistributive/socialist proposals, and mocked her opposition to Trump administration efforts to build a wall on the Mexcian border.

When @AlexandraOcasi6 did make a gendered joke, it was usually in the popular voice common to these accounts, which portrays AOC as a naive millennial, complete with “likes” and “umms.” The jokes were generally more about her age than her Latinx or female identity.

Like many Republicans (the user identifies as “pretty right of center”), @AlexandraOcasi6 dislikes the congresswoman’s policies because they find them unrealistic and believe that her young fan base has more energy than they do coherent politics, they told the Daily Dot:

“AOC is a fun character to parody because most of the things she says are super uninformed and would definitely qualify as gaffes if she didn’t have so much devotion from her fans.  It cracks me up how many insane things I’m able to publish that her followers totally agree with because they’ve already bought what she’s selling.”

Or, up until Twitter cracked down.

I shouldn't have used quotes because you will prove yourself in congress (as if you haven't already and not that you have too). You are absolutely right about the sexism. #meToo

— Peacockblue (@peacockblu) January 6, 2019

@AlexandraOcasi6 admits that they were motivated to create the account partially because they have a fondness for Ocasio-Cortez’s youthful energy. Their thoughts on AOC echo what a conservative might begrudgingly admit about Barack Obama or Beto O’Rourke:

“At the same time, she seems like a really genuine person so I find myself liking her at a certain level.  It’s a lot more fun satirizing someone who makes you smile than someone who makes your skin crawl because being mean-spirited just seems exhausting.”

However, the user behind @AlexandraOcasi6 doesn’t necessarily think that the prevalence of AOC parody accounts will lead to a political future beyond the House of Representatives:

“I think she’s so set on breaking things in Washington, that she’ll eventually make herself a ideological pariah with the Democratic caucus, which will prevent her from influencing anyone outside of her social media sphere.  She’s also deeply naive and I think she knows it. She’s still more of an activist than a legislator so I don’t see her becoming a pillar of our government any time soon.”

@AOCpress takes a similar tone with their account and has similar views on Ocasio-Cortez.

Their tweets paint a picture of AOC as ill-informed and naive, unfit for office and unschooled in political realities. The person behind @AOCpress is a parody account veteran, having run a parody account of Mike Pompeo until being suspended from Twitter. The Pompeo account was sometimes mistaken for the former CIA directors actual account, and was often retweeted by Donald Trump Jr. and Anne Coulter.

PRESS RELEASE: I just drafted an executive order to remove the immoral fencing from around the White House.

— AOC Press (@AOCpress) January 13, 2019

These immigrants wouldn’t be undocumented if ICE didn’t steal their documents.

— AOC Press (@AOCpress) January 9, 2019

Like @AlexandraOcasio6, they shy away from gendered or racial jokes, but like to take on millennials and what they view as the extremity of PC culture.

PRESS RELEASE: AOC announces her decision to go pronoun-free. Please refer to AOC as “your honor.”

— AOC Press (@AOCpress) January 4, 2019

@AOCpress personally views Ocasio-Cortez and her fans as unintelligent. They told the Daily Dot, “I chose AOC because I think she’s dumb as hell and I can attribute any dumb things to her.”

The person behind @AOCpress also identifies as a conservative: “I am an ardent Trump supporter and have been since June 16, 2015.” Prior to starting their AOC account, they ran a Mike Pompeo parody account aimed at promoting the conservative EX-CIA chief.

Unlike @AlexandraOcasi6, @AOCpress sees Ocasio-Cortez as a serious political threat. “I believe AOC is a real threat and if the Country continues on this downward spiral I see a President AOC within the next 25 years.”

Only time will tell if @AlexandraOcasi6’s prediction will come true or if @AOCpress is right.

Will Ocasio-Cortez catapult to the kind of notoriety that leads to immortal parody accounts like @PimpBillClinton (234,000 followers, still tweeting)?

Parody account fame doesn’t necessarily mean enduring political fortunes, just ask @ShitToddAkinSays (RIP) or @TomCoburnsBeard.

While the future remains to be seen, one unassailable fact remains true in the age of politics and social media: if nobody’s parodying you, it’s probably because no one is listening.

from Ricky Schneiderus Curation https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-twitter-parodies/

[nedsecondline]

Jenna Abrams, Russia’s Clown Troll Princess, Duped the Mainstream Media and the World

Jenna Abrams had a lot of enemies on Twitter, but she was a very good friend to viral content writers across the world.

Her opinions about everything from manspreading on the subway to Rachel Dolezal to ballistic missiles still linger on news sites all over the web.

One website devoted an entire article to Abrams’ tweet about Kim Kardashian’s clothes. The story was titled “This Tweeter’s PERFECT Response to Kim K’s Naked Selfie Will Crack You Up.”

“Thank goodness, then, that there are people like Twitter user Jenna Abrams to come to the celebrity’s wardrobe-lacking aide,” reads a Brit & Co. article from March of 2016.

Those same users who followed @Jenn_Abrams for her perfect Kim Kardashian jokes would be blasted with her shoddily punctuated ideas on slavery and segregation just one month later.

“To those people, who hate the Confederate flag. Did you know that the flag and the war wasn’t about slavery, it was all about money,” Abrams’ account tweeted in April of last year.

The tweet went viral, earning heaps of ridicule from journalists, historians, and celebrities alike, then calls for support from far-right users coming to her defense.

That was the plan all along.

Congressional investigators working with social-media companies have since confirmed that Abrams wasn’t who she said she was.

Her account was the creation of employees at the Internet Research Agency, or the Russian government-funded “troll farm,” in St. Petersburg.

Jenna Abrams, the freewheeling American blogger who believed in a return to segregation and said that many of America’s problems stemmed from PC culture run amok, did not exist.

But Abrams got very real attention from almost any national news outlet you can think of, according to a Daily Beast analysis of her online footprint.

Get The Beast In Your Inbox!

Daily Digest

Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.

Cheat Sheet

A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).

Subscribe

Thank You!

You are now subscribed to the Daily Digest and Cheat Sheet. We will not share your email with anyone for any reason.

Abrams, who at one point boasted nearly 70,000 Twitter followers, was featured in articles written by Bustle, U.S. News and World Report, USA Today, several local Fox affiliates, InfoWars, BET, Yahoo Sports, Sky News, IJR, Breitbart, The Washington Post, Mashable, New York Daily News, Quartz, Dallas News, France24, HuffPost, The Daily Caller, The Telegraph, CNN, the BBC, Gizmodo, The Independent, The Daily Dot, The Observer, Business Insider, The National Post, Refinery29, The Times of India, BuzzFeed, The Daily Mail, The New York Times, and, of course, Russia Today and Sputnik.

Many of these stories had nothing to do with Russia—or politics at all. Instead, stretching back to 2014, Abrams’ account built up an image of a straight-talking, no-nonsense, viral-tweet-writing young American woman. She was featured in articles as diverse as “the 15 funniest tweets this week” to “#FeministAMovie Proves Why Twitter Can’t Have Nice Things.” Then, once she built her following, she would push divisive views on immigration, segregation, and Donald Trump, especially as the 2016 election loomed.

Abrams’ pervasiveness in American news outlets shows just how much impact Russia’s troll farm had on American discourse in the run-up to the 2016 election—and illustrates how Russian talking points can seep into American mainstream media without even a single dollar spent on advertising.

***

Remnants from some of Abrams’ most elaborate conspiracies and xenophobic opinions still remain in replies from celebrities sparring with—or agreeing with—her account.

Roseanne Barr responded to one of Abrams’ tweets on Feb. 2, 2016, to call a common enemy “pro-pedophile.” Abrams’ tweet earlier in the day about a Saudi Arabian Starbucks went viral, meriting pickup from The Telegraph and Russia Today, and even a response from Starbucks’ corporate Twitter account.

Barr elaborated in a tweet later in the month, saying “dems repubs libertarians indies greens, black white yellow red-all religions” are “#PEDOPHILES.”

Even Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia and an expert in Russian propaganda, got into a number of Twitter spats with Abrams. McFaul responded to Abrams’ posts in 10 separate months between February of 2015 and August of 2016.

Before they knew the account was run by paid disinformation agents, Abrams’ ahistorical slavery revisionism irked journalists and historians alike.

Al Letson, the host of the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal podcast, received over 65,000 retweets and 153,000 likes when he refuted Abrams’ incorrect Civil War claim.

“It’s much easier to say the Civil War was about money, when your ancestors weren’t the currency,” said Letson, whose tweet is still pinned to the top of his Twitter page.

Historian Kevin Kruse’s quote-tweet of Abrams accrued over 41,000 retweets.

“No, the Civil War was about slavery,” he wrote. “Sincerely, Historians.”

“I responded to the tweet because it echoed an argument I’ve heard many times: that the Civil War was somehow not about slavery, even when the seceding states and the Confederate government made it quite clear, in their own words at the time, that it was entirely about slavery,” Kruse told The Daily Beast.

That argument was echoed once again just this past week, as White House Chief of Staff John Kelly claimed the Civil War was only fought because of “the lack of an ability to compromise.”

Kruse said both Kelly’s thoughts, and the Kremlin-funded viral tweet that preceded it on Abrams’ account, “are deeply at odds with the historical record.”

“The Confederate statues across the South that [Kelly] and others in this administration now defend were a vital part of the ‘Lost Cause’ myth constructed in the early 20th century to obscure the basic truths about the Civil War,” he said.

***

While the the typical image of a Russian troll may be a hastily put together Twitter account blaring out non-stop political messages, Abrams’ account went to great lengths to simulate a real, American person who existed outside of Twitter fights and amplifying racist disinformation.

Her Twitter account was created back in 2014. She had a personal website, a Medium page, her own Gmail, and even a GoFundMe page.

When The Daily Beast attempted to email Jenna’s email address, [email protected] (“Yes, there are 3 Ns,” her Twitter bio read), an automatic reply from Google stated that the “account that you tried to reach is disabled.” Google refused to comment when asked if the company had pulled the account for its ties to the Kremlin troll farm.

One of Abrams’ earliest media mentions came well before the 2016 election, in a June 2015 BBC article that aggregated Twitter users’ feelings about women choosing not to shave their armpits. Later that year, British newspaper The Telegraph picked up one of her Twitter jokes about punctuation.

But in the run-up to Election Day, Abrams’ account, and the people who were in control of it, became much more political.

In September 2016, Abrams wrote a now-removed Medium post titled “Why do we need to get back to segregation.”

“Humanity has gone full circle. Never mind how many activists of any color died to get rid of segregation, and fought for inclusion, black people want it back. 100% free people made their choice, and their choice is segregation,” Abrams wrote.

She also posted a summary of former FBI Director James Comey’s public testimony, writing “Comey admitted Hillary is a liar,” plus a picture of black and green olives, mocking the Black Lives Matter movement. CNN subsequently picked up the photo.

This sort of content seemed to become Abrams’ niche, and it tended to accrue the most replies and shares.

Abrams’ Confederate flag tweet was one of her most viewed posts, with a slew of journalists, commentators, and other high-profile Twitter users catapulting Abrams’ rhetoric to new heights. Even if those users were attempting to engage or argue against Abrams’ views, they likely did not know that, in fact, these were manufactured opinions of a Russian manipulation factory.

When Abrams joined in with an anti-Clinton hashtag, The Washington Post included her tweet in its own coverage. One outlet used an image of a terrorist attack sourced from Abrams’ Twitter feed.

As The Daily Beast reported on Wednesday, Michael Flynn Jr. retweeted Abrams at least once to his 30,000+ followers shortly before the election.

Still, Abrams went to great lengths to tell most people that she was not a Trump supporter, just a real person with an email address who wanted Americans to send her a message.

“Calm down, I’m not pro-Trump. I am pro-common sense,” Abrams’ biography read on Twitter. “Any offers/ideas/questions?”

***

The Twitter user Ironghazi couldn’t remember what Jenna Abrams wrote in April that made him pose as a news reporter so he could call her a “dumbass moron,” but he knows whoever wrote it was pretty vacant.

“If she got the ‘Hi, I’m Ironghazi from (CBS News)’ treatment, she must’ve been [a moron],” he told The Daily Beast.

It was Abrams’ Civil War tweet that prompted this reply from Ironghazi, which racked up over 1,000 retweets and 5,600 likes:

“Hi Jenn, I’m a reporter with CBS News and I’m doing a story on dumbass morons,” it reads. “Do you mind if I feature your tweet and avatar?”

Ironghazi, who declined to give his real name for this story because “when you make people mad online, they tend to try to find you for some reason,” is a notorious Twitter troll in his own right. In his most viral tweet, he shrank every continent with Photoshop to make them fit inside a map of the USA so he could illustrate “just how vast our great nation is.”

In other words, one of Twitter’s most infamous American trolls had been out-trolled by a state-sponsored Russian influence operation.

Now, over a year later, he says he didn’t suspect a thing. From one troll to another, Ironghazi thought Jenna Abrams, the sometimes funny, often stupid, always angry American, was a natural.

“The key to being a good troll is being just stupid enough to be believable, keeping in mind that the ultimate goal is making people mad online,” he said. “To that end, this Jed Abraham account succeeded.” He then clarified that the misspelling of Abrams’ name was intentional.

[bountyofbeads]

TRUMP’S DEFENSE TEAM TO TARGET BIDENS IN COUNTERPUNCH TO IMPEACHMENT CHARGES

By Rachael Bade, Robert Costa, Karoun Demirjian and Josh Dawsey | Published

January 24 at 9:50 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted Jan 25, 2020

White House lawyers are gearing up for a scorched-earth defense of President Trump in the impeachment trial, mounting a politically charged case aimed more at swaying American voters than GOP senators — and damaging Trump’s possible 2020 opponent, Joe Biden.

Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel, and Jay Sekulow, Trump’s personal attorney, plan to use their time in the trial to target the former vice president and his son, Hunter, according to multiple GOP officials familiar with the strategy. Trump’s allies believe that if they can argue that the president had a plausible reason for requesting the Biden investigation in Ukraine, they can both defend him against the impeachment charges and gain the bonus of undercutting a political adversary.

The strategy — aimed squarely at muddying the waters surrounding the two impeachment articles of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — carries potential risk. Some congressional Republicans have encouraged the White House to prioritize a line-by-line rebuttal of the Democrats’ case, ensuring that wary moderates are provided enough cover to vote for Trump’s acquittal. It is unclear whether going after a former colleague will sway that core constituency, protecting moderates from possible political blowback at home — though a senior administration official made clear that Trump’s legal team would try to do both.

The official, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter frankly.

The Biden campaign condemned the strategy.

“Donald Trump is so terrified of facing Joe Biden that he became the only president in American history to attempt to coerce a foreign nation into lying about a political rival,” spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “Even members of his own administration — including his former top envoy to Ukraine — have refuted the conspiracy theory that he tried to force Ukraine to spread to bail out his struggling reelection campaign.”

The offensive will mark the first time lawmakers or the public have heard a full-throated White House defense. The president’s attorneys rejected the House invitation to participate in the last phase of the impeachment inquiry, making their presentation — expected Saturday and Monday — the team’s first major turn in the spotlight.

Until now, the White House has struggled to address why Trump froze military aid to Ukraine and repeatedly postponed a promised White House meeting with newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky while pressing for investigations of the Bidens and an unfounded conspiracy theory about Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election. The White House also has had difficulty explaining why Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani was the point person on policy toward the Eastern European nation.

In October, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney openly admitted that a quid pro quo occurred, telling reporters to “get over it” — though he later walked back the comments.

Trump is eager for his team to take the stage and has been trying to strategically time it to maximize TV viewership. He has told allies that while he’s fine with the defense beginning its presentation Saturday for a few hours starting at 10 a.m. — in part because he hopes it will drive discussions on Sunday morning talk shows — he prefers the bulk of their arguments to happen Monday when more Americans will be watching television, according to White House officials who were not authorized to speak publicly.

“After having been treated unbelievably unfairly in the House, and then having to endure hour after hour of lies, fraud & deception by Shifty Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer & their crew, looks like my lawyers will be forced to start on Saturday, which is called Death Valley in T.V.,” Trump tweeted Friday morning.

The emerging strategy comes as the White House has heard conflicting advice from Republicans eager to share their opinion on the best rebuttal. In recent weeks, there has been a quiet, behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign by both GOP senators and Trump’s House allies on his defense team, creating confusion among Republicans about which strategy the White House will adopt.

The deliberations occasionally have been marked by intense discussions, including debates about whether to push a process-focused case against Democrats or to take on each of their points and accusations individually, according to senators and congressional aides familiar with the talks. Over the past 24 hours, the debate has focused more on how much time should be dedicated to going after the Bidens.

Those divergent views were on full display in the Capitol this week. Rep. Lee Zeldin, a New York Republican advising Trump’s defense team, told reporters that Trump’s lawyers needed to re-litigate what is considered a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to help Hillary Clinton — and, therefore, justified Trump pushing Ukraine to investigate the matter. But some Senate Republicans, including No. 2 leader John Thune (S.D.), want the White House to avoid what they consider a baseless conspiracy theory.

“I think the intelligence community has very conclusively determined that it was Russia — and not Ukraine — that interfered in the 2016 election, so … I guess that’s not a direction I would have them go,” Thune said.

Other Senate Republicans, including Trump ally Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), have publicly pushed back on a key White House legal team talking point: that the charges against the president do not constitute a crime and therefore his actions are not impeachable.

Trump himself actively recruited lawyer and TV commentator Alan Dershowitz at a Mar-a-Lago buffet to make that very argument — then sought out Dershowitz’s wife to help persuade him to do it. “He wants me to make the argument that the case does not meet the grounds for impeachment,” said Dershowitz. “He knows that I feel very strongly about constitutional issues.”

Democrats, meanwhile, have been bracing for this moment, anxious about the Trump team getting 24 hours without any interruptions and pushback from impeachment managers. That concern only grew after Trump’s lawyers uttered several inaccuracies on the Senate floor Tuesday, including a claim that House Republicans were not allowed to question witnesses during closed-door depositions. They could, and they did.

Democrats want to ensure that the Trump team doesn’t get the last word, in part by using some of the allotted 16 hours of questions and answers to correct any misstatements.

“I’m concerned about their deceptive and misleading statements,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), promising that Democrats would “ask questions that are, in effect, an invitation to set the record straight.”

Democrats have been anticipating that the defense would shift attention from Trump’s alleged misconduct to focus on the Bidens. That, in part, is what drove House managers to devote a considerable portion of their Thursday presentation to a preemptive rebuttal on those points, arguing that several Republicans and Europeans had supported Biden’s efforts to push out corrupt former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin.

Trump and Republicans have accused Biden — without evidence — of ousting Shokin because the prosecutor was investigating Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden on its board while the elder Biden was vice president. But former U.S. and Ukrainian officials have said the prosecutor’s investigation of Burisma had been dormant, and many had hoped that the change in prosecutors backed by Biden and others would lead to more aggressive anti-corruption investigations. Republicans also have pointed to concerns about the appearance of a conflict of interest, which were expressed by some of the Democrats’ top witnesses in the impeachment inquiry.

“The House managers sort of drove a knife through the heart of those false arguments ahead of time … and I think that will help make the case,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters Thursday.

Not all Republicans are eager about a singular focus on the former vice president. In an unusual role-reversal, Trump’s most aggressive House allies have urged the legal team to focus on trying to undercut the Democrats’ timeline and arguments.

“You can’t talk about corruption broadly without talking about Burisma and Hunter Biden’s involvement,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who also is assisting the defense team. “That being said, I think the vast majority of this emphasis is on what were the components that led the president to ultimately release the aid.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and his top attorney on the House Oversight Committee, Steve Castor, both of whom participated in the House investigation, have been working with the Trump team to try to highlight what they see as weak spots in the impeachment case.

As the impeachment managers showed clips of Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland confirming a quid pro quo, Jordan has pushed for the team to counter by highlighting Sondland’s changing statements as well as his own admission that he never heard such a directive from Trump.

“Remember, Sondland is the guy who had to amend his testimony, the guy who had to clarify his testimony, is the guy they rely on the most?” Jordan said.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has been on the other side of the argument, working closely with the White House and meeting with Trump’s legal team as recently as Thursday evening to encourage them to go hard on Hunter Biden’s Burisma position.

“Focus on what matters, which is the substance,” he said on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Friday morning, summarizing his advice to Trump’s team. “And I told them, ‘Look, nothing matters more than the facts on Burisma.’ . . . Lay out substantive, factual reasons why investigating Burisma, the president had a responsibility to do so.”

Senate Republicans said they have been eager to hear what Trump’s team has to say — in part because they don’t know what line of attack it will take. Privately, some Republican senators have groused in recent days that the Trump team is “everywhere but nowhere,” as one described the dynamic, speaking on the condition anonymity to give a frank assessment.

“They are on TV and at the Capitol yelling at the Democrats, but I’m not really sure what the whole range of the argument is. Are you?” the GOP senator asked, adding that the frustration was shared by other Republicans.

*********

ASSESSING THE TRUMP TEAM’S 6-POINT IMPEACHMENT DEFENSE

By Philip Bump | Published January 25 at 12:14 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 25, 2020 |

President Trump’s legal team in his impeachment trial began its defense on Saturday morning with a slightly more lawyerly version of one of Trump’s favorite tweets: read the transcript.

“They didn’t talk a lot about the transcript of the call,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone told the assembled senators in the Senate chambers at the outset of his remarks, “which I would submit is the best evidence of what happened on the call.”

That line, in itself, is a neat encapsulation of Trump’s case. It focuses on the rough transcript of Trump’s July 25, 2019 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as exculpatory — while also asserting that the central issue is the call itself. It isn’t. The presented evidence shows a broad campaign of pressure of which that call was only one part, a campaign that is harder for Trump’s team to refute.

Cipollone soon transitioned to Michael Purpura, the deputy White House counsel. Purpura began by articulating a six-point defense that his team would offer during its presentation. Those six points, like Cipollone’s claim about the rough transcript: carefully worded, constrained — and often not hard to undercut.

Here’s each point as he stated it, and what the available evidence says about the claims.

THE TRUMP TEAM’S CASE

1. “The transcript shows that the president did not condition either security assistance or a meeting on anything. The paused security assistance funds aren’t even mentioned on the call.”

Remember what’s at issue here. Trump, on the July 25 call, asked Zelensky to launch two investigations, one focused on former vice president Joe Biden and unfounded allegations about his actions in Ukraine in 2016, and another centered on a bizarre conspiracy theory in which Ukraine is implicated in 2016 election interference. To compel Ukraine to launch those investigations, the Democrats argue, Trump delayed a White House meeting sought by Zelensky and withheld military and security aid scheduled to be sent to Ukraine.

Purpura’s right that the transcript doesn’t include any conditioning of the requested investigations on a meeting or aid during the call. What he doesn’t mention, though, is evidence sitting just outside that call which makes clear that Trump’s team made that conditionality clear to Zelensky’s team.

Trump spoke with Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland that morning. Sondland then reached out to then-Ukraine special envoy Kurt Volker, asking Volker to call him. Shortly after, Volker sent a text message to Andriy Yermak, a key adviser to Zelensky, with whom he’d earlier had lunch in Kyiv.

“Heard from White House,” Volker wrote. “[A]ssuming President [Zelensky] convinces trump he will investigate / ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington.”

Volker then sent a message to Sondland.

“[H]ad a great lunch with Yermak and then passed your message to him,” Volker wrote. “He will see you tomorrow, think everything in place.”

Sondland testified about that message, which he said, “likely I would have received that from President Trump.”

During the call, Zelensky at one point seems to make explicit reference to the investigate-for-visit mandate mentioned by Volker.

“I also wanted to thank you for your invitation to visit the United States, specifically Washington D.C.,” Zelensky said, according to the rough transcript. “On the other hand, I also wanted (to) ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation.”

No, Trump didn’t say that Zelensky wasn’t getting a meeting without the investigation. He didn’t need to. His team had already passed that along.

To Purpura’s second point, it is true that there was no mention of the aid during the call. We’ll get to that in a moment.

2. “President Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said that there was no quid pro quo and no pressure on them to review anything.”

In its careful wording, this is also true. Zelensky, sitting with Trump in a meeting on Sept. 25, was asked if he felt pressure from Trump in the call. After indicating that he didn’t want to get involved in the politics of the question, he conceded that he hadn’t felt pushed.

That admission, as he obviously understood, was what Trump wanted to hear. Trump quickly jumped on it: “In other words, no pressure,” he said, paraphrasing his counterpart.

David Holmes, a political staffer at the embassy in Ukraine, explained why he felt that Ukraine would not only have felt pressure but also pressure not to concede that they were being pressured. He was speaking about how Ukraine would have tried to navigate the hold on aid, but the point is broader.

“Whether the hold, the security assistance hold, continued or not, Ukrainians understood that that’s something the president wanted, and they still wanted important things from the president,” Holmes said. “So I think that continues to this day. I think they’re being very careful. They still need us now going forward.”

Purpura suggested that treating Zelensky’s claims with skepticism was akin to reading Zelensky’s mind. Taking the assertions of Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials at immediate face value, though, offers no more assurance of yielding an accurate interpretation.

This conflict gets to the heart of what Trump is alleged to have done. Either the United States has the ability to exert pressure on Ukraine or it doesn’t. Trump asks that we assume there is no implicit pressure at play and that everything that occurred is no more complicated than the most basic reading of events. That request can be evaluated on its own merits.

3. “President Zelensky and high-ranking Ukrainian officials did not even know — did not even know the security assistance was paused until the end of August. Over a month after the July 25th call.”

Cipollone and Purpura lamented that the House impeachment managers had failed to offer evidence exculpating the president, as though prosecutors are generally in the habit of doing so. Included in that overlooked evidence were statements from administration officials indicating that Ukraine and Zelensky weren’t aware of the hold on aid — introduced in early July — until late August when Politico broke the story. Several of those who testified said that this was the first point at which the issue was raised by their contacts in Ukraine.

Trump’s lawyers mostly skipped the evidence that contradicts this, of course. Emails sent on July 25 itself to staffers at the Defense Department indicated that the Ukrainian Embassy was aware of the hold, which had been announced within the administration a week earlier. A former senior Ukrainian official, working in Zelensky’s administration at that point, indicated that she was aware of the hold by late July. Catherine Croft, a State Department official, testified that she was surprised at how quickly her Ukrainian colleagues learned about the hold soon after it was known in the administration, though she didn’t know when precisely that occurred, as Purpura pointed out.

Croft made another point, though, which directly undercuts a claim made by Purpura. “Common sense comes into play right here,” he said at one point. “The top Ukrainian officials said nothing, nothing at all to their U.S. counterparts during all of these meetings about the pause on security assistance. But then, boom, soon as the Politico article comes out, suddenly, in that first intense week of September, in George Kent’s words, security assistance was all they wanted to talk about."

“What must we conclude if we’re using our common sense?” Purpura continued. “That they didn’t know about the pause until the Politico article on August 28. No activity before. Article comes out, flurry of activity.”

During her testimony, Croft explained why Ukraine wouldn’t want to focus on the aid while it wasn’t publicly known.

“If this were public in Ukraine, it would be seen as a reversal of our policy and would, just to say sort of candidly and colloquially, this would be a really big deal, it would be a really big deal in Ukraine, and an expression of declining U.S. support for Ukraine,” she said in her closed-door testimony. “As long as they thought that in the end the hold would be lifted, they had no reason for this to want to come out.”

What Purpura also ignored, of course, is that Sondland himself had informed Yermak on Sept. 1 that the aid would be held until the investigations were launched. He did so of his own volition, as he testified, but it was nonetheless the case that an official close to Trump did inform Ukraine that there was a quid pro quo on this point.

4. “Not a single witness testified that the president himself said that there was any connection between any investigations and security assistance, a presidential meeting or anything else.”

This is a valid point. While several witnesses linked Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani specifically to a meeting-for-investigations qui pro quo, no one testified that they’d been told that Trump made that conditionality clear. The only person who did make such a link was acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney during a news conference in October. But, of course, Mulvaney declined to actually testify.

Trump’s team, justifiably, has long focused on the extent to which Trump himself has been kept at a distance from the allegations. There’s little question that, to some extent, that distance was intentional. Trump told Sondland, Volker and then-Energy Secretary Rick Perry to work with Giuliani, for example, just as he told Zelensky he’d put him in contact with his personal attorney. Giuliani himself told the New York Times and other outlets that he was working on Trump’s political behalf in seeking the investigations. Giuliani was also at the center of an effort to link a White House meeting to the announcement of investigations in a series of interactions in early August.

The link from Trump to those efforts seems obvious, but that it isn’t obvious — at least with the available testimony — retains some aspect of reasonable doubt.

5. The security assistance flowed on Sept. 11, and a presidential meeting took place on Sept. 25 without the Ukrainian government announcing any investigations.

To undercut the idea that the aid or the meeting were conditioned on the announcement of investigations, Trump’s team (as his allies have done in the past) noted that Ukraine got both the aid and the meeting. The aid was, in fact, released on Sept. 11, 2019. The two presidents did meet, in fact, two weeks later.

However.

That aid was only released after attention had been drawn to its being withheld publicly. House Democrats had launched an investigation into the hold. The Washington Post editorial board had explicitly connected the hold to the desired investigations. Trump had already been briefed on a complaint from an anonymous whistleblower in which that connection was mentioned as part of a broad campaign to pressure Ukraine. Trump had faced questions from both Sondland and political allies, like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), about why the aid was being held and if it was being held to pressure Ukraine. The tables, in other words, had turned: now Trump faced significant pressure to release the aid.

Stack those factors against the administration’s stated rationale for the hold. That rationale centers on Trump’s purported concerns about Ukrainian corruption, concerns that weren’t manifested within the administration through any obvious process of evaluation and which for vague reasons were coincidentally alleviated just as all of this external pressure had come into play.

Another salient factor? On Sept. 11, Zelensky was still planning to participate in an interview with CNN in which he’d informed Trump’s team he would announce the investigations. That interview was only canceled once the Ukraine question broke into public view.

The claim that Zelensky got his desired meeting in late September is a simply ridiculous claim. What Zelensky wanted was a one-on-one demonstration that Ukraine is a close ally of the United States by having Zelensky and Trump sit down in the Oval Office. He wanted that photo of Trump and himself shaking hands, something he could present to the world — and Russia — as a statement of the big stick he was able to carry.

On Sept. 25, that’s not what he got. He got a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. That same day, Trump also sat down with leaders from Japan and El Salvador. The day prior, he’d similarly met with leaders from India, the United Kingdom and Iraq. Claiming that the Sept. 25 meeting was what Zelensky sought is like claiming that dancing with a partner once at a party is equivalent to getting engaged.

From the time that Zelensky won his election in April of last year through the end of last year, about a dozen other foreign leaders got precisely the sort of meeting Zelensky sought; among them was Russia’s foreign minister.

6. The Democrats’ blind drive to impeach the president does not and cannot change the fact, as attested to by the Democrats own witnesses, that President Trump has been a better friend and stronger supporter of Ukraine than his predecessor.

This is a subjective claim, but it’s true that, in prior years, Trump had authorized aid to Ukraine including military aid which hadn’t been provided under Barack Obama.

It raises an important question, though: Why did that support collapse in 2019? House Democrats argue that there’s an obvious answer. In April 2019, Joe Biden announced his candidacy. On the morning of July 25, Trump watched a Fox News broadcast showing Biden leading Trump in 2020 polling.

We’re asked to believe that this was not a consideration for a president who has tweeted scores of times about his political opponents. We’re asked to believe instead that he was focused on corruption in Ukraine, something he’d tweeted about only once before early September — and only then in the context of Joe Biden.

*********

Adam Schiff delivered a detailed, hour-long summary of the Democrats’ impeachment case. Some Republicans dismissed it because of one line.

By Mike DeBonis | Published January 24 at 10:54 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 25, 2020 |

Rep. Adam B. Schiff spoke for nearly an hour closing the House’s case for the removal of President Trump, advancing and rebutting scores of arguments, but many Republican senators left the chamber talking about only one line: His reference to a news report that GOP senators were warned that if they vote against the president, their “head will be on a pike.”

“Not true!” an indignant Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) bristled afterward, saying senators were “visibly upset” by the comment. “Nothing like going through three days of frustration and then cap it with an insult on everybody.”

The reference came from a CBS News report that had gone viral earlier Friday, quoting an anonymous Trump confidant claiming that senators were warned that “your head will be on a pike” if they vote against the president on impeachment. The report did not say who had delivered the threat or which senators had been so warned.

“I don’t know if that’s true,” Schiff (D-Calif.) said. “I hope it’s not true. But I’m struck by the irony of the idea, when we’re talking about a president who would make himself a monarch, that whoever that was would use the terminology of a penalty that was imposed by a monarch — a head on a pike.”

Schiff sandwiched the reference between an anecdote about his father trying to get into the military with bad eyes and a flat feet during World War II, succeeding on the third attempt, and a tribute to the late representative Thomas F. Railsback (R-Ill.), who worked to build bipartisan support for President Richard M. Nixon’s impeachment.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), normally staid, smiled as Schiff told the story about his dad, which delved into lessons of courage as he urged the Republicans to break with their party leader.

When Schiff mentioned the alleged “head on a pike” threat, the GOP side of the chamber began to murmur and shift in outrage.

“That’s not true!” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who shook her head angrily, then crossed her arms over her chest in protest for the rest of his speech.

And after he ended his speech about 10 minutes later, the Republican outrage was brewing.

Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the Republican Conference chairman, denied any such threat and attacked Schiff for repeating the suggestion.

“What he has proven to all of us is that he is capable of falsehoods and he would tell it to the country and tell it to us sitting in the chamber when every one of us knows it’s not true,” he said. “Whatever gains he may have made, he lost all of it, plus some, tonight.”

While it is not especially surprising that a party leader like Barrasso, whose vote for Trump’s acquittal is not in question, would be vexed by the remark, the dismay of Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) — GOP senators who Democrats believe are open to voting next week for additional witnesses — could be more troubling.

“That’s where he lost me,” Murkowski said of the remark — though she quickly clarified that Schiff had lost her rhetorically, but had not necessarily lost her vote.

What neither Murkowski nor other GOP senators acknowledged is that Trump makes no secret of his disdain for Republican lawmakers who don’t follow his every cue. They hardly need to be reminded of the consequences for breaking ranks.

In October, as the impeachment investigation reached a fever pitch, Trump called Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) a “pompous ass” and “so bad for” the GOP after Romney criticized Trump’s calls for foreign countries to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, a potential campaign rival.

Two Republican senators who had clashed with Trump — Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.) — chose to forgo reelection in 2018 rather than risk campaigning against a more Trump-friendly candidate.

Democrats rolled their eyes at the GOP outrage. A Democratic aide working on the impeachment probe but who was not authorized to comment publicly noted that Schiff “repeatedly said he hoped it wasn’t true — they doth protest too much.”

Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) noted that Trump’s willingness to threaten and exact revenge on those who cross him politically was no secret.

“That’s one of the worst-kept secrets in Washington — what this White House, this president does to people who cross him,” he said. “And he’s made it clear from Day 1.”

And Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) suggested in a tweet that Republicans were feigning outrage to distract from the rest of Schiff’s detailed argument for Trump’s removal.

“I’m gonna let you in on a secret,” he wrote. “Republicans who don’t want to defend Trump’s corruption on the merits are instead going to complain about how mean the House managers are.”

______

Rachael Bade, Paul Kane and Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.

*********

Democrats focus on Trump’s character as they argue for removing him from office in impeachment trial

By Elise Viebeck, Karoun Demirjian and Mike DeBonis | Published January 24 at 8:41 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 25, 2020 |

House prosecutors finished their opening arguments in President Trump’s impeachment trial on Friday, arguing that his conduct toward Ukraine reflected a dangerous reflex toward political expediency and a lack of character that will backfire on Republicans if they do not help remove him from office.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and his colleagues attempted to drive this argument home Friday to sway a handful of Republican senators whose position on gathering further evidence will determine the arc and scope of the trial. Yet there were few signs that any Republican was persuaded, leaving open the matter of possible witness testimony and further dampening Democrats’ already meager hopes of a conviction in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Schiff’s pointed and increasingly personal approach was an attempt to go beyond the specifics of House Democrats’ case to make the broader argument that Trump is an untrustworthy president who is likely to repeatedly flout the Constitution if allowed to stay in office.

“It goes to character,” Schiff said. “You don’t realize how ­important character is in the highest office in the land until you don’t have it.”

The Democrats’ closing statements were their final appeal to senators before the next phase of the trial: an aggressive rebuttal from Trump’s lawyers that will kick off Saturday and continue in earnest on Monday.

Speaking Friday on the Senate floor — hours after new evidence emerged of Trump’s campaign to oust the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine starting in 2018 — Schiff predicted that Trump’s future behavior would vindicate Democrats’ claim that he abused his power, and he warned Republicans the president, now their ally, could ultimately turn on them.

“Do you think for a moment that any of you — no matter what your relationship with this president, no matter how close you are to this president — do you think for a moment that if he felt it was in his interest, he wouldn’t ask you to be investigated?” he asked.

The remarks concluded the House managers’ case for the first article of impeachment, which charges Trump with abuse of power over allegations he withheld military aid and an Oval Office meeting from Ukraine to pressure the country’s leaders into announcing investigations into Trump’s political rivals. These included former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who served on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company, while his father was in office. The managers spent the rest of the day detailing their case for the second article of impeachment — obstruction of Congress, following Trump’s barring the executive branch from cooperating with the House investigation.

The Senate will reconvene Saturday at 10 a.m. for several hours of what Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow described as “coming attractions” from his side — a preview of the pro-Trump case before the full-scale presentation begins Monday. The timetable is aimed at garnering peak television viewership — a priority for Trump as he faces the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history — though Sekulow also said that his side would not use its full 24-hour time allotment for defending Trump.

“We’re not going to try to run the clock out,” he said this week.

Democrats faced continued criticism from Republicans that their presentations were tedious and difficult to follow.

“I just thought yesterday was like, too much,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), calling the remarks repetitive and “mind-numbing.” “This needs to end. They’ve had an opportunity to make their case.”

While many Republicans echoed the view that the trial has been repetitive, every member of the Senate GOP caucus has voted against hearing from new witnesses or collecting new evidence.

It was clear when the trial resumed at 1 p.m. Friday that Schiff heeded some of Republicans’ complaints: rather than speaking for hours at a time, the managers presented in shorter spurts, rotating more often and punctuating their remarks with more video clips.

After Trump’s defense concludes, mostly likely on Monday, the trial will enter a question-and-answer phase that will last for up to 16 hours. This is expected to take place Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by a debate Thursday over whether to seek testimony from witnesses. Democrats are pushing for former national security adviser John Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to appear, while most Republicans have shot down the idea of hearing from witnesses. But they have said that if Democrats secure the votes to subpoena any of their choices, the GOP will push for Joe or Hunter Biden to appear.

Democrats need four Republicans to join them in any attempt to secure new testimony or evidence, and the senators being targeted have been careful to say that they have made no decision — while giving no indication they are moving closer to supporting any subpoenas.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), one of the most closely watched Republican senators, said Friday that the House managers had “presented us with a mountain of overwhelming evidence,” though it was unclear which way he was leaning on the question of hearing more.

Alexander told reporters that he will make his decision on admitting witnesses and other new evidence only after the White House defense team makes its case.

“I think that question can only be answered then,” he said. “We’ve been polite to the House managers, listened to them carefully, and now we’re going to do the same with the president’s lawyers. I think the House managers have done a good job of making their arguments. But that doesn’t mean I will agree with them.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) raised the prospect that a Senate trial could drag on for months if Trump administration witnesses are called, arguing that the issue of executive privilege would have to be litigated in the courts.

“This could tie up the Senate through the election and even beyond as the courts litigate these claims,” Cornyn said during an appearance on conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt’s syndicated radio show. “We’ll wait and see, but right now, I’m not for extending this for months and months while claims of privilege and the like are litigated in the courts.”

The question of whether the Senate will seek more evidence was heightened Friday by a new Washington Post-ABC News poll revealing that a majority of American adults, 66 percent, support the Senate calling new witnesses to testify, as opposed to 27 percent who don’t.

ABC News also reported Friday that it reviewed a recording of Trump at a private dinner telling associates that he wanted then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch gone, a reminder of the evidence yet to be uncovered about Trump’s actions.

“Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it,” Trump is heard saying, according to ABC News.

Schiff challenged the Senate to call the administration’s bluff on whether witnesses would be limited from testifying by executive privilege and let Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who is presiding over the trial, make those calls.

Calling executive privilege “the last refuge of the president’s team to conceal the evidence from the American people,” Schiff argued that Roberts should “decide issues of evidence and privilege” whenever witnesses or the president claim it, but that the assumption Trump will try to silence certain witnesses by claiming executive privilege should not keep the Senate from calling them to testify.

“The Senate will always have the opportunity to overrule the justice,” Schiff said to reporters, adding that “you cannot use executive privilege to hide wrongdoing or criminality or impeachable misconduct, and that is exactly the purpose for which they seek to use it.”

After Roberts scolded both sides for overheated rhetoric late Tuesday night, Democrats took pains to tone down their accusations against Trump and his supporters in the Senate.

Yet Schiff also sharpened his case on Friday, arguing that Republicans trust Trump at their own peril.

He invoked the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) in arguing about the strategic importance of Ukraine as a U.S. ally and quoted him as saying, “We are all Ukrainians.”

And he made a lengthy case that Trump’s skepticism about the conclusions of U.S. intelligence services — particularly about Russian interference in the 2016 election — represents a “coup” for Russia.

“Has there ever been such a coup? I would submit to you that in the entire length of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had no such success. No such success,” Schiff said. “I hope it was worth it. I hope it was worth it for the president. Because it certainly wasn’t worth it for the United States.”

Trump’s defenders are focused on Biden’s push to oust former Ukraine prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin, who was overseeing a probe of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma and its owner at the same time that Biden’s son was serving as a member of the company’s board.

Biden’s actions were in line with official U.S. and European policy at the time — a consensus that Shokin was involved in corrupt schemes and needed to be removed.

Democrats detailed these facts on Thursday with the awareness that Trump’s legal team was likely to focus on them during their defense of the president.

The president’s aides and allies continued to portray the trial as a waste of time and one that is not capturing the public’s attention.

“As you’ve seen, the ratings keep going down every day in terms of viewers,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said on Fox News. “I think that next week, we need to get this over with so we can get on with the business of the country.”

Schiff concluded his remarks Friday night with a different message as he urged senators to support hearing more evidence.

“I ask you. I implore you: Give America a fair trial,” he told senators. “Give America a fair trial. She’s worth it.”

______

Michael Brice-Saddler, Scott Clement, Colby Itkowitz and John Wagner contributed to this report.

*********