[ Donald Trump still holds immeasurable power, and only a fool
would underestimate him at this point, because cornered animals can be
lethal. Yet if Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky are any indication,
they are but a harbinger of what is to come.] [[link removed]]

DONALD TRUMP LOST TUESDAY’S ELECTIONS  
[[link removed]]

 

William Rivers Pitt
November 6, 2019
Truthout
[[link removed]]

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_ Donald Trump still holds immeasurable power, and only a fool would
underestimate him at this point, because cornered animals can be
lethal. Yet if Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky are any indication,
they are but a harbinger of what is to come. _

President Trump walks on the South Lawn upon his return to the White
House in Washington, D.C., on November 3, 2019., Olivier Douliery /
AFP via Getty Images // Truthout

 

A single mother of two flips her middle finger at Donald Trump’s
motorcade while riding her bike in Loudoun County, Virginia, and the
moment is captured in a photo that goes viral on social media. The
woman is fired
[[link removed]] from her job
for “violating” the company’s social media policies.

She sues her former employer and wins
[[link removed]] a
severance claim, and two years after that bird flew, she defeats a
Republican to win a seat on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors.
Loudoun County is home to National Golf Club, a Trump property. Odds
are he was either on his way there or had just left when she tossed
him the long-finger salute.

Pitch that script to a Hollywood producer and you’d be laughed out
of the room. For Juli Briskman, wielder of the famous digit, it is a
reality
[[link removed]],
one chapter in a still-unspooling story titled _Trump’s Superbad
Tuesday_. “Isn’t that sweet justice?” she asked
[[link removed]] a _Washington
Post_ reporter.

Indeed. Briskman’s victory was an accent in the symphony of defeat
endured by the Virginia Republican Party on Tuesday night. Democrats
ran the state legislative table, taking majority control in both
houses for the first time since 1994. The evening’s aftermath left
elected Virginia Republicans almost as endangered
[[link removed]] as
the rare Dismal Swamp Shrew, a tiny creature who lives in bogs and
dines on worms.

“With Democrats already controlling the governor’s mansion, the
state’s two U.S. Senate seats, and a majority of its congressional
seats,” reports
[[link removed]] _The
Washington Post_, “[Virginia] Republicans are bracing for policy
changes in Richmond and the specter of Democrats redrawing legislative
districts after the 2020 Census that could undermine GOP incumbents
from the state house to Congress.”

The nationwide suburban revolt against Trump continued apace
[[link removed]] in
Pennsylvania on Tuesday. For the first time since the Civil War,
Democrats took all five seats on the Delaware County Council.
Democrats likewise assumed majority control over Chester County, and
won the Bucks County Board of Commissioners, which Republicans have
owned since 1983.

More bad news for Republicans traveled west with the sun on Tuesday,
casting bleak shadows across the residence of Kentucky’s GOP Gov.
Matt Bevin, who was defeated
[[link removed]] by
Democratic challenger Andy Beshear. Bevin, one of the more truculent
varieties of Trump sycophant, stapled himself to the White House by
trying to make his re-election campaign a referendum on impeachment.
His efforts did not yield fruit.

Mindful of the bellwether nature of the Kentucky governor’s race —
happening as it was in the home state of Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell, his most vital Senate ally — Trump traveled to Lexington
the day before the vote to implore his followers to go to the polls.

“If you lose,” Trump implored
[[link removed]] the
crowd with hands lifted in supplication, “it sends a really bad
message, just sends a bad, and they will build it up. Here’s the
story: If you win, they’re gonna make it like ‘ho-hum,’ and if
you lose, they’re going to say ‘Trump suffered the greatest defeat
in the history of the world. This was the greatest.’ You can’t let
that happen to me!”

The evening’s aftermath left elected Virginia Republicans almost as
endangered as the rare Dismal Swamp Shrew, a tiny creature who lives
in bogs and dines on worms.

It is beyond dispute that Donald Trump will remember this past fifth
of November for a long time, and not just because of the doings at the
ballot box.

“If you’re looking for a circumstance where the president of the
United States was threatening the Ukraine with cutting off aid unless
they investigated his political opponent, you’d be very
disappointed,” said
[[link removed]] Sen. Lindsey
Graham back on September 25. “That does not exist.”

Apparently, someone forgot to tell that to EU Ambassador Gordon
Sondland
[[link removed]],
who nearly tore an Achilles tendon trying to outrun a
conspiracy/perjury rap on Tuesday.

Sondland’s previous House testimony – in which he claimed he was
unaware of any quid pro quo demands put to Ukraine during Trump’s
efforts to dig dirt on Democrats — performed an abruptly aerobic
pivot on Tuesday. All of a sudden, he totally remembered Trump putting
the exact aid-for-investigation requirements to the Ukrainian
government after a half-dozen other witnesses put the bricks to his
prior self-serving statements.

“I now recall speaking individually with [top Ukrainian national
security adviser Andriy] Yermak, where I said that resumption of U.S.
aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public
anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many
weeks,” said
[[link removed]] Sondland
in his updated testimony.

Beyond the stark fact that Sondland’s refreshed memory has further
buttressed evidence of rampant illegal activities by Trump, the bit
about “discussing for many weeks” stands out. Trump and his allies
have been peddling a “Read the transcript” argument against the
rising impeachment tide, attempting to claim that the edited
transcript of the July 25 call between Trump and Ukraine President
Volodymyr Zelensky contains no visible wrongdoing. It does, but
Sondland’s “many weeks” comment further underscores the fact
that efforts to strong-arm Ukraine into interfering with the U.S.
presidential election went far beyond a single phone call.

Republican efforts to batten down the hatches have begun to reek of
desperation.

The Trump playbook for hostile witnesses to date has been to paint
them as “Never Trumpers” with a political agenda. That’s going
to be a hard case to make against Sondland, who donated a cool
million dollars
[[link removed]] to
Trump’s inauguration committee and was repaid with the EU
ambassadorship. That hasn’t kept some Republican lawmakers
from lashing out
[[link removed]] at
Sondland by calling him “a lackey, a chest-thumper and a rube.”
Enjoy those bus wheels, Gordy. I suspect you will soon have company
[[link removed]].

Republican efforts to batten down the hatches have begun to reek of
desperation. “The Republican National Committee paid to generate
thousands of calls to the congressional offices of nearly three dozen
House Democrats in recent weeks,” reported
[[link removed]] _The
New York Times_ on Monday, “an effort that was aimed at both
shaping opinion around the impeachment inquiry and tying up the phone
lines of the elected officials.”

Simultaneously, flailing GOP senators are debating
[[link removed]] whether
or not to try and drag Hunter Biden into the public impeachment
hearings — which begin in one week — in order to distract the
public from the ongoing car accident that is the Trump administration.

This course of action is being championed by Sen. Rand Paul, who also
wants to expose the name of the whistleblower who got the impeachment
ball rolling in the first place. Not every Republican is on board with
this ploy, however; Sen. John Cornyn called Paul’s idea a
“sideshow,” and others privately fretted such a move would
backfire.

Meanwhile, Trump himself — in the background, foreground and
everywhere in between — intends to keep trying to lie his way out
[[link removed]] of
this impeachment predicament. Put simply, the man does not know how to
do anything else, and he does not care a whit for the damage he will
do to the party he so thoroughly conquered in 2016.

Donald Trump still holds immeasurable power, and only a fool would
underestimate him at this point, because cornered animals can be
lethal. Yet if Virginia, Pennsylvania and Matt Bevin’s Kentucky are
any indication, and if Gordon Sondland represents the first pebbles of
an impeachment avalanche, the bruises raised on Tuesday are but a
harbinger of what is to come.

The greatest defeat in the history of the world? Certainly not …
yet.

_[William Rivers Pitt is a senior editor and lead columnist
at Truthout. He is also a New York Times and internationally
bestselling author of three books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush
Doesn’t Want You to Know
[[link removed]], The
Greatest Sedition Is Silence
[[link removed]] and House
of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America’s Ravaged
Reputation
[[link removed]]. His
fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and
Who Is Responsible
[[link removed]],
co-written with Dahr Jamail
[[link removed]], is available now on
Amazon. He lives and works in New Hampshire.]_

_Copyright, Truthout [[link removed]]. Reprinted with
permission. May not be reprinted without permission._

_Truthout publishes a variety of hard-hitting news stories and
critical analysis pieces every day. To keep up-to-date, sign up for
our newsletter by clicking here
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