October 9, 2019

"Trump's burn-down-the-House plan.... Trump really only trusts his own instincts. And his instincts here are the same as they were with the Mueller investigation: Fight like hell."

Axios outlines Trump's plan for the all-out fight:
  • No nuance or apology — not a hint of it.
  • Turn the leader of the investigation (in this case, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff) into a conservative media villain.
  • Condemn Trump enemies in the most incendiary and exaggerated language possible (treason, traitors, coup, etc.).
There's a second set of bullet points, for "Why it matters," which are followed by the announcement of the "bottom line" that these are not "helpful signals for Trump":
  • Republicans close to leadership and the White House tell Axios they're concerned by trend lines in a Washington Post poll showing 49% of Americans think Trump should be removed from office.
  • Top Republicans don’t believe the numbers in the Post poll, which found support for an impeachment inquiry rising among Republicans by 21 points since July.
  • Trump’s abrupt announcement that he would withdraw from Syria and clear the way for the Turks to charge in (and perhaps massacre the Kurds) has added to this anxiety about Trump weakening the support he needs among Republican lawmakers.
So Trump will fight like hell and his fighting matters because there are some confusing polls and Trump did something in Syria that has nothing to do with the grounds for impeachment. I don't really understand that other than to see that Axios has a template and it may satisfy some readers who are looking for a visual that looks like order. The term "helpful signals for Trump" strikes me as completely silly. Won't Axios always tend to assure us that Trump's in trouble? Would they ever find any "helpful signals" for him? Why not say Trump's plan to fight like hell isn't a "helpful signal" for the members of Congress who imagine that if they express enough outrage about Trump, he'll lay down and die?

82 comments:

Michael K said...

They call it "concern trolling."

William said...

The next election is about one year away. Why not let the voters rather than the poll takers decide whether Trump is fit for office? If Trump gets re-elected, will the impeachment thingummy proceed?....If an opposing party is in control of the Senate, we have now pretty much established the precedent that not Supreme Court position can be filled by that President. Have we now established the precedent that if the House is controlled by the opposition party, impeachment proceedings can and should begin?

Hari said...

The intention to engage in an "all-out fight" is helpful signal.

gilbar said...

Hmmm
A Washington post poll, shows 99% of people trust, and adore the Washington post.
You KNOW it's True, it IN the Washington post

jim said...

Hard to fight like hell for a guy who allows an ally to be massacred.

wild chicken said...

Wait, I thought Trump cooperated with Mueller. At least wrt discovery, sending nicely bound and indexed volumes instead of an obnoxious unorganized document dump.

gerry said...

- No nuance or apology — not a hint of it.
- Turn the leader of the investigation (in this case, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff) into a conservative media villain.
- Condemn Trump enemies in the most incendiary and exaggerated language possible (treason, traitors, coup, etc.).


The Democrats/Progressives are not used to being subjected to their own tactics. This will be amusing.

elkh1 said...

"...Trump really only trusts his own instincts. And his instincts here are the same as they were with the Mueller investigation: Fight like hell."

His instincts were spot-on, don't you think?

Trump's approvals were wobbly under Mueller's clouds. When the clouds cleared, his approvals shot up.

Dems are trying to re-stage a Mueller-like scenario to drive down his approval ratings hoping that he would have no time to recover. Ergo, Trump refuses all subpoenas to speed up the "Impeachment".

Dems' October Surprise comes a year too early.

mccullough said...

I couldn’t get into Axios because of their Power-Point style. We are all wrong most of the time, but we can still be interesting and wrong.

Oso Negro said...

Fuck the 49%. There is an orderly and established process by which Trump may be removed from office that minimizes the chance of a shooting civil war. It is called a "Presidential Election". Run Warren, run Hillary, run Oprah, run Michelle Obama and all the ethnic women you can find. Let's have an election. Fuck the Republicans too.

Bay Area Guy said...

"Fight like Hell" seems a bit uncouth in the modern era of snowflakes, safe spaces, cappuccinos and gender identity issues.

But it is necessary.

Why?

Because the Left is deranged, they have increasing numbers, and they have burrowed there way into the Universities, Hollywood, the media, the State Dept, the CIA, and the FBI.

Let's not be hysterical and just look at two places: Detroit and San Francisco. Look at these two cities over the past 50 years. No Republicans in the government, very few on the voter rolls. Democrat monopolies - hundreds of thousands of Democrat votes.

Detroit -- ghettos, poverty abandonned houses now crack dens. Population in 1950 was 1.8 million -- today its less than 700K. People have voted with their feet.

SF - incredible views & vistas, rich neighborhoods, tech booms, great restaurants, shangri-la on earth, right? Well, in the 70s, it had Jim Jones, Harvey Milk shootings, and the AIDS epidemic. Now, it has a poop map across the city. . The average rent? $3700/month for 724 sq feet. No young person can afford this.

Yes, for older folks who've lived in SF for years, and own something, life is good. But if you're young and just starting a family, it's impossible.

That's what the Left has done, and that's what they'd like to do to the country -- Detroit economics, SF values.

That's why Trump must "Fight like Hell." Don't let your state become like California, don't let your city become like Detroit.

Oso Negro said...

Fuck the 49%. There is an orderly and established process by which Trump may be removed from office that minimizes the chance of a shooting civil war. It is called a "Presidential Election". Run Warren, run Hillary, run Oprah, run Michelle Obama and all the ethnic women you can find. Let's have an election. Fuck the Republicans too.

tim maguire said...

I like the two-party system. It brings me no joy that Democrats have decided not to be that other party. One would hope they'd have the decency and patriotism to get out of the way so someone else could fill the role they have vacated.

Mark O said...

The Democrats will fight like hell. What's new about Trump, over Bush and others, is that he will fight like hell as well.

Personally, I like it.

Tommy Duncan said...

Why won't Trump act like a real Republican? Just dig a trench with the shovel they give you and stand next to it waiting for a bullet in the temple...

Kevin said...

Hooray, so 49% want him impeached. Probably 46% wanted him impeached at midnight the night he was elected, so basically, the impact of this investigation remains within the margin of error.

narciso said...

and Quinnipiac has a different finding, this folger's crystals impeachment, some might say schrodingers is very annoying,

Tommy Duncan said...

Does any one else wonder what the Trump Presidency would have been like if Trump had not been harassed, framed, impugned and berated every day of his tenure?

Susan said...

Politics ain't beanbag.

Iman said...

Axios is just this side of Salon... IMO.

narciso said...

anyways terry hayes the author of the novel, I recommended to john henry, was a correspondent from the Sydney herald in the era of watergate and the gough Whitlam removal one might consider opposite sides of deep state plays, the former was challenging the mostly liberal establishment at the company, an atmosphere, fleshed out more clear in aaron lathams roman a clef 'flowers for mother' the latter the cold warriors at the asio,

Mike Sylwester said...

The walls are closing in!!!

Bilwick said...

" . . . his instincts here are the same as they were during the Mueller investigation: fight like hell."

As opposed to the instincts of the RINOs and Me-Too Republicans: wave the white flag of surrender.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Why not? The left are powerful corrupt assholes in charge of the corporate media and most of the D-party corruption machine.

Fight it. Someone has to.

Big Mike said...

I think Pelosi believes that the Democrats are going to pay next November for letting impeachment get as far as it already has, so they might as well go forward with the mess and hope that something lucky happens.

She is certainly right about the first part.

Big Mike said...

@Tommy Duncan, I think Kim Jung Il might have settled up by now if he didn't have reason to hope that Trump would be removed from office.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

"Conservative media villain"

Doncha love the leftwing vernacular?

Adam Schitt is a liar. A proven liar.

to the left it's all "Republicans pounce"

the left have ZERO ability to process corruption and lies on their own team.

rehajm said...

Dr K is right- there is some concern trolling but there's also the journolist style of telling us things that have already happened in hopes that when we recognize these things we'll be skeptical of them.

Plus: Make Schiff the villain? He hid things from us, he lied about meeting the whistleblower. He is the villain honey....

jim said...

Yea, adolf never had to deal with this!

narciso said...

does the truth ever make it anywhere,


https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/09/john-durham-fbi-cia-barr/

Ken B said...

Occam says “Perhaps he believes he did nothing wrong.” I think that would explain Trump's response.

So far I also think he did nothing wrong in re the Ukraine.

Drago said...

"Yea, adolf never had to deal with this!"

Never too early to go full Godwin when you've got nothing else....I suppose.

Gospace said...

Well, the never Trumpers among my Facebook friends are still posting idiotic memes.

And my pro-American friends on Facebook are still supporting Trump.

I see rising panic amongst the anti-Trumpers. The memes are getting more shrill.

rehajm said...

Trump's burn-down-the-house plan

Hold tight! Wait till the party's over...

Richard Dolan said...

"Won't Axios always tend to assure us that Trump's in trouble?"

Yes, and most people reading it know that (most of them are looking for that). That's how readers look at all of these sites, indeed all of reporting today.

Follow the thought a little further since that phenomenon is one of the most revolutionary changes in American political culture. In politics and public affairs generally, there is no accepted conventional wisdom any more, no common narrative that most people start from, and from which the differing parties diverge at the margins. Instead, American public culture (and the forms of journalism and commentary that feed it) are becoming more European -- you know in advance the likely slant that a newspaper, TV channel or other source of news and commentary is going to take on any particular issue, and you make your reading/viewing choices with that in mind.

The same underlying impulse is making our politics also trend in a European direction, in the sense that a majority sufficient to get anything done will have to be cobbled together from unstable factions, resulting in a kind of political paralysis at home and weakness on the international stage. It's common in Europe today, and I suspect will become common here.

The Europeans have tried to solve the problem by empowering a bureaucratic super-state (the EU) to displace the endless squabbling and indecision that party politics at the national level has delivered in the past (and still does today). For a time that could be viewed as a solution of sorts (even if anti-democratic), but today it's become more of a problem (and a driver of the populist anti-EU parties growing throughout the EU). In the US, the equivalent seems to be the effort to use the universities, Hollywood and most media to dictate the approved narrative while inculcating the imagined leaders of the next generation in good-think. But there is a natural resistance to being told what to think, what it's permissible to say and how one must act. It's only a matter of time before that effort at control-and-command, too, begins to look more like the problem than any kind of solution.

But the goods news is that, if the catastrophe prophesied by Extinction Rebellion comes to pass, we have every reason to expect that the cockroaches and other inheritors of the Earth will do a better job of it.

Seeing Red said...

Trump isn’t burning down da Houzz.

The Dems control it and have been and are doing it all on their own.

This is squarely in their lap. IF they only put as much effort into finding out about the pakastani hackers.

Krumhorn said...

Bay Area Guy and Mark O are on target. "Fight Like Hell" is one of the reasons I like Trump. He gives as good as he gets. W was a good guy and the model of what a president should be...but he was a pussy and the lefties ate his lunch every single day even when he was standing in the pit of the smoking World Trade Center wearing the hard hat. "Mission Accomplished" was a non-stop leftie field day, and W just turned the other cheek like a good Christian boy.

Trump is a good Christian boy too, but is more of an eye-for-an-eye kind of guy.

The libruls are relentless. They must be beaten like a red-headed stepchild.

- Krumhorn

Birches said...

Plus: Make Schiff the villain? He hid things from us, he lied about meeting the whistleblower. He is the villain honey....

This is the comment I was going to make.

Michael K said...

im said...
Hard to fight like hell for a guy who allows an ally to be massacred.


Yes, well your ally Nancy deserves it.

Bruce Hayden said...

“SF - incredible views & vistas, rich neighborhoods, tech booms, great restaurants, shangri-la on earth, right? Well, in the 70s, it had Jim Jones, Harvey Milk shootings, and the AIDS epidemic. Now, it has a poop map across the city. . The average rent? $3700/month for 724 sq feet. No young person can afford this.”

At least they are apparently exempt to from the PG&E blackouts that are starting to happen all around them.

Kevin said...

It's quite amazing how the journalists don't seem to think about Barr's investigations and what might be coming.

They see this as Trump and Congress duking it out in the ring while we watch.

In reality they are fighting in the middle of a road with a semi bearing down on them.

Trump just has to play defense and step out of the way as it arrives.

The truck handles everything from there.

Kevin said...

I would say the Dems are trying to burn down the house.

Sorry, House.

bonkti said...

Unless he moderates his tone, Trump is in danger of losing Romney.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Some people see only black and white, missing shades of gray, but they're no more wrong than those who see only subtleties, and can't recognize black or white when they see it.

viator said...

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Likely U.S. Voters agree with Trump’s statement to pull back the U.S. military in Syria, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey. Just 20% disagree, while 22% are not sure.
Rasmussen October,9, 2019

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

We find out by accident that the Bidens are like the Clintons - so Trump must pay.

tim in vermont said...

Here is my take on “impeachment”. I think it has gotten out of control, it’s like the old joke, that may be the most disgusting joke I have ever heard, but it applies:

Two guys in a bar in the old west. One guy bets the other a hundred dollars if he will drink the spittoon.
The other guy picks up the spittoon and starts drinking.
First guy yells “Stop! Stop! I will give you the money, just stop!”
Second guy keeps drinking until it’s empty.
“Why did you keep drinking when I said I would give you the money anyway?”
“It was all one string."

Birkel said...

jim sucks.
Where is jim at?

tim in vermont said...

If Adam Schiff were a witness, and had been caught in a lie, as he has, wouldn’t the proper term be that he has been impeached?

Schiff tried to collude with the Russians to get damaging info on Trump. When is his trial for expulsion from the House, since the Majority is so outraged by this kind of conduct. What difference does it mean that the pranksters weren’t Russian? Schiff believed that they were.

tim in vermont said...

A wise man once said “It’s not over ’til we win.”

Why should Trump apologize for stuff he didn’t do, BTW?

tim in vermont said...

"Yea, adolf never had to deal with this!”

If Trump were Adolph, he would be the ones sending thugs to opposition rallies in order to create an air of violence. That was one of Hitler’s signature moves. So I can see why the “anti fascists” have adopted it.

cubanbob said...

49% would like to see Hillary doing 20 to life. 49% would like to see the NYT and the WaPo go bust. 49% would like to see the DNC Swamp creatures in prison. 49% would like to see Hollywood and the MSM go broke. Now back in the real world where Trump still has real support DNC fantasies just aren't going to happen.

cubanbob said...

jim said...
Yea, adolf never had to deal with this!

Indeed! And Dear Old Uncle Joe Stalin, he also knew how to deal with this.

tim in vermont said...

We can lose with him, but we can’t win without him.

I'm Full of Soup said...

His instincts against the Mueller investigation were to "fight like hell"? No shit sherlock - what other choice did Trump have?

Matt Sablan said...

Didn't Trump fully cooperate with records requests and provide staff for questioning? That's hardly fighting at every turn. Schiff made his own enemies by lying about seeing hard non circumstantial evidence of collusion. I question the premise.

narciso said...

it's a Seinfeld inquiry


https://dailycaller.com/2019/10/09/tom-cotton-michael-atkinson-whistleblower-evasive/

Skeptical Voter said...

Not to hard to make Schiff a villain. It's easy when you're dealing with a prevaricating poltroon of a "parody" artist. I'd say he's a Pelosi puppet---but Nan will abandon him in time.

JAORE said...


Trump shouldn't have fought. Justice K shouldn't have fought. Who cares if the charges are crap? Just rollover and play dead and the D's will play nice. Like they did with Mitt, and Johnny Mack and George W.

Sheesh.

Bob Loblaw said...

The walls are closing in!!!

It's like some kind of political Zeno's paradox - I recall walls were in from 2000-2008 and somehow they never actually closed.

JamesB.BKK said...

The Washington Post could publish an undisclosed insider's account of some matter, and the FBI could use that as grounds for an investigation.

Christopher B said...

Everything I heard was that while Trump publicly disparaged Mueller, privately his team offered unprecedented cooperation including access to documents and testimony they could have claimed were privileged.

So claiming Trump 'fought like hell' against Mueller is a bit misleading, and calls the rest if their analysis into question.

Douglas B. Levene said...

Did Trump fight the Mueller investigation? I was under the impression that he waived privilege and instructed all his lawyers and advisors to turn over all requested documents and to testify as requested. Yes, he complained about the investigation, loudly and often, but fight it? What exactly did he do to fight it?

Martin said...

Keep in mind that Axios is in the stable of publications controlled by the VERY liberal and anti-Trump Lauren Jobs. So expect the greatest possible anti-Trump spin on anything there.

Narayanan said...

Zen-fighting by
not-fighting.

Grant their wish.
He Let go of the rope in tug-o-war

Bruce Hayden said...

“Did Trump fight the Mueller investigation? I was under the impression that he waived privilege and instructed all his lawyers and advisors to turn over all requested documents and to testify as requested. Yes, he complained about the investigation, loudly and often, but fight it? What exactly did he do to fight it?”

Lawfare Group working with Mueller’s prosecutors invented a novel Obstruction of Justice interpretation that turned it from a specific intent to a general intent crime (and you can see them trying to do the same thing with impeachment - again with the help of the Lawfare Group, whose members have been hired by Schiff and Wadler). That essentially meant that denying the Mueller investigation anything that they wanted through, for example, asserting Executive Privilege, would have been considered Obstruction of Justice. As noted, this redefinition of Obstruction was rejected by DOJ OLC (plus AG and DAG), and has never been tested in court. But it was routinely used by Mueller’s prosecutors. The result is that the Trump Administration never fought the Mueller prosecutors directly, but rather over disclosed, so that they never had any legal excuse to formally interview Trump, which was, of course, the only way to spring a perjury trap on him. Every time the Muellerites asked to interview Trump, the response was invariably another mountain of documents, etc. and without a successful perjury trap, they weren’t going to touch Trump. They went round and round for better than a year, before Barr was confirmed, and shut that nonsense down, the only way they safely could, by relieving Rosenstein, and putting a Mueller in the hot seat.

sunsong said...

Wow, you guys are truly lost souls

donald is a VERY sick man who belongs in prison

may goodness and truth prevail in America...may it be so!

tim in vermont said...

"may goodness and truth prevail in America...may it be so!”

That’s what we are after. Honest reporting of all sides. What is wrong with that?

Are you really OK with Biden’s influence peddling? And Clinton’s too?

Breezy said...

Though a disgusting set of tactics got us into a special counsel stew, Mueller nominally followed the process. The Pelosi-Schiff-Letter team is not. That’s what is sick. Schiff got Nunes recused for far less than what he has done and continues to do to avoid due process and transparency.

sunsong said...

there is no defence of donald

attacking someone else is what children do

when you lie even to yourself...you're a lost soul

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Sungosng - Explain how Trump belongs in prison and HIllary doesn't.

Nichevo said...

Are you really OK with Biden’s influence peddling? And Clinton’s too?

10/10/19, 5:01 AM


Yes, sunsong is fine with all that.

sunsong said...

third time:

you prove how lost you are by asking about Hillary???


lol do you NOT have a clue???

she lost...it's over

is it fun living in the past?

Birkel said...

sunsong offers the "Defending yourself from bogus charges is proof of criminality." argument.

Some of the people in Salem, MA might have been witches.

Drago said...

sunsong: "she lost...it's over

is it fun living in the past?"

LOLOLOL

“Maybe there does need to be a rematch. Obviously, I can beat him again.
---Hillary Clinton (to PBS) 10/8/19

Thanks for playing sunsong.

Michael K said...

I see we have a new troll. Hillary has about a 50% chance of being the Dims nominee.

sunsong said...

you heard it here first. Hillary is NOT running and will NOT run! She was joking to get a rise out of you, which you clearly are good for lol

Drago said...

sunsong: "you heard it here first. Hillary is NOT running and will NOT run! She was joking to get a rise out of you, which you clearly are good for lol"

Hillary has now claimed to have "won" a dozen times in different venues over the previous 12 months.

I don't blame you for avoiding addressing that little bit of Hillary psychosis.

And given Hillary's now fully exposed support for Harvey Weinstein AFTER the truth emerged about Weinstein, well, that's going to put a dent into #BelieveAllWomen, isn't it?

LOL

Drago said...

Hillary repeatedly tells everyone who will listen that she actually won the race.

Sunsong believes she can wave her hands and make everyone believe Hillary is NOT saying precisely what she repeatedly says.

LOL

Too funny.

Poor Hillary. It's hard to run the Clinton "Sell your office for fun and profit" Grifter game without actually holding office, and lets face it. No one is prepared to vote for Chelsea yet.

Well, except Sunsong maybe.

I wonder if anyone will ask future candidate Chelsea how much she knew about her mother's behind the scenes protection of Harvey Weinstein?

Drago said...

Wait!!! I spoke too soon!!

Nita Lowey has announced her "retirement" (no pressure there, I'm quite sure).

That opens the door for Chelsea who only has to claim her "real" residence is in Chappaqua and presto!! The Clinton women slide into another seat!!

The Clinton Grift Game begins anew....from a more modest position. But lets face it, just 1 or 2 terms as a Congress chick would set up Chelsea to pick up Gillibrand's seat when Gillibrand announces her "surprise" retirement.

Michael K said...

Why do these sunsong trolls appear just now ?

Do you speak Mandarin?

Bunkypotatohead said...

SunsInga