(unenthusiastically) He did what?
Today numerous media outlets including the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wallstreet Jurnal got their hands on copies of former National Security Advisor John Bolton's new book "The Room Where it Happened." The controversial book, which the Trump Administration is currently suing to block outlines several concerning actions that President Trump has taken during the last few years.
The Wall Street Journal published an entire chapter of the book about Trump's dealings with China. You know it's bad when the Wall Street Journal says "to hell with it," and publishes an entire freaking chapter of the book. Can you imagine a journalist being so exhausted from the kind of things that this administration has done that they just straight-up publish the source material to make it easier on themselves?
Here are some of the things the book outlines:
-President Trump tried getting Chinese President Xi Jinping to buy more domestic product to help him win over farmers for the 2020 election. He even offered to drop a federal investigation into Huawei to sweeten the deal.
-Showed a willingness to halt federal investigations for dictators he liked including Turkish premier Tayyip Erdogan who has been lobbying to end a federal investigation of a Turkish lender for violating sanctions against Iran.
-Tried giving a signed copy of Rocket Man to North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un to convince him the title was not an insult.
That last point isn't as terrible as the first two but still - huh?
I don't think a comedy written by Armando Iannucci could top this stuff.
The book also offers some insight into why the 2019 impeachment probe may not have worked as well as Democrats hoped it would:
“...had Democratic impeachment advocates not been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time to inquire more systematically about Trump’s behavior across his entire foreign policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different.” - He writes.
What's coming out of this book is crucial because it further paints a picture of corruption that democrats and media analysts have painted of the Trump administration. Before this book was released the president was impeached because he had urged the president of Ukraine to find political dirt on his opponent former Vice President Joe Biden.
Whether or not this will do anything is yet to be seen. Historically we know that despite scandal after scandal President Trump's base is often bolstered by a number of people that constantly sing his praise. Even during the impeachment there came a point when polls showed that the President's favor hadn't changed much - neither going down or up.
On top of that, given everything that's going on, I'm sure something will happen that will change the news cycle and essentially bury everything this book talks about. I mean we're dealing with a pandemic, Police reform as well as an election year and at this point I'm not sure this information will really matter in the next few weeks.
Despite all of this one question still nags me: why didn't he testify if he had all of this information?
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