An explicit quid pro quo? No. But conservatives argued - properly so - that when Obama mused aloud about siccing the IRS on political opponents or prejudged that Hillary had done nothing indictable, he didn't have to be 100% explicit for it to be bad. Apply the same logic here.
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Thread. There is no way around the fact that Hunter Biden was making money - in fact, making his entire living - off his proximity to his father's political influence. And Joe Biden, in his fifth decade in DC, can't possibly have been unaware of thathttps://twitter.com/ltthompso/status/1176882652613361664 …
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Yep. It's not 100% verbatim, and it's wise to read a conversation impressionistically to get how it was perceived. But as these sorts of transcripts go, it's pretty diligenthttps://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1176892328511979520 …
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You will notice - and this latest controversy is by no means the only example - the pattern: 1. "Release X! X will bring down Trump!" 2. X comes out, isn't what we were promised. 3. "We told you releasing just X was a coverup! Release Y! It's not a real investigation until..."
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For example, remember when the be-all & end-all of things was the FBI interviewing Mark Judge? And then they did, & nobody ever mentioned him again?
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Schiff sure sounds like a guy who is backing away from the original marketing of this story as a quid pro quohttps://twitter.com/DHBerman/status/1176894713909174273 …
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It's not in Biden's political interest to focus more attention on Hunter Bidenhttps://twitter.com/NoahCRothman/status/1176895064104230914 …
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It would be useful to get someone more credible than Chris Murphy on the record saying thishttps://twitter.com/RyanLizza/status/1176897474017058817 …
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True, and oft-overlooked by people who are more interested in using Trump as a club against Republicanshttps://twitter.com/DLeonhardt/status/1176900229385347072 …
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Likely true. Also likely true that virtually everyone will just chalk this up to Trump being exactly what they already assumed Trump is likehttps://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1176900396448722944 …
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As to 2020, I'm still where I've been for months now: I resent being asked to cast a ballot for a man who is manifestly unfit for the job, but I also not want to hand power to a party that will make the lives of Americans worse & do permanent damage to its vital institutions.
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Inasmuch as that means no good choices, well, there's no reason to make me want to commit any earlier than I need to. But I continue to not blame other conservatives who have cast their lot already with Trump 2020 or Never Trump 2020.
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It will not surprise me if the outcome of this whole thing is to do only modest damage to Trump, but extensive damage to Biden, who after all still has a primary fight to winhttps://twitter.com/BetSnyder/status/1176902657413439488 …
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"A confidential diplomatic communication between the president and a foreign leader," singular.https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1176906281074024450 …
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Readout of the call is somewhat ambiguous as to whether Trump actually asked Zelensky to investigate the Bidens or just cooperate with a US investigation, but it certainly appears that Zelensky interpreted it as the former, & Trump rolled with it:pic.twitter.com/3d2B9tp133
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Yeah, and this gets back to my point about reading the readout impressionistically, as it would be received in a back-and-forth conversationhttps://twitter.com/gabrielmalor/status/1176929195093610496 …
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End of conversation
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