It’s New Year’s Eve and Donald Trump is doing what he does most of the rest of the year: Lounging at his golf resort, watching Fox News, and posting asinine lies on Twitter. It’s a lazy lifestyle of ego gratification that he has adopted since becoming president and rarely wavers from it.
True to form, Trump was busy tapping out tweets on Tuesday morning to insult Democrats, praise Putin, and insist on his innocence with quotes from some Fox News flunkies. And stuffed into the mix was one of Trump’s favorite phrases that he thinks is an effective argument for his impeachment defense. And as it turns out, it’s actually the most useful suggestion that Trump has given to the nation for the whole year. Therefore News Corpse has chosen it as…
The Best/Worst Donald Trump Advice of 2019: Read the Transcript!
Everyone really should read the summary memo that Trump falsely calls a “transcript.” The memo that Trump himself released reveals with crystal clarity that Trump extorted President Zelensky of Ukraine. Trump asked Zelensky to interfere in the U.S. election by trying to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. And he conditioned critical U.S. military aid on Zelensky’s cooperation. What the memo says that Trump said, in response to Zelensky’s inquiry about the aid, was…
“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.”
That’s a textbook quid pro quo. Trump then talks about getting some information related to a debunked conspiracy theory about a computer server that belonged to the Democratic National Committee. But he quickly segues from that to explicit requests for dirt on Joe Biden:
“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with [Rudy Giuliani and] the Attorney General [William Barr] would be great … so if you can look into it.”
So yes, please take Trump’s advice and read the “transcript.” It’s one of the most precise confessions that Trump has made to his criminal behavior. And if that isn’t enough, there is also Trump’s explicit admission that he wanted Zelensky to probe the Bidens, which he made on national television. Yet somehow, Trump still had the audacity to spend much of the year denying that he asked for that obvious quid pro quo. In fact, he tweeted that there was no such request at least 43 times this year.
Trump’s Twitter timeline was awash with flagrantly dishonest declarations of his innocence that he usually couched in attacks on others. He tweeted about the whistleblower 119 times this year; he swore that there was “no collusion” 153 times; he called his critics “crazy” 209 times; and he whined impotently about impeachment a whopping 589 times. That’s nearly twice every day.
Trump is particularly obsessed with the whistleblower whose whereabouts he repeatedly asks for. He accuses the whistleblower of having gotten everything wrong in his report to the Inspector General. That claim was chosen by PolitiFact as their “Lie of the Year“ for 2019. But worst of all, in a post-Christmas tweet, Trump retweeted a shady account that allegedly named the whistleblower. Of course, that cannot be substantiated, but the harm is done to that person whether or not he/she is involved.
What’s more, the post that Trump retweeted was extraordinarily suspicious. The name on the account changed at least four times. And with each new name, the previous one was deleted. But all of the accounts had the exact same tweet content, were created at the same time, and linked to known Russian propaganda sources.
It’s a year-end enigma that just drips with criminal, if not treasonous, intrigue. But it Trump is confidant that everything will be resolved if you would only “read the transcript!” Even if none of his own willfully ignorant cult followers will:
Have Trump supporters read the Ukraine call transcript? @jordanklepper finds out: https://t.co/N9I4xStMx4 pic.twitter.com/HmOjbuBG9s
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) December 17, 2019
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.