Let's all post our incomes and Trump's SAT scores.
I'm not watching. Anybody ask about the pee tape yet?
Jim Jordan brought it up hypothetically just to point out that if such a tape exists it might be Obama wearing a Trump mask.
Cohen denied ever having peed on Trump, but he left open the possibility that Trump begged him to.
Under cross-examination Cohen admitted that despite all the bad things he said about Trump, if he's allowed to vote in 2020 he will definitely vote for him, because a Democrat might raise his taxes.
Cohen said that my kid took a try-pee before bed, then wet the bed, then climbed in our bed, then wet our bed, and then finally went to the bathroom, for a total of peeing four times between 8:30 pm and 3 am.
6: That's creepily specific knowledge for Cohen, and a real trial for you. Or perhaps an opportunity... it seems like the pee production is prodigious. Can it be monetized without sending your kid to Russia?
Raskin asks about the pee tape. Cohen says he's heard about it for many years, had many people contact him about it, and he has no reason to believe it exists.
https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1100817052040916992
9: Yes. Also careful analysis of the tape reveals that Cohen actually said he has "no reason to peelieve it exists." Is there a secret message????
Actually, the best moment of all this so far (at least when I was listening, this morning) was just before they broke for a break around noon. Cohen was getting pissed off at the Republicans lecturing and sneering at him, and busted out with a little speech in which he declared that these very Trump supporters were doing exactly what he himself, Cohen, had done in working for Trump for 10 years: blindly following and supporting him, lying for him, covering for him, fixing things for him ... that the Republican members of the committee, and Trump enablers writ large, were committing just the same crimes he himself had*, and would eventually pay the price**.
It was a decent moment, essentially slapping them across the face and saying, Look, I did this shit for Him, and I sucked for doing it, and you should look in the mirror yourselves, no shit, I'm not kidding.
* That's a stretch - Trumpists haven't all committed tax fraud
** Also a stretch - most of them won't pay any price.
That does sound fun. Who cares whether or not he had a crisis of conscience, he at least is having a crisis of strategic failing-to-avoid-jail.
Huh. Yeah. At some point, someone asked him if he considered himself a con-man (or cheat, I forget exact words), and he said he considered himself a fool. He said a couple of times that he was star-struck by Trump, being in the Trump orbit, that it was very powerful, etc. etc.
I'd been giving him the benefit of the doubt that he really has now figured out that being a fixer for Donald Trump is an idiotic, wrong thing to do. But you're right: it may be just that his biggest regret is having been caught.
Meanwhile -- since I tuned out around noon and have only vaguely been hearing what's been said since -- I believe there was something in Cohen's opening statement stating that his original testimony before Congress (in which he lied, and will be serving time for) was actually edited and "corrected" by Trump's own lawyers before Cohen testified the first time ...?
Isn't that, like, illegal?
BTW, The Guardian's live updates are really helpful, as always.
It's sad that the first high-profile hearing since Democrats took the House is someone who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. Not a well-placed whistleblower, nor some more honorable class of criminal, but someone who pleaded guilty to lying in a hearing just like the one he's currently sitting in.
Every bad thing he says about Trump, Republicans are going to say "LOL OK, why should we believe you?" They'd say the same thing if the speaker was the Pope or Sam Wurzelbacher, but at the same time, Trump's critics are ignoring everything he says that doesn't incriminate Trump or parsing it for hidden meanings, like in 8/10. This makes it particularly hard to expect anything good to come of this.
17: Trump's genius is to surround himself with people that are completely untrustworthy.
Technically, we bring capital rather than income.
Is there a reason the government allows private payment companies to charge for tax payments? That seems like a basic part of being part of the community? I ask because I had a tax bill come in that differed from my return - not a big number, like under $500, but they warn me that using a standard transaction interchange (Amex, MC, Visa) will incur a fee. I am not one who normally would say sure the government should fiddle with private transaction fees, but shit. Paying your taxes should be fee free.
You can, or could, do a free transfer at the IRS website.
They do not, however, let you pay my mother's estimated taxes from an account that isn't in her name.
I guess I find it annoying that the government's due is allowed to be taxed by corporations, which have a minimal marginal cost per transaction. Because the government enforces the payment terms for said companies. This affects every single person paying taxes. Every single voter out there. Why does a private company get to baseline their business with taxes?
I guess I find it annoying that the government's due is allowed to be taxed by corporations, which have a minimal marginal cost per transaction. Because the government enforces the payment terms for said companies. This affects every single person paying taxes. Every single voter out there. Why does a private company get to baseline their business with taxes?
How seriously do we need to take his claim that Trump won't go quietly if he loses in 2020? What would he do? Try to start a civil war? Nuke Tehran? Hold his breath until he turns blue?
I wouldn't take it seriously. I'm still worried he won't lose.
I think he's going to set a record for extremely self-serving pardons on his way out.
28: you should be, as a good Bayesian. There have been 27 occasions in US history when a serving president has run for re-election. On 18 of those occasions he has been successful. So that's your prior. For you to be even reasonably unworried about his re-election, you need to update with enough negatives to bring that 67% down to, say, 20%, which is quite a leap.
I'm extremely worried about it. That even though it would probably ultimately fail - he'd no longer be president - it will stoke a lot of rightwing violence and lies.
If anyone missed AOC's questioning of Cohen in yeserday's hearing it's really worth watching. No grandstanding just straight to the point and laying the groundwork for subpoenaing Trumps taxes and other financial records.
She really was terrific. I think part of it might have been literally political inexperience -- having been through one election, and a non-professional weird insurgent election at that, you get the impression that she's not yet acculturated into the sort of timewasting grandstanding for the cameras that most politicians do. She sounded like a competent lawyer doing a discovery deposition. Boy do I hope she doesn't get more ordinary over her career.
Cohen writes, "Mr. Trump's personal lawyers reviewed and edited my statement to Congress about the timing of the Moscow Tower negotiations before I gave it," referring to the August 2017 letter Cohen submitted to the House and Senate intelligence committees, which contained the false assertion that the negotiations ended in January 2016.Which is illegal on the attorneys' part, yes?
33 I think part of it is she doesn't need the cameras for publicity, she'll just go to Instagram/Twitter for that.
33: I haven't checked, but I'm guessing there are at least a few attorneys on that committee. The only one that questioned the witness "like a competent attorney" was the former bartender? A sad commentary on the profession!
35: People keep saying this, but her questioning is getting the most attention.
I guess I find it annoying that the government's due is allowed to be taxed by corporations, which have a minimal marginal cost per transaction.
Isn't this a charge they impose in some amount on any financial transaction they intermediate? I fail to see how a convenience charge is indicative of any systemic issues.
People are also free to write a check, the traditional approach.
Market dominance by credit card companies leading to excessive fees is an issue, but that's not specific to tax payment.
It was also observed that a lot of the other Democrats on the committee spent time retreading old ground and bloviating without accomplishing much. (JMM's quarter-excuse: "Part of me suspects the real serious work they expect tomorrow in the closed door Intelligence Committee hearing.")
36: The only one that questioned the witness "like a competent attorney" was the former bartender?
No. Plenty of others questioned Cohen like a competent, serious, and attentive attorney.
They should have questioned him like an asshat, because Cohen isn't competent, serious, or attentive.
40.2: You actually watched the whole thing! That's not fair.
"Watership Down" isn't going to go to a happy place after ten minutes and stay there, is it?
I did watch from the start to about noon. I admit it. Then I had it on the radio in the background the rest of the time, and kind of faded in and out of attention to it. At any rate, there were a several questioners who were very much conducting a deposition, with a clear list of graduated questions, and somewhat barked out "Yes or no, please" from time to time.
Wait is this Watership Down 1978 or Watership Down 2018.
Hope the next down has no god demanding bunnies sacrifice themselves.
The boy picked something new, The Monkey King.
51. I told you I was ill.
40 disagree, very few and mostly the freshmen congresspeople and of those AOC was a standout
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On the plus side, Trump somehow managed not to trade away the east Asian alliance system for a photo-op.
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