Donald Trump has been labelled “dangerous” and accused of “unhinged depravity” after he tweeted that the impeachment inquiry into his phone call with Ukraine's president amounted to a “coup” days after quoting a far-right Texas pastor’s warning that Congress risks creating a “Civil War like fracture” by pursuing him.
As his job approval rating slides to an all-time low, reports emerge that the president suggested shooting migrants in the legs, building a snake and alligator-filled moat at the US-Mexico border (no, really) and electrifying his much-touted wall before being told by aides his ideas were both illegal and impractical.
Congressional committees investigating Mr Trump’s now-infamous July exchange with Volodymyr Zelensky have summoned their first two officials to testify, with others expected to follow, as secretary of state Mike Pompeo admits he was in on the Zelensky call.
Please allow a moment for our live blog to load
Eccentric 2020 Democrat and universal basic income advocate Andrew Yang has raised an impressive $10m (£8m) in the third quarter.
He's happy about it - and anyone who likes "Return of the Mack" as much as he does is OK with me.
Colorado senator Michael Bennet has meanwhile announced he raised $2.1m (£1.7m) for the period, at the lower end of the scale.
Ukraine's former president Petro Poroshenko has said today he discussed investments with Rudy Giuliani in 2017 but that he never discussed the affairs of Ukrainian companies with any US official.
Like many of his compatriots, Poroshenko is currently working hard to distance himself from the impeachment inquiry embroiling Trump and Poroshenko's successor, Volodymyr Zelensky.
"We definitely do not want to be involved in the political process inside the United States," Poroshenko, now a member of parliament, told reporters.
(Getty)
Poroshenko said he met Giuliani in 2017 as a "friend of Ukraine" and they discussed "political support and investment" but nothing else. He wouldn't elaborate.
"We never ever spoke about commercial companies" with Trump, former president Barack Obama, current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden or "any US officials," said Poroshenko, who led Ukraine from 2014 to 2019.
Meanwhile, in his first public comments on the phone call, Russian president Vladimir Putin said Trump's critics are using "every excuse to attack" the US president and openly mocked the idea the Kremlin hacked the 2016 election and intends to do so again next year while speaking at a conference in Moscow.
Poroshenko said he was not aware that Giuliani had met with then-Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko.
Most Ukrainians are said to be shrugging off US efforts to impeach Trump as someone else's problem.
But they are worried about one thing: that Ukraine's role in the Trump affair strengthens Russia's hand and hobbles the politically inexperienced Zelenskiy just as he's trying to tackle the problems that matter to them most: corruption and an armed conflict with Russian-backed separatists in the east that has divided their nation.
Zelenskiy announced an agreement on Tuesday with Ukrainian separatists that paves the way for peace talks to end five years of fighting but Ukrainian nationalists denounced it as capitulation to Russia.
The US scandal "is weakening Zelenskiy's standing inside the country," said Tatyana Stanovaya, head of the R.Politik political analysis firm. "He gave a reason to doubt his ability to be an honest president," Stanovaya said of the 25 July phone call. "It's the first big blow for him" since he overwhelmingly beat Poroshenko in Ukraine's April election.
Zelenskiy's comments on the call will fuel the Kremlin's view that Ukrainian leaders are beholden to US interests.
As the impeachment process heats up, the US State Department gave initial approval to a $39m (£32m) sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine to help the country battle Russia-backed separatists. The proposed aid is in addition to some $400m (£326m) in US military aid released last month.
AP
Trump is now calling the moat story "Fake News", offering up another classic typo.
A Moot point, perhaps.
Chris Riotta has more.
We're hearing that 2020 candidate Bernie Sanders was hospitalised after suffering a chest complaint at a campaign event last night but is "conversing and in good spirits", according to senior advisor Jeff Weaver.
The investigating House Democrats are now threatening to subpoena the White House if the administration stonewalls on handing over its records on the Ukraine call by Friday.
So much for #DONOTHINGDEMS.
More raving.
Far from "doing nothing", the Democrats seem extremely busy and productive to me.
Trump is currently calling for House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff to resign after previously saying he should be arrested for high treason. "He is sick!" the president insists.
Robert Jeffress - the controversial Texan pastor whose inflammatory "Civil War" quote Trump tweeted over the week, causing uproar - has appeared on Fox News Radio to accuse the Democrats of worshipping the Old Testament demon god Moloch, according to Right Wing Watch.
“Apparently the god they worship is the pagan god of the Old Testament, Moloch, who allowed for child sacrifice,” said Jeffress.
“The god of the Bible doesn’t sanction the killing of millions and millions of children in the womb. I think the god they are worshiping is the god of their own imagination.”
The pastor, who leads the First Baptist megachurch in Dallas, reiterated his thoughts view that America is "finished" if the opposition win the 2020 election and went on to attack House speaker Nancy Pelosi calling her, “an arsonist, a pyromaniac with a match in his hand about to set a building on fire, saying, ‘Now pray with me that the destruction I’m about to cause isn’t too severe.’ If Nancy Pelosi is sincere about bringing this nation together, she will drop this impeachment effort.”
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll has shown support for Trump's impeachment to outweigh opposition for the first time.
According to the new survey, 46 per cent of voters are in favour compared to 43 against, with 11 per cent undecided.
Norwegian 80s pop heroes A-Ha have responded to the Trump campaign's weird rotoscope video attempting to present the president as a loveable character, apparently riffing on their classic 1985 video for "Take on Me".
Roisin O'Connor has more.
Not exactly known for her measured rhetoric, Democrat Maxine Waters, chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, says the president deserves to be jailed and thrown in solitary confinement.
Trump's first tweets of the day find him again throwing his weight around the Louisiana governor's election (as he did last night) and hailing a court ruling yesterday that means he will not have to publish his tax returns to appear on California's primary ballot in 2020 after all. He's also doing his fairground barker act on the border wall.
For Indy Voices, DC reporter Andrew Feinberg offers these insights on whether White House insiders believe the president is ready for the impeachment proceedings gearing up against him.
The Ukraine investigation continues to grow as Bob Menendez of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asks Trump's energy secretary Rick Perry what took place when he visited the Eastern European country in May this year, which just so happens to be when Giuliani was threatening to fly in.
Yikes. More ugly remarks from Trump resurfacing online, this time from a 2013 appearance on David Letterman's chat show, in which he said the Mafia are "very nice people".
Darren Richman has the full story for Indy100.
Mike Pompeo has addressed his role in the Zelensky call for the first time at a press conference in Rome after speaking at the Vatican. Perhaps his surroundings moved him to confession.
Here's Chris Riotta's report.
A little more on the coming election fight.
America First Policies, a political action group backing Trump, will launch an advertising campaign aimed at unseating vulnerable House Democrats who support the impeachment inquiry against him.
The television and digital ad buy, which the source said would cost more than $1m (£820,000), will encourage voters to tell their Democratic representatives in Congress to oppose the impeachment probe.
The attack ads are designed to echo a $2m (£1.6m) campaign the Republican National Committee (RNC) launched over the weekend - examples of which you can see below - and will be set to run when those ads are completed, likely at the end of this week or the beginning of next week.
America First Policies is a super PAC permitted to raise and spend unlimited sums of money but must disclose both fundraising and expenses. As a super PAC, the group is prohibited from directly coordinating with either the RNC or Trump's campaign.
The ads are being run by the America First non-profit arm, which is not required to disclose how much money it raises or spends, but is prohibited from funding advertisements that directly advocate voting for or against a candidate.
The ads will point to the "kitchen-table" issues that Democrats campaigned on during the 2018 congressional elections, like healthcare and the border.
"Now you're doing nothing, all you do is investigate, investigate, investigate," a source told Reuters, summarising the intended message. "It's a call to action."
The ads will target districts that elected Democrats in 2018 after going for Trump in the 2016 election.
"We're going to be putting pressure on moderate Democrats," the source said.
We heard yesterday that Bernie Sanders raked in $25.3m (£20.6m) in campaign donations over the past three months, putting him on top of the Democratic presidential fundraising field for now. But in a sign of what he and his rivals are up against, Trump and his allies raised $125m (£102m).
Other leading Democrats, including former vice president Joe Biden and Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, have yet to reveal their fundraising figures for the third quarter.
But the staggering sum on the Republican side, which was split between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, highlights the cash gulf between Democrats and the GOP. It could revive anxieties among Democrats that a protracted primary featuring nearly 20 candidates could be counterproductive while Trump builds a massive cash advantage that can be used against the ultimate nominee.
"This is a shit-ton of money," Bakari Sellers, a top surrogate for California senator Kamala Harris, tweeted in reference to Trump's fundraising. Although activists who contribute small amounts online have been widely celebrated, he said that won't stand up to the Trump operation. "Small dollar donations alone ain't going to save our democracy."
Sanders posted the largest quarterly sum for a Democratic White House hopeful this year. The haul ensures the Vermont senator will be an enduring presence in the primary even as Warren and Biden have surpassed him in some polls. Much of the money he raised came from his army of small-dollar online contributors.
Meanwhile, Pete Buttigieg, who entered the race as the little-known mayor of South Bend, Indiana, pulled in $19.1m (£15.6m). That's an almost $6m (£4.9m) dip from his field-leading sum last quarter but a figure that's all but certain to place him in the top tier.
Now the question turns to how much money Biden and Warren raised during the third quarter. The former vice president and the Massachusetts senator are in an increasingly close race for first place, according to several polls.
There's a growing sense of urgency for the White House hopefuls as the primary becomes a fierce battle for a limited pool of cash. In the days and hours before Monday's deadline, they pleaded for money, making appeals on social media and collectively blasting out more than 80 emails asking supporters to "chip in" $5, $10 or $50. The third-quarter figures have to be reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) by 15 October.
Those outside the top tier are facing pressure to post competitive numbers or get out. They will not only face challenges paying for advertising to amplify their message, but are also likely to struggle reaching fundraising thresholds set by the Democratic National Committee to qualify for future debates.
"If you are being outraised 3-to-1 by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, you have no viable path to victory," said Rufus Gifford, Barack Obama's former finance director. "Even if you can compete in the early states... shortly thereafter you will run out of money."
Over the summer, Harris kept up an aggressive fundraising schedule to stockpile the cash needed to build up her operation in early states. Yet she did not improve on her past performance amid a series of stumbles and restarts. The $11.6m (£9.5m) she reported raising keeps virtually even with her totals from each of the past two quarters, suggesting she hasn't caught on with much of the party's activist donor base. Still, it's enough to keep her in contention in the months to come, and Harris's campaign manager, Juan Rodriguez, said they were "built to win this primary."
Others face dimmer odds. Cory Booker recently warned that unless he juiced his fundraising numbers by an additional $1.7m (£1.4m) he'd likely have to drop out. The New Jersey senator announced Tuesday he was "proud" of his team for surpassing the goal while pulling in a total of $6m (£4.9m) for the quarter. But campaign manager Addisu Demissie then issued a memo stating they'd have to do even better and raise $3 million by the end of October.
Montana governor Steve Bullock, who has also struggled to raise money, is applying for public financing, turning to a fund that is replenished by those who volunteer to chip in $3 from their taxes. He hopes it will supplement his campaign with a $2m (£1.6m) boost, though the FEC board does not currently have enough commissioners to sign off on the request.
The third quarter came to a close as Trump faces an impeachment inquiry in Congress related to his attempts to get the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden. The development has scrambled politics in Washington but has turned into a fundraising rallying cry for both major political parties.
Trump has turned his outrage over the inquiry into a flood of campaign cash. Trump and the Republican National Committee reported raising $13m (£10.6m) in the three days after House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the probe last week. And Trump's son Eric tweeted later that the total grew to $15m (£12.2m). That's a source of worry for some Democrats.
"Trump's presidency is wounded but not mortally wounded, and their operation is as good as it gets," Gifford said.
AP
Could Trump still run for president in 2020 even if he were to ultimately be impeached in the Senate?
Here's your answer folks.
Astonishingly, a new poll has found that just 40 per cent of self-identied Republicans believe Trump discussed the Biden investigation with President Zelensky, according to USA Today, despite his openly admitting he did so and the White House transcript setting it out in plain English.
Among Democrats, that total is 85 per cent, with 61 per cent of independents agreeing the president "probably did" press Zelensky on his new favourite conspiracy theory.
"This seems to be another example of partisan tribalism at work in public opinion,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, which carried out the survey between 23 and 29 September.
More than six in 10 adults surveyed by Monmouth said it is not appropriate for a president to make a request of its nature to a foreign leader. Only three in 10 Republicans agreed.
Almost half of all adults questioned (49 per cent) said it's a good idea for the House Judiciary Committee to conduct an impeachment inquiry, but less than half (44 per cent) felt Trump should actually be impeached and forced out of the White House.
"Trump may be facing backlash for this call but the irony is now that its contents are out there, it may actually help with his objective," Murray said. "And that is to sow doubt about Biden among voters."
