Well, other than the hotel guy who paid Trump $1 million to play “Ambasador to Europe” confirming that, yup, there really was a “quid pro quo” and what’s more, “everyone was in on it”, it was a pretty good day for Trump Nation.
But they still want to meet the whistleblower.
Everyone has their takeaway from Gordon Sondland’s day in the headlights — a day that, like John Dean, will be remembered for a very long time. Mine is that he’s one smug bastard. And, like Mick Mulvaney, Jim Jordan and John Ratcliffe, he’s another guy who is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is Further, a guy who better be praying to whatever god or golden idol he worships that no one ever puts him in a room or on a phone line amid a conversation about “Burisma” equaling “Joe and Hunter Biden.”
The fact Sondland claims that never in his long, illustrious career as Ambassador to Pretty Much Everything, (that’s a grand total of 17 months and counting), did he ever figure out that Trump and Rudy Giuliani meant “Biden” every time they mentioned “investigations” and “Burisma” is — how to put this? — undigestible bullshit.
Beyond that though his willingness today, finally, to roll Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence and John Bolton into the legal sausage makes my hardened partisan heart sing sweet hallelujahs. There are others, but only a few other threesomes who deserve a public outing as much as they do.
Bolton — pretty much your textbook raging ideologue, but maybe not fully a criminal — clearly knew what was going on and now has to ruminate on what history will say about him, you know a deep-thinking, “principled conservative”, if Sondland and god knows who else paints him into Donny and Rudy’s boneheaded extortion plot. He signed on with Trump, but he didn’t sign on I’m guessing, for felony stupidity.
I repeat again, the truest words ever spoken about the Age of Trump is the title of Rick Wilson’s book, “Everything Trump Touches Dies.“
The betting is that Bolton will soon see the wisdom of getting his version into the official record, even if it means cutting into sales of his forthcoming book on the fiasco. (Like Donny Jr., I’m sure the “bulk sales” machinery is already being greased and gassed.) Common sense he will now agree to testify, whether the courts “clear” his subpoena or not. But as we saw vividly again today, common sense is not exactly a foundational talent with the Trump crew.
Pompeo and Pence though, I feel certain, will ride the S.S. Trump down the full 1000 fathoms.
One little thing that keeps nagging at me as the list of “in the loopers” metastasizes. Who exactly advised Trump to emphasize to Sondland, “no quid pro quo”? I just don’t think Trump came up with that on his own. It’s the sort of legalized verbiage you get from a “looped in” attorney, like perhaps … John Eisenberg, the National Security Council Legal Advisor, and Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs appointed by … wait for it … Mike Flynn. Eisenberg being the guy who ordered the infamous July 25 call notes locked away in a super-secure server. That guy “stinks”, as Popeye Doyle and others in the movies are fond of saying.
If anyone reading this is a practicing defense attorney, you might want consider joining the caravan headed to D.C. There’s a hellish amount of good-paying work there for the taking.
Just make sure Trump pays up front.