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Before Donald Trump began to slur his words and concoct fake verbs like “tolerize,” he declared on Wednesday that “as long as I’m president of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon…Their pursuit of nuclear weapons threatens the civilized world. We’ll never let that happen.”

Great. If that’s what he wants, perhaps he’d take a deal that among other things compelled Iran to cut its uranium-enriching centrifuges by nearly 75 percent until the late 2020s and submit to ongoing international inspections.

Oh wait! Those were the terms of the historic nuclear deal that Trump tore up two years ago because it had one fundamental problem: It was a signature achievement for Barack Obama. So of course it had to go.

Obama had embraced the credo best expressed in Godfather II by Michael Corleone: “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” If Trump was not a husk of a human ruled by petty pique, he would understand the wisdom of entrapping a foe via international engagement. But because he’s so hung up on Obama, and so personally weak, he had to flex what he thinks is “strength.” His disastrous decision to tear up the nuclear deal has ramped up the dangerous tensions that presently plague us.

“The logic of Tehran’s response is straightforward and utterly predictable: If the United States wants to make life difficult for Iran, its leaders will demonstrate that they can make life difficult for the United States too,” explained Stephen Walt, one of our smartest foreign affairs experts. “It wouldn’t take more than a shred of strategic thinking to anticipate Iran’s response and recognize that unilateral pressure was not going to work.”

But Trump, lacking a shred of strategic thought, apparently couldn’t fathom the possibility that Iran would refuse to knuckle under, that instead it would lash out. The result is the current tit-for-tat violence that could trigger a war.

That’s why Obama’s embrace of the Corleone credo made perfect sense. Alas, Trump’s impulsive instinct is to destroy every last vestige of Obama’s work – as evidenced Wednesday by his oft-repeated false accusation that Obama funded terrorism. Thanks to the “foolish” nuclear deal, he said, the Iranians “were given $150 billion…The missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for with the funds made available by the last administration.”

In truth, the actual amount was reportedly closer to $50 billion and, contrary to Trump’s insinuation, it was not American taxpayer money. It was Iran’s money that had been frozen until the signing of the nuclear deal in 2013. Nor does Trump have any proof that the sums owed to Iran were specifically spent to manufacture the missiles Iran had launched. What he said Wednesday, in his latest attempt to smear his predecessor’s achievement, was just the usual stew of lies and bellicosity.

I was reminded of a conversation I had in 2015 with Ami Ayalon, a former director of Israel’s domestic security service. Ayalon was visiting Philadelphia, at a time when candidate Trump was attacking Obama’s nuclear deal. Ayalon told me that Trump was being foolish: “To kill the deal is to kill American leadership in the Middle East. Their assumption that we should simply reject this deal, and that we could then go back and negotiate a better deal? This is nonsense. This can only be heard from a person who does not understand anything about Iran.”

Nor, of course, does Trump understand anything about democracy. His spinners went to Capitol Hill Wednesday, ostensibly to explain why he was right to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, but mostly to tell Republican senators that they should not dissent or debate the warrior-in-chief’s decisions. Which prompted a conservative Republican senator, Utah’s Mike Lee, to blow a gasket in front of the press corps:

“(It) was probably the worst briefing I’ve seen at least on a military issue in the nine years I’ve served in the United States Senate,” Lee complained. “I find it insulting and I find it demeaning to the Constitution of the United States. It’s un-American. It’s unconstitutional. And it’s wrong.”

Leave it to Trump to shred every remnant of the Corleone credo. As evidenced Wednesday, he can’t even keep his friends close.

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Copyright 2020Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Year three of the man-child administration was much like his first two, only more so. But before you compel yourself, for the sake of your sanity, to forget so much of what you saw and heard, perhaps you can be tempted to test your smarts on this year’s most memorable rhetorical sewage. Give it a try. Amaze your family and pets. And no peeking at the answers below!

1. Trump frequently opined about wind turbine power (although, in his words, “I never understood wind”). He decreed that wind turbine power is responsible for several terrible things. Which ones?

a) It causes cancer

b) It spews tremendous tremendous amount of fumes

c) It forces us to flush toilets 10 times

d) It shatters our old-fashioned light bulbs

e) It gives us bird graveyards

2. True or false: Trump said that “there has never been, ever before, an administration that’s been so open and transparent.”

3. Trump falsely stated (for the fourth time) that a certain someone was “born in a very wonderful place in Germany.” To whom was he referring?

a) Hitler, who was actually born in Austria

b) Melania, who was actually born in Slovenia

c) His own father, who was actually born in New York

d) Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban, who was actually born in Hungary

4. Trump, referring to the Mueller report, said: “They did a report and there was no obstruction.” But according to the Mueller report, how many times did Trump commit obstruction of justice during the Russia probe?

a) Zero times. For once, Trump was accurate.

b) Three documented times

c) Six documented times

d) Ten documented times

5. True or false: Trump flunky Devin Nunes, the California congressman, sued a Twitter account called Devin Nunes’ Cow, because Devin Nunes’ cow had “bullied” him for moving his dairy farm from California to Nebraska.

6. “Crazy Nancy and Shifty Schiff” is…

a) A new hipster rock band in Brooklyn

b) A new cartoon show pitched by Stephen Colbert

c) An improv remark from Trump at a recent rally

d) A new ice cream flavor from Ben and Jerry

e) A trending Twitter hashtag

7. Trump recently said: “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.” Who does he believe should be executed?

a) The NATO leaders who laughed at him behind his back

b) The patriotic civil servants who fed information to the Ukraine whistleblower

c) The patriotic diplomats who testified at the House impeachment hearings

d) The national security reporters who use anonymous sources

e) The Canadian broadcasters who cut his scene in “Home Alone 2”

8. Jeff Van Drew, the New Jersey congressman who was elected in ’18 as a Democrat, defected to the GOP and pledged his “undying support” to Trump. When voting on House bills in 2019, how often did he undyingly support Trump?

a) 83.7 percent of the time

b) 53.7 percent of the time

c) 11.7 percent of the time

9. A judge recently ordered Trump to pay $2 million in restitution. What had he done wrong this time? Which answer is true?

a) He’d stolen money that he fund-raised for military vets and spent it on himself

b) He’d shortchanged plaintiffs in the Trump University settlement

c) He’d screwed small contractors in Atlantic City, and finally had to pay up

d) He’d failed to pay Hachette Book Group after bulk-ordering 50,000 copies of Don Jr’s “Triggered”

10. True or False: Trump will become the first impeached president to win re-election, losing the popular vote by five million but eking out an Electoral College squeaker, which he will call the greatest landslide victory since the era of ancient Rome.

ANSWERS: 1. (a,b,e) 2. True 3. (c) 4. (d) 5. True, except that Nunes moved his cows to Iowa. 6. (c) 7. (b) 8. (c) 9. (a) 10. Who the heck knows? That one’s a freebie. Happy New Year!

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Oh swell. The Republican Senate’s so-called “moderates,” who combine big talk with little action and fuse noble rhetoric with hapless inertia, appear to be readying themselves for another year of deeming certain Trump desecrations as “unhelpful” or “unwise.”

One member of this club – which I call the Fellowship of the Furrowed Brow – spoke up earlier this week. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she’s “disturbed” that Mitch McConnell is colluding backstage with the legal team of defendant Donald Trump in advance of his Impeachment trial in the Senate.

Mainstream media outlets think this is big news. According to the New York Times, it’s “a potentially significant crack in Republican unity.” We’ll see. To me, it sounds like the Furrowed Brow Fellowship’s standard sponginess, the kind we’ve been getting for the past three years from Murkowski and Republican Senate colleagues like Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, Rob Portman, and Lamar Alexander.

First they mouth honeyed words, then (far more often than not) they vote with Trump and abet his abuses.

It’s nice that Murkowski is “disturbed” that McConnell has “confused” the trial process. But it would truly serve the public interest if she and her furrowed-brow brethren denounced McConnell’s goal of granting Trump a speedy exoneration. Under Senate rules, 51 senators (all 47 caucusing Democrats and a mere 4 Republicans) can set the terms of that trial.

That’s what conservative Trump critics would love to see. Bill Kristol, the longtime conservative commentator and activist, co-writing with a University of Texas academic in a right-leaning online magazine, deftly frames the issue:

“If a bipartisan group of public-spirited constitutionalists on both sides of the aisle come together, they can tell McConnell that he will only get 51 votes…if he works with them to fashion a fair process that allows for crucial documents to be compelled to be produced, and a reasonable number of witnesses to be called….The only way to get to that outcome is if some Senate Republicans refuse to lower themselves to be the mere agents of an unprincipled and partisan leader and instead rise to the demands of principle and statesmanship.”

“Some Senate Republicans…” He’s referring to the Fellowship of the Furrowed Brow – which, Murkowski aside, has said very little about McConnell’s determination to rig the game for Trump. Are they terrified that Trump will tweet at them? Are they scared of the grassroots Trumpists back home? Or is it basically because their “moderate” image is overblown, given the fact that as senators they vote their party the vast majority of the time?

I’ll go with door number three. A recent vote serves as the perfect metaphor.

Back in October McConnell nominated, for a federal judgeship, a 37-year-old right-winger who’d been rated “unqualified” by the nonpartisan American Bar Association. In the ABA’s words, Justin Walker “does not presently have the requisite trial or litigation experience (and) has never tried a case as lead or co-counsel, whether civil or criminal.”

No matter. Every member of the Furrowed Brow Fellowship – Murkowski, Romney, Sasse, Collins – voted to put Walker on the federal bench. Just as they’ve consistently abetted Trump’s far-right takeover of the bench.

Sasse, in particular, has been verbally upset with Trump for a long time, but he has voted with Trump 86 percent of the time and voted (along with Collins and then-Furrowed Browist Jeff Flake) to put accused sexual assaulter Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.

One would think that confronting McConnell on the impeachment trial rules, and demanding witness testimony, would be easy calls. Those are popular positions. According to the latest Morning Consult/Politico poll, Americans – by a margin of 54 to 27 percent – want the Senate to bring in additional witnesses. Independents are on board, 51 to 27 percent. Even a plurality of Republicans are on board, 43 to 38 percent. Numbers like that have apparently inspired Murkowski to deem herself “disturbed” by the prospect of a rigged exoneration.

Yes, only four Republicans are needed to ensure a real trial. But that would require them to act, so what we’re more likely to hear are various synonyms of “disturbed.” Keep your ear cocked for these potential Furrowed Brow adjectives:

Concerned.

Troubled.

Puzzled.

Perturbed.

Disconcerted.

Unsettled.

Worried.

Is there room on that list for infuriated or outraged? Not on their watch.

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Most Americans, exhausted by Trump’s demagogic lying and relentless pillaging of the values we hold dear, are understandably skeptical that impeachment will cleanse the stench and quash the nightmare. Indeed, that day of reckoning won’t come any time soon. His fact-averse authoritarian enablers in the Republican Senate will likely rig his escape from accountability, and he’ll spend 2020 playing the victim and stoking his cult.

But there can be a happy ending, if people have the will to make it so.

The turnout backlash against Trump that powered the 2018 blue wave – the midterm election that gave us the Democratic House, without which there would be no Articles of Impeachment – may prove to be the harbinger of a far more massive backlash that could oust Trump next November.

Yes, Trump still reigns supreme within his credulous cocoon. Despite the mountain of factual evidence unearthed in the Ukraine scandal – detailed in documents, confirmed by nonpartisan witnesses, rebutted by nobody – his support within that minority cadre (roughly 42 percent of the electorate) has not eroded a whit. At a rally Tuesday night, he assailed “the lightest impeachment in the history of our country,” and the cultists twitched with Pavlovian glee. If Trump ever murders someone on Fifth Avenue, they’d proclaim him innocent just to own the libs.

But there’s another way to read those polls. Roughly half of all Americans – the Fox News survey currently puts the share at 49 percent – now support Trump’s impeachment and removal. Support for Richard Nixon’s ouster didn’t go that high until the eve of his resignation, more than two years after the start of the Watergate scandal.

When Bill Clinton was targeted for impeachment by the GOP (for the dire offense of lying about extramarital sex), public support for his impeachment and removal never exceeded 29 percent. Indeed, when the House GOP (led by Newt Gingrich and Robert Livingston, both of whom were having extramarital affairs) formally impeached Clinton in late 1998, his public approval rating was 73 percent. Care to bet whether Trump will even hit 45 percent?

My point is that Trump’s impeachment can further fuel the ire of the majority of Americans who want him gone. That’s especially so after the Senate Republicans presumably let him off the hook. In fact, a backlash against those enablers could imperil a number of Senate Republicans up for re-election, most notably in Colorado (a blue state in the last three presidential elections), Maine (reliably blue), Iowa (a blue state in 2000, 2008 and 2012), and Arizona (a red state on the cusp of going blue).

Yes, Trump’s base is hard-wired for tribal worship, and yes, many other Americans lack the energy to pierce Trump’s disinformation fog and process the actual facts. But, as the 2018 midterms demonstrated, there’s tremendous potential for an historic blue turnout with an impeached president on the ballot – because there are far more non-cultists than cultists in the electorate.

If we can assume that Democrats will unite behind a nominee (despite all their current predictable bickering and identity politicking), there’s reason to believe that Trump’s impeachment will be a powerful turnout motivator. Granted, the shelf life for issues is short in our ADD culture. But no president has ever run for re-election with impeachment arrows stuck to his backside. And the fundamental facts lay bare Trump’s betrayal of America.

Consider this irrefutable assessment from conservative commentator Daniel Larison:

“The president abused his power, violated the public’s trust, and broke his oath of office…The central question at the heart of this matter has always been whether we will tolerate the president corruptly using the powers of his office for personal benefit. The president’s defenders have answered loudly that they will tolerate corruption of the presidency. If we have any respect left for the Constitution and the rule of law, it is imperative that the president is not allowed to escape without facing serious consequences for his abuses. This is important not only to hold the current president in check, but it is also necessary to warn future presidents that such corruption will not be permitted to flourish.”

If a scribe on the right can make this argument for truth, justice, and the American way, there’s no reason why Democrats can’t do the same on a daily basis – targeting not just low-motivated progressives, but moderates and persuadable conservatives as well – and put impeachment on the ballot. Indeed, 2020 will be a referendum on whether facts and truth still power this imperiled democracy.

If we can’t stoke an historic backlash against authoritarian disinformation, it is truly game over.

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

I know it’s very uncool – at least in the precincts of snarky lefty Twitter – to defend Joe Biden, but I’ll give it a try.

The Democratic front-runner is currently touring Iowa on a bus that’s newly emblazoned with his favorite Irish-American slang – “No Malarkey!” – which, for those unfamiliar with the word, roughly means “No BS,” a not-so-implicit swipe at Donald Trump’s serial lying. Biden has virtually branded the word as his own. During his first presidential bid in 1988, he assailed Republican rhetoric: “Don’t buy all this malarkey!” As the veep in 2012, he mocked Paul Ryan for spouting “a bunch of malarkey.” In 2016, he said that Trump’s promises were “a bunch of malarkey.”

Young snarky lefties on social media think it’s hysterically funny that Biden loves the adjective enough to put it on his bus. Over the weekend, they tweeted a flood of malarkey mockery: “Omg, your bus says malarkey?!? What is this the ’50s?” and “Man I can’t even troll this. Could someone from Biden 2020 please start explaining these things to him.”

On cable TV, Trevor Noah said that nobody knows what malarkey means “unless you’re over the age of 80.” New York magazine weighed in as well, because it’s important to be edgy. Its headline: 77-Year-Old Candidate Hopes ‘No Malarkey’ Will Excite Voters.

Granted, this isn’t the biggest issue in the world – especially now, with a lawless “president” finally on the cusp of impeachment – but it illustrates the chasm that separates the young mockers from current political reality.

For starters, Twitter (which skews young and liberal Democratic) does not mirror the Democratic primary electorate. The Pew Research Center says that only 22 percent of American adults use Twitter, and the most prolific 10 percent account for roughly 80 percent of all tweets. The disproportionate share of tweeters are typically outspoken young people; the disproportionate share of people who actually vote in Democratic primaries and general elections are older adults and seniors.

Or put it this way: Young people aged 18 to 29, who make the most noise on Twitter and mock Biden every day, consistently have the lowest turnout rates. Older adults and seniors consistently have the highest turnout rates. One of the earliest Democratic primary states is Nevada, where the youth turnout rate in 2016 was 5 percent. In South Carolina, another early Democratic state, it was 18 percent – which was actually lower than in 2012.

Biden doesn’t care right now about younger voters, because if they show up at all in the early primaries, they’ll likely choose Bernie or Warren. But older people vote in the greatest numbers, they don’t pay attention to Twitter or the late-night wiseacres, and they like Biden. They’re his base, and they’ve kept him at the top of the Democratic race. The “No Malarkey” slogan is designed specifically for them. Young people think the slogan is synonymous with old guy, but, as one Biden precinct captain in Iowa told Politico, “Older people know what it means, and older people vote.”

And regardless of whether you support or oppose Biden, you have to admit that the “No Malarkey” slogan attests to his authenticity. If he seems uncool, using a word that traces back to the Jazz Age and beyond, then so be it. He is who he is, take it or leave it. Voters tend to appreciate it when a politician eschews pretense and behaves like a human.

Of course, if Biden does win the nomination – propelled by older voters, and racking up delegates in the most populous states thanks especially to older black voters – he’ll need to gin up support among the young for the home stretch. But that’s a fight for another day, and if young people were to ultimately decide that their landslide hostility toward Trump is somehow outweighed by Biden’s profile as an old guy, the consequences for this nation could be tragic.

They would deserve the blame, not Biden. And that’s no malarkey.

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

As we survey the havoc that President Trump and his sycophants have wreaked on the institutions of government, we can at least be thankful, during this holiday week, that the federal judiciary has steadfastly upheld our most enduring values.

Last Friday, for instance, a federal judge ruled that Trump broke the law when he concocted a fake “national emergency” to build his border wall, spending money far beyond the amount authorized by Congress. He has been similarly rebuked by the courts for (among other things) trying to rig the 2020 Census, for trying to thwart the Dreamer immigration program, for separating families, for trying to monetize the presidency, and for hiding his tax returns.

He hasn’t been conclusively defeated on most of those fronts, but let’s be thankful for the judges who’ve hewed to the Founders’ faith in checks and balances.

And Monday, a federal judge authored what is, thus far, the most stinging rebuke of Trump’s imperial pretensions. Get ready for some awesome ruling excerpts. I read all 120 pages so you wouldn’t have to.

But first, some context: Trump has long insisted that he has an absolute right to stop aides from testifying on Capitol Hill – starting with Don McGahn, the former White House counsel who bailed on Trump in 2018. (According to the Mueller report, Trump ordered McGahn to fire Mueller. McGahn refused. Trump also told McGahn that he wanted the Justice Department to investigate Hillary Clinton and James Comey. McGahn told Trump that was a bad idea.) Earlier this year, the House Judiciary Committee hit McGahn with a subpoena. Trump’s lawyers went to court to block it.

The ruling Monday, by Federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, orders McGahn to testify. She based her reasoning on decades of precedent, including a federal directive that compelled George W. Bush’s aides to testify. Judge Jackson wrote, “The blatant defiance of Congress…is an affront to the mechanism for curbing abuses of power that the Founders carefully crafted for our protection…”

Courtesy of Judge Jackson, here’s a Thanksgiving smile:

“Stated simply, the primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings. This means they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control. Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employes of the White House work for the People of the United States and that they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States…per the Constitution, no one is above the law.”

Granted, this ruling settles nothing. Trump’s lawyers, still determined to bar McGahn from testifying (in the Mueller report, McGahn was quoted as complaining that Trump wanted him to “do crazy s—-”) have already announced that they will appeal Jackson’s decision to a higher court. Jackson says that her ruling also applies to “other current and former senior-level White House officials,” but it’s unclear whether one particular ex-senior aide – John Bolton – will be duly prompted to testify. As always, we’re compelled to stay tuned for further developments.

Nevertheless, we can be thankful for her eloquent defense of the rule of law. We can also be thankful for another Monday ruling, by another federal judge, who said that emails between the White House and Pentagon, concerning the freezing of military aid to Ukraine, should be released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Even as Trump continues to stack the courts, the Founders’ values may yet endure. Happy holiday week!

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Do you remember the climax of Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express?” It turned out all the murder suspects were guilty.

And as Trump’s handpicked ambassador, Gordon Sondland, publicly declared during Wednesday’s House impeachment hearing, all the suspects in the illegal scheme to squeeze Ukraine for fake Biden dirt are guilty. Starting at the very top, with Trump.

And Sondland is certainly a credible guy, right? After all, Trump praised him last month as “a really good man and great American.”

Here’s what the good man and great American told Congress: “Everyone was in the loop.” The whole mission was to “make the boss happy.” And if it made the boss happy to hold back taxpayer-financed military aid from an ally fighting Russian aggression, until the ally agreed to launch bogus investigations of the Bidens, then fine. In Sondland’s explosive words, “Was there a quid quo pro? The answer is yes…We followed the president’s orders.”

Translation: I paid a million bucks to get myself an ambassadorship, and never imagined I’d get sucked into something like this. There’s no way I’m gonna take the fall. If that happens, I’m gonna take everyone down with me – starting with Trump.

Sondland’s sworn testimony – at least for those of us who aren’t “bored” by these proceedings – is more delicious than a chocolate sundae. Historians will look back on this day as conclusive proof that Trump blatantly abused his office, pursuing his own personal interests and solicited collusion with a foreign government – all at the expense of our national security. And as Sondland testified, “everyone was in the loop” on the impeachable act.

Sondland fingered Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ex-national security advisor John Bolton, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and, of course, he fingered Rudy Giuliani. In short, “everyone knew what we were doing and why.”

Am I overreacting? I’ll yield the floor to Ken Starr, the conservative Clinton-hunting special prosecutor. On Fox News Wednesday, he said: “Articles of impeachment are being drawn up if they haven’t already been drawn up…This, obviously, has been one of those bombshell days.”

Sondland also blew up two desperate Republican defenses. The mantra of “no quid pro quo” is dead. And the notion that Rudy and a handful of confederates “went rogue,” and that Trump had no role in the scheme for fake Biden dirt, is buried.

Now for the fun part: Sondland was quizzed about his cellphone conversation with Trump on July 26. Sondland was at a Kiev eatery when a foreign service official, David Holmes, has already stated in a sworn deposition that he was with Sondland at the time, that he overheard Trump’s end of the conversation (because Trump was speaking so loudly), and that Trump specifically asked Sondland for an assurance that Ukraine would indeed launch a Biden dirt investigation.

Sondland, today: “I have no reason to doubt that the conversation included the subject of investigations.” And “I have no reason to doubt” Holmes’ recollection of the cellphone call.

Holmes, in his deposition, said that Sondland assured Trump that Ukraine’s president was ready to play ball – and that, in fact, “he loves your ass.”

Sondland was asked whether he really said that. His response: “It sounds like something I would say.” He and Trump talked frequently, and liked to engage “in Trumpspeak,” which featured “a lot of four-letter words” – or, in the case of ass, “a three-letter word.”

(So they spoke a lot? But didn’t Trump say earlier this month that “I hardly know the gentleman”?)

Looking back, Sondland now laments: “I really regret that the Ukrainians were placed in that predicament.” It’s nice that he feels compelled to voice remorse. And it’s amazing how his memory keeps getting better as the noose keeps tightening. Luckily for us, he has zero interest in taking the fall for a crime boss.

Indeed, Trump knows how that game works. Last year he told Fox News: “I know all about flipping. For 30, 40 years, I’ve been watching flippers.”

In Trumpspeak, Wednesday’s flipper is beautiful.

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

The public impeachment hearings were barely underway when Jim Jordan, the GOP’s attack Chihuahua, began to yap about the whistleblower. Where’s the whistleblower? Why can’t we question the whistleblower? Bring in the whistleblower! Who’s the whistleblower?

That’s what passes these days for a Republican defense, as decreed by Donald Trump, who recently railed: “The whistleblower is a disgrace to our country. A disgrace. And the whistleblower, because of that, should be revealed.”

Why are Trump and his authoritarian enablers so obsessed with outing the whistleblower, who is protected by a web of federal laws that safeguard the identities of patriotic dissenters?

Indeed, why are they still obsessed with the whistleblower at all – given the fact that most of his (or her) August complaint has been solidly collaborated by documents and an ever-lengthening roster of sworn witnesses?

Easy answer: Mobsters always obsess about “finks” and “rats.” When mobsters are caught red-handed, they try to target whoever dimed them out.

Easy answer II: Trump always needs to have an enemy, and as he helplessly hurtles toward impeachment, he badly needs one now. Putting a face on the whistleblower would be chum for his sharks. (After all, he doesn’t have much else to offer in terms of a defense.)

Trump’s sharks in the House used to care (or claim to care) about protecting whistleblowers’ identities. Back in 2016, Mark Meadows said: “What I’m not going to tolerate is retaliation on whistleblowers. I protect my whistleblowers.” In 2017, Devin Nunes said: “Sources and methods are kept very confidential. We invite whistleblowers to come forward.” But purging one’s principles is de rigueur for anyone who wears the Trump armband.

Federal statutes don’t specifically bar a president or a member of Congress from outing the name of a whistleblower. But it’s abundantly clear that the Whistleblower Protection Act and the Inspector General Act put strong emphasis on confidentiality.

Here’s one provision, 15 USC 12139(h): “The identity of any individual who makes a (complaint) may not be disclosed without such individual’s consent.” Here’s another, intended specifically for the intelligence community’s watchdog: “The Inspector General shall not, after receipt of a complaint or information from an employe, disclose the identity of the employee without the consent of the employee…” And the complaint form filled out by the Trump whistleblower features this line: “I understand that in handling my disclosure, the Inspector General shall not disclose my identity without my consent.”

Nothing chills patriotic dissent more effectively than the threat of exposure – and the resulting danger of retaliation. And at least five Republican senators – Charles Grassley, Mitt Romney, Jodi Ernst, John Thune, and Susan Collins – have actually vetted that obvious fact. Collins said earlier this month: “Whistleblowers are entitled to protection under the law…To try to reveal the identity of this individual is contrary to the intent of the whistleblower law.”

Alas, Trump’s House henchmen care nothing about the rule of law and American values. Trashing the spirit of the whistleblower law – in effect, obsessing about the person who calls 911 instead of focusing on the reason for calling 911 – is just another Trumpist weapon of mass distraction.

But the good news Wednesday was that the weapon ignited in Jim Jordan’s hands. Late in the public hearing, he yapped anew: “We will never get the chance, we will never get the chance, to see the whistleblower raise his right hand, swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, we’ll never get that chance, more importantly the American people will never get that chance.”

But Jordan’s call was met with this delicious riposte, from Democrat Peter Welch: “Thank you. I’d say to my colleague, I’d be glad to have the person who started it all to come in and testify. President Trump is welcome to take a seat right there.”

Laughter, at Jordan’s expense, rolled through the room. In grim times like these, mirth is a great tonic.

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

The lesson of the 2019 state elections confirmed the lesson of the 2018 congressional midterms: Donald Trump can stage all the demagogic rallies he wants, but he’s powerless to reverse the GOP’s hemorrhaging in the populous suburbs.

Let’s borrow one of his favorite metaphors. On Tuesday night, his captive Republicans died like dogs. Or, as party strategist Alex Conant told the Associated Press, “Republican support in the suburbs has basically collapsed under Trump.”

Today’s suburbs, once typically lily white, are racially and ethnically diverse, and bursting with people (especially women) who have college educations. This means they’re bright enough to read the news, see Trump for what he is, and be rightly repulsed by a craven Republican party that abets and excuses his serial abuses of power.

And now we’re seeing the payoff. One year ago, Democrats recaptured the House in an historic blue wave that subsumed Republican suburban seats even in red redoubts like South Carolina, Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Utah. And in this week’s 2019 elections, Virginia Democrats snatched both legislative chambers for the first time in a generation, wiping out every last Republican (including a state House GOP leader) in the Washington D.C. suburbs. A Muslim woman even won in the Richmond suburbs, ousting a Republican state senator who’d long sought to weaken Obamacare.

Most of Virginia’s Republican candidates tried to distance themselves from Trump, but the voters punished them anyway. Down in ruby-red Kentucky, incumbent Republican Gov. Matt Bevins tried the opposite tack, embracing Trump and stumping with an anti-impeachment banner, but voters in the Louisville and Lexington suburbs punished him anyway. Most notably, in the vote-rich suburbs across the river from Cincinnati – the same suburbs he’d won easily back in 2015 – he was wiped out.

Kentucky will surely vote for Trump in 2020, but it’s far less certain that pivotal Pennsylvania will do so for the second time. Republicans have long been losing clout in the Philadelphia suburbs, but Trump’s toxicity has greatly accelerated that trend, especially at the grassroots level. In the 2019 elections, Democrats took control of suburban Delaware County for the first time since the Civil War, captured a governing majority in suburban Chester County, and did the same in suburban Bucks County for the first time in 36 years. Those results may well foreshadow a titanic blue turnout when Trump is (presumably) back on the ballot, where his rural and small-town fans may not be numerous enough to hold back the wave.

And that’s the Trump team’s core quandary. It aims to maximize rural and small-town turnout (especially among non-college white men) in the handful of states that will sway the Electoral College, in order to offset massive losses in suburbia and, of course, in the cities. But that math may not work, because suburbia is where the most votes are. Tom Davis, a former national Republican leader, warns: “What’s happening is that the fast-growing areas (are) where the Democrats are doing better. There aren’t enough white rural voters to make up the difference.”

Dennis Bonnen, the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, recently put it more bluntly. In an audio recording obtained by The Washington Post, Bonnen was heard whining to an ally: “I just think we’ve got to get through 2020…With all due respect to Trump, who I love by the way, he’s killing us in the urban-suburban districts.”

True that. Spiking Democratic turnout in the Texas suburbs – and the defeat of two GOP House incumbents in the 2018 midterms – have prompted at least five House Republicans to announce their “retirements.”

Reality-based Republicans are well aware that they need to reconnect with educated white-collar suburban voters, especially women. But, alas, they’re tethered to a font of intolerance who becomes more toxic with each Orwellian lie. And they’re tragically too timid to revolt.

Twice now, in successive years, the suburbs have sent Trump a message, but he’s too pig-headed to hear it. And I’m reminded of a scene in Citizen Kane, when a political boss warns the megalomaniacal mogul: “If it was anybody else, I’d say what’s going to happen to you would be a lesson to you. Only you’re going to need more than one lesson. And you’re going to get more than one lesson.”

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]

Speaking in 1910, former two-term president Theodore Roosevelt offered some practical advice that Elizabeth Warren and today’s progressive Democrats would be wise to heed. Although they probably won’t.

Teddy said: “The citizen must have high ideals, and yet he must be able to achieve them in practical fashion. No permanent good comes from aspirations so lofty that they have grown fantastic and have become impossible to realize. The impractical visionary is far less often the guide and precursor than he is the embittered foe of the real reformer who, with stumblings and shortcomings, yet does in some shape, in practical fashion, give effect to the hopes and desires of those who strive for better things.”

Warren, the impractical visionary, has now told us how she purports to pay for her high-ideals plan to erase private health coverage and move everyone to government care. She says that middle class Americans won’t be hit with higher taxes, whereas Bernie Sanders, on her left flank, says they most certainly will – and he welcomes that.

Bottom line: “Medicare for All” is the biggest gift that impractical liberals could possibly give to Donald Trump and his band of demagogues. There’s no better way for Democrats to blow one of the most critical presidential elections in history.

Government health care – we’ll go with the acronym MFA – is a lofty and even laudable aspiration, but in reality it’s a suicidal political loser. Warren says that anyone who knocks her plan is merely reciting “Republican talking points,” but, rest assured, if she were to win the nomination and campaign on this issue, she’d give Trump more than he needs to talk about.

You know how the GOP has long caricatured the Democrats as “tax and spend liberals”? Warren’s health care crusade, which endeavors to reshape roughly 20 percent of the economy, checks that GOP box like no other. You know how Trump is trying to caricature all Democrats as “socialists?” Warren’s crusade plays right into his small hands, because it is socialistic.

If you don’t think Republicans will make mincemeat of MFA in 2020, you’ll need to get up to speed on the politics of the past 30 years. Fairly or not, a huge percentage of the voters hate liberals, and a program designed to take away private health coverage is virtually guaranteed to swell the ranks of the haters. Which is why Nancy Pelosi – who, like Teddy Roosevelt, knows a few things about what’s achievable in politics – told reporters last Friday that while MFA may be catnip for liberals, it won’t pull in the moderate voters who swing the Electoral College one year from now.

As Pelosi well knows – because she designed the strategy – Democrats took the House last November in an historic blue wave not by campaigning for pie-in the-sky MFA, but by assailing the Trump GOP’s ongoing efforts to cripple or kill Obamacare. The Democratic message, in the swing suburbs that built the blue wave, was that Obamacare needs to be protected and incrementally improved. That practical message bores Warren and Sanders and their liberal dreamers, but that message would win in 2020.

The irony – and potential tragedy – is that Warren is going full tilt with a plan that will never pass Congress. If she were somehow elected president with a new Republican Senate, MFA is dead. If she entered office with a recaptured Democrats Senate, MFA is dead – because moderate Democrats would balk, and it wouldn’t get the requisite 60 votes to hurdle a Republican filibuster. It’s a shame she can’t commit candor and admit this, but the game right now is to woo idealistic liberals in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Warren and her allies contend that MFA will massively gin up turnout on the left, and blunt the need for centrist swing voters. Again, here’s reality: Running up the turnout in guaranteed blue states on the two coasts won’t clinch the Electoral College. The race will still be decided in a handful of states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida – and it just so happens that Warren is barely competitive with Trump in those states, despite his impending impeachment.

Leave it to the Democrats to dream so big that they risk losing to a committer of impeachable acts. This nation can’t afford such risks right now. As Teddy Roosevelt warned, the impractical visionary is “forever the enemy of the possible good.”

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Copyright 2019 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net. Email him at [email protected]