The New York Times has had bigger ledes but that beats probably 90% of them.
From the article by Michael D. Shear and Nicholas Fandos:
WASHINGTON — The top American diplomat in Ukraine on Tuesday gave impeachment investigators a vivid and impassioned account of how multiple senior administration officials told him that President Trump blocked security aid to Ukraine and refused to meet the country’s leader until he agreed to publicly pledge to investigate Mr. Trump’s political rivals.
In testimony to impeachment investigators delivered in defiance of State Department orders, the diplomat, William B. Taylor Jr., sketched out in remarkable detail a quid pro quo pressure campaign on Ukraine that Mr. Trump and his allies have long denied. He said the president sought to condition the entire United States relationship with Ukraine — including a $391 million aid package whose delay put Ukrainian lives in danger — on a promise that the country would publicly investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his family, along with other Democrats, in an effort to incriminate his adversaries.
His account implicated Mr. Trump personally in the effort, citing multiple sources inside the government. Those include a budget official who said during a secure National Security Council conference call in July that she had been instructed not to approve the security assistance for Ukraine, and that, Mr. Taylor said, “the directive had come from the president.”
I will say this: Putin and Trump’s use of power to intimidate and bully, “Fear” is what power is about Trump told Bob Woodward, has not been successful on The New York Times and Washington Post. “Enemies of the people,” Trump has called them. Well, the enemies are still enemy-ing. Trump has not tried to shut them down and there have been no murders of Times or Post reporters or editors, no building bombings. It may be that although enraging Trump he and Putin just don’t see them having the power to threaten Trump. The Criminal Trump Supporters do not get their news from the Times or Post, they don’t read much of anything because they can’t read very well, so they get their news on the boob tube from Red Fox 🦊.
To digress for a second on that last point. The Times, the Post, and but especially the Democratic candidates for president, need to drag Trump’s Criminal Supporters front and center in this civil war thing. We need to go after them. I know that it is convenient to write about the Leader but Putin and Trump did not stuff ballot boxes. Theirs was a campaign of dog whistles and dezinfortmatsiya that was perfect for Trump’s Criminal Supporters. The Catastrophe was the result of Russian-influence. Trump is the tool of Putin and the tool of his Criminal Supporters. Nobody knows that better than Trump. He knows that his power in this country comes from the people, his “base.” He knows that if he loses even a small number of them he is cooked. Democratic candidates need to say that they don’t want the votes of criminals! They need to disown them! They need to hold counter-rallies at Trump rallies and call Trump’s supporters anti-American scum!
We should name names, publish their names and pictures, their home addresses and employers. Name, shame, publicize, delegitimize, ostracize. They don’t like that! They don’t like being identified. My brother-the-klansman, Dan Ranck, Cary North Carolina, told one neighbor he was going to vote for Trump and she said disgustedly, “I figured as much.” His feelings were hurt. They like to stay undercover. They are embarrassed to be Trump supporters. They are afraid they will lose their jobs or be ostracized by erstwhile friends and neighbors. They talk sotto voce around normal people. They dog whistle each other. I was in court a few weeks ago, standing in line waiting for my case to be called. A lawyer who I know to see and whose first name I know who was behind me and went up to a lawyer (know him to see him, don’t know his name, would probably put name and face together if I heard his name)) who was directly in front of me and started whispering animatedly. It was rude. He then got back in line. A minute later he came back again to the lawyer in front of me. “...And it’s Trump’s fault!...” he animatedly whispered sarcastically to the friend, who smiled thinly. “Sorry Ben,” he resumed in his normal voice to apologize for his rudeness, he didn’t know that I had heard what he had said the second time, we had always been friendly acquaintances, and he again returned to his place. He would not want his name known because he would lose business. In an earlier draft I identified this lawyer by first name, which is all I could remember and described him. On second thought, I have removed those identifying details because, although beyond a reasonable doubt “...And it’s Trump’s fault!...” was what he said and my description of how he said it left no subjective reasonable doubt in my mind that he is Trump Trailer Trash Scum, to be fair, my evidence is not objectively beyond a reasonable doubt proof that he is a Trump Low Life. We need to out these people on sufficient evidence is the point.
Anyway, this post was mainly on the greatness of the NYT and WaPo. As I have said before, “Thank God for The New York Times and Washington Post.
