Tag Archives: Marie Yovanovitch

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Immigrant patriots get slimed by House GOP members

What do Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, Fiona Hill and Marie Yovanovitch have in common?

Two things: They all are naturalized U.S. citizens and they all have been smeared and slimed by congressional Republicans who have questioned their loyalty to the country they chose to call their home. Moreover, they all have chosen to serve their country with distinction, valor and heroism.

They all testified over the past two weeks before the House Intelligence Committee, which conducted its inquiry hearings into whether to impeach Donald J. Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors.

First up was Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who Trump recalled earlier this year, citing his prerogative as president to do what he did. He smeared the decorated envoy prior to removing her and then afterward, even while she was testifying to the House panel about what she saw and heard regarding Trump’s asking the Ukrainian government for a personal political favor.

Then we heard from Lt. Col. Vindman, a Ukrainian immigrant who came to this country with his family when he was a toddler. The National Security Council adviser joined the Army and has served for two decades as an infantry officer, receiving the Purple Heart after he wounded in battle in Iraq. GOP lawmakers and their friends in the conservative media have questioned Vindman’s loyalty to the country, suggesting he was secretly more loyal to his native Ukraine than to the nation he has served heroically.

Finally, we had Fiona Hill, the British immigrant and former NSC adviser who testified this week about her concern over whether the nation was sacrificing national security for the sake of a “political errand” being run by European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland on behalf of the presidents of the United States and Ukraine. She, too, has been dismissed in some circles because she is, um, an immigrant.

These people all represent the best of this great nation. They are proud patriots who love this country deeply and have stepped forward to serve with the highest honor imaginable. They represent millions of Americans who are themselves immigrants or the direct descendants of immigrants who chose to venture many thousands of miles to build new lives.

That their loyalty would be questioned at any level by anyone is shameful on its face.

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Will he resign or stay … and get pummeled?

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly wants to serve in the U.S. Senate. How does he do that if he is serving in the Donald Trump administration? Obviously, he cannot.

He also is being dragged feet first into the impeachment inquiry sausage grinder that has cranked up in the House of Representatives.

Pompeo hails from Kansas. He once served in the House from that state. Sen. Pat Roberts is retiring at the end of 2020. Pompeo wants to succeed him.

Does he stay on at State or does he enter the campaign from Kansas? He ought to run for the Senate. I don’t believe he needs to be elected from that state, given that I believe he has disserved his fellow diplomats at State. How? By not standing behind one of his more stellar ambassadors, Marie Yovanovitch, who has been smeared by Donald Trump, who fired her from her post as ambassador to Ukraine.

The impeachment inquiry is getting messy for Pompeo. He now has been revealed to have been in on that phone call Trump made to Ukraine’s president in which he asked for a favor in return for weapons sent to Ukraine to use against rebels backed by Russia.

Yahoo.com reported that Pompeo wants out, that he wants to run for the Senate. The State Department denies it … naturally!

Since the denial comes from the Trump administration, I cannot accept it at face value.

I tend to believe the reports that Donald Trump is going to look for the third secretary of state who is willing to endure the misery the president seems all too willing to inflict on those he selects to serve.

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This impeachment debate is getting personal … and graphic

I just performed a rare — for me, at least — social media act.

I severed a social media relationship based on something this individual posted. I don’t like admitting it, but I am doing so now.

Here’s my side of the story.

The impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s conduct as president has drawn some amazing commentary on both sides of the great divide among Americans. It has stormed onto social media in ways I did not expect.

This evening on Facebook, I got a message from someone I know — although not well — that made me wretch. It contained an encrypted picture that had a note that it contained a graphic image; I had to click on a link to view it, so I did.

It turned my stomach. It showed a terrible image of what was described as a U.S. envoy being tortured; juxtaposed with that image was a picture of former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch with a caption that said she had her “feelings hurt” by Donald Trump.

I put the encryption back on the picture and then “unfriended” the person who posted it from my Facebook network.

Yes, this is the kind of anger that the Donald Trump Era of Politics has brought us. I do not like it. Not in the least.

Although I have to say that the debate over Donald Trump’s fitness to serve as president and the inquiry into whether he should be impeached is revealing a lot about people I thought I knew. I am finding that some of my many acquaintances harbor some pretty nasty tendencies, such as the picture that one of those individuals posted on a social media platform.

I have lived through two serious presidential crises. The first one involved President Nixon and the Watergate scandal; the second one concerned President Clinton and the White House intern scandal. Nixon was on the way to getting impeached, but he resigned the presidency; the House impeached Clinton but he was acquitted by the Senate at trial.

In neither of those crises do I remember the intensity being exhibited by partisans on both sides of that divide. However, the image I looked at today — yes, I saw the warning, but looked anyway — goes so far beyond the pale that I parted company with someone who I thought was better than that.

I am afraid this tumult is going to damage a lot more relationships.

national news

No one is above the law, including the POTUS

It has been said time and time again, that “no one is above the law, and that includes the president of the United States.”

It’s an article of truth to be sure. Our laws apply to all Americans.

Which brings me to this point: How does the president of the United States, Donald Trump, get away with smearing, defaming and slandering individuals?

The latest example? Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

The former envoy was removed from her embassy post earlier this year by Donald Trump, who has the authority to change ambassadors. That is his call. We all get that.

However, he smeared Yovanovitch while recalling her from her post in Ukraine. The envoy is noted for her diligence and diplomatic skill. She has been honored and decorated over her 33-year career in the foreign service. Then the president calls her “bad news” and blamed her — and this is rich — for what went wrong in Somalia, where she was posted prior to her Ukraine assignment. He made the Somalia reference while Yovanovitch was testifying — in real time — during the congressional impeachment inquiry that is under way on Capitol Hill.

The president offered no evidence of any “bad news” element. Nor has he explained in anything approaching detail why he thinks badly of Yovanovitch.

Is he above the law? Or must he adhere to the same laws as the rest of us? I’ve long believed that presidents of the United States are not deities, nor are they dictators. They are our elected heads of state and government, but they are citizens … just like the rest of us.

I just am baffled by how this individual — the president — gets away with saying the things that fly out of his mouth. He has defamed Marie Yovanovitch’s exemplary reputation.

Don’t such laws that protect citizens against such abuse exist when they regard the president?

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Secretary of state: derelict in his duty

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo brought a lot of heft to his post as the nation’s top diplomat: top of his class at West Point; active-duty Army service; member of Congress; CIA director.

It’s the West Point chapter in his life that gives me concern, though, but not because I intend to disparage his academic record at the nation’s Military Academy.

Pompeo has violated a fundamental tenet of service in the military. One of the individuals under his command as secretary of state, former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, has seen her record smeared by the president of the United States.

Did the secretary of state stand up for her? Did he have her back? Has he vouched for her honor and affirmed that she isn’t “bad news,” as Trump has described her? Has he affirmed his support for her gallant service to the country over he past three decades? No. He has allowed the president to run roughshod over her.

Yovanovitch testified this past week before the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, which is overseeing the impeachment inquiry process launched against the president. While she was in the middle of her testimony, Trump decided to fire off a Twitter message that denigrated her service and — in the minds of many observers — contained a threat to her and others who might be so inclined to cooperate with House congressional questioners.

Why in the world has the nation’s top diplomat, the secretary of state, allowed this defamation to continue against one of the individuals under his command? Secretary of State Pompeo has been a profile in cowardice.

The president says he is entitled to express himself. Actually, what Donald Trump doesn’t grasp is the gravity of any statement he makes as the nation’s chief executive, as its head of state. Mike Pompeo surely should understand what has gone over the president’s head and he surely should have stood foursquare behind a highly honored and decorated diplomat, such as Marie Yovanovitch.

He didn’t. Pompeo choked. He disgraced himself as well as the long-standing tradition he brought to his high office.

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Trump’s penchant for lying goes on and on and on …

Donald Trump declared he was “too busy” to watch the televised impeachment inquiry hearings in the House of Representatives.

“Too busy ” doing what remains a mystery to many of us, but that’s what he said.

What, then, did the president do on Friday during the second day of hearings? He fired off a Twitter message that former Ukraine envoy Marie Yovanovitch said would “intimidate” future witnesses. Indeed, the president commented in real time on what the ex-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was telling members of the House Intelligence Committee.

Therefore, the president was watching the hearings. He wasn’t “too busy” tending to statecraft.

Why does the Prevaricator in Chief continue to lie?

I have referred to his “gratuitous” lying. He lies when he doesn’t need to lie. He lies for the sake of saying the first thing that enters his skull and flies out of his mouth. Why would he tell the nation he would be “too busy” to watch the hearings when he was watching them?

I don’t get this guy. I don’t understand what rattles around inside his noggin that compels him to lie. What’s more, he’s proven to be a bad liar. He’s not good at it. He says things that are demonstrably fictitious.

Case in point: He has told the nation that he lost “many friends” on 9/11 inside the Twin Towers as they collapsed. He did not. It has been shown that he didn’t attend a single funeral for anyone who died on that terrible day. Yet he lies about losing friends?

To my way of thinking, that fits the description of a “gratuitous lie.” It is something he says because, well, he can.

Donald Trump is never “too busy” to tear himself away from a TV set whenever he is the subject of whatever is being broadcast.

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Trump’s incompetence rivals his corrupt intent

Donald Trump, with a single Twitter message, managed to send his Republican allies on the House Intelligence Committee scrambling to cover up for his ridiculous and destructive impulses.

While a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was testifying before the panel today, Trump decided to fire off a tweet that said she was “bad news” while serving at her post. Trump fired her, which was well within his authority to do. He did so after insulting her performance. She testified today about the circumstances that led to her dismissal as ambassador to Ukraine.

But then the president decided to tweet that ridiculous message, committing what Committee Chairman Adam Schiff called a potentially impeachable offense “in real time.”

The result of that astonishing message was to produce glowing salutations to the former ambassador’s three decades of service to the country. I suppose they were intent on roughing her up, but they relented when word got out about Trump’s remarkably ignorant tweet.

I don’t know what prompted the president to say such a thing while Yovanovitch was testifying. He well might have committed yet another impeachable offense by tossing out a message that could prove intimidating to future committee witnesses.

My goodness, this president’s incompetence is beginning to approach the level of what I believe is his corrupt intent.

Weird.

national news

Has the POTUS added another impeachable offense?

Good grief! All the president of the United States had to do with sit back along with many millions of the rest of us and listen to what this former ambassador had to say in response to questions from the House Intelligence Committee.

Did he do that? Oh, no! Donald J. Trump instead decided to unlimber his Twitter fingers and insult and denigrate Marie Yovanovitch while she was in the middle of her congressional testimony.

The tweet that Trump fired off prompted Committee Chairman Adam Schiff to stop the testimony and read the president’s message out loud and into the record.

“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him,” Trump tweeted. “It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.”

As we used to say in high school, “No sh**, Sherlock!” Of course it is a president’s right to appoint ambassadors. It’s also within his right to fire them. The question at hand, though, as it regards this former envoy is: Why did you choose to insult her publicly and demean her before dropping the hammer?

Now we hear that the president, in the minds of some on Capitol Hill, might have added witness intimidation to the list of offenses for which he is likely to be impeached by the House of Representatives.

Trump defended his tweet saying he has the right of “freedom of speech” afforded to all Americans. Well, yeah, sure he does. However, he happens to the president of the United States who is being investigated for allegations that are likely to lead to his impeachment.

Therefore, does the president of the United States have the freedom to say whatever the hell he wants? I guess he does … if he has some sort of political death wish!

This guy, Donald Trump, is out of control. He needs to go!