[Discussion] Impeachment, Legacy, and Discussion of Individual 45

Though noted as discussion, news, debate, and all things related to events that occurred during the Tr*mp administration can go here. The scope of this thread is specific to the former administration and it's hangers-on in the aftermath of the shift in power for the United States and impacted areas worldwide.

That's totally been Mitch's justification for stacking the courts. If Democrats didn't do something to filibuster 10 years ago I never would have done this evil thing. It's all their fault.

f*ck him and f*ck that

How about "one-term presidents who violate the emoluments clause, interfere in elections and foment rebellion shall at the end of their term be fired into the heart of the sun"?

The precident is already set. Federal employees & office holders can already lose their pension if they're convicted of a crime against national security. Insurrection and seditious conspiracy are explicitly listed as disqualifying crimes.

H.P. Lovesauce wrote:

How about "one-term presidents who violate the emoluments clause, interfere in elections and foment rebellion shall at the end of their term be fired into the heart of the sun"?

Stengah wrote:

The precedent is already set.

Oh, cool. I must have missed that announcement.

imbiginjapan wrote:
Hobear wrote:

I am hoping a solid & real investigation can finally take place into ALL his treasonous acts. Then he is in prison until he gets himself a pardon from some jerk in the future.

In the Darkest Timeline he goes to prison but is pardoned in 2024 by President Giuliani.

In the darkest timeline he was either reelected or worse the insurrection worked.

McConnell proposes delaying impeachment trial until February so Trump team can prepare

(CNN)Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is proposing that the Senate give former President Donald Trump's legal team two weeks to prepare for the upcoming impeachment trial once the Senate receives the article and delay its start until mid-February.

What a load of crap. McConnell didn't want to delay anything when it came to judges. I hope Schumer reminds him of this fact while sticking his foot up McConnell's ass.

JC wrote:

McConnell proposes delaying impeachment trial until February so Trump team can prepare

(CNN)Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is proposing that the Senate give former President Donald Trump's legal team two weeks to prepare for the upcoming impeachment trial once the Senate receives the article and delay its start until mid-February.

What a load of crap. McConnell didn't want to delay anything when it came to judges. I hope Schumer reminds him of this fact while sticking his foot up McConnell's ass.

Part of me is like "Sure. Let's see what they can come up with." But yeah, McConnell is full of it as usual.

From the CNN piece.

McConnell told Republicans on a conference call Thursday he's in no rush to begin the trial. The Republican leader's point was the House moved quickly on impeachment but the Senate needs time to prepare for a full trial, according to sources on the call.

"At this time of strong political passions, Senate Republicans believe it is absolutely imperative that we do not allow a half-baked process to short-circuit the due process that former President Trump deserves or damage the Senate or the presidency," McConnell said in a statement.

Trump business revenues plunged during pandemic, final disclosure reveals

NBC News wrote:

Former President Donald Trump’s business empire lost significant revenue during the pandemic, as the virus and the failed response to it cost his own interests money, according to a financial disclosure document released after he left office Wednesday.

Most of his core golf and hotel properties saw steep declines as the virus and lockdown restrictions kept consumers home and suspended discretionary travel.

Compared to his disclosure from the year prior, revenues at the Trump National Doral Miami golf course in Florida declined from $77 million to $44 million. Trump's Turnberry golf club in Scotland saw revenues fall from $25 million to just under $10 million.

Revenues also declined from $40.5 million to $15 million at Trump’s hotel at the leased Old Post Office location in Washington, D.C.

Total revenue fell at the Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago hotel-condo last year, with hotel management fees tumbling from nearly $2 million to about half a million, and condo management fees rising slightly.

Business increased in some red state locations, such as his golf club in Charlotte, North Carolina, where revenues rose from $12 million to $13 million. Revenues at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Florida and new residence, rose $3 million.

But overall, the net impact was negative, with Trump’s declared revenue falling from a reported $445 million to $278 million.

Good thing they embezzled that half billion from the campaign money then.

Delay is only good. That gives Trump’s legal team and Congressional Republicans yes, time to prep, but also time for the entire Department of Justice to collect facts as to who knew what when as part of their ongoing criminal investigations. And of course delay means the Senate can actually spend time now where it matters more now: COVID response and appointee confirmations. (I’m tempted to elude to the stupid spat now over filibustering, but there’s a whole Biden administration thread for that.)

Keithustus wrote:

Delay is only good. That gives Trump’s legal team and Congressional Republicans yes, time to prep, but also time for the entire Department of Justice to collect facts as to who knew what when as part of their ongoing criminal investigations. And of course delay means the Senate can actually spend time now where it matters more now: COVID response and appointee confirmations. (I’m tempted to elude to the stupid spat now over filibustering, but there’s a whole Biden administration thread for that.)

If it were a more complicated case, sure, but this is extremely straightforward. They don't need to call witnesses because they themselves are both the witnesses and the victims. They don't need any time to dig up hidden evidence or experts to walk them through what it all means, it was all done in plain view: just play his speech and show his tweets.

The issue I have with delaying it is that I fear that will give many of the Republicans enough time to convince themselves (or be convinced by Republican leaders) that they weren't as close as they were to being publicly executed by a mob. The ongoing investigations will certainly help expose other conspirators, but I don't think they'll turn up anything useful that can be used against Trump in the Impeachment trial. He's not the type to involve himself in any actual planning, so he likely wasn't involved in busing in militia members or giving them tours of restricted areas. I don't think they'll turn up any better evidence against Trump than we already have. They'll help nail the congress members & other Trump lackeys that helped though.

Trump finds a lawyer...

Former President Donald J. Trump’s new impeachment lawyer, Butch Bowers, is a South Carolina-based attorney who was arranged through Senator Lindsey Graham and has a long history of representing politicians in his home state.

Mr. Bowers is well known in the insular world of South Carolina politics, where he represented two former governors, Mark Sanford and Nikki Haley.

Operatives in South Carolina generally said that Mr. Bowers would be a good fit for the president, and that he had a profile that would be useful with some of the senators.

“He’s not a MAGA Republican so it will help with establishment Republicans,” said Bakari Sellers, a Democratic strategist based in South Carolina.

Please please please let him appear in court wearing suspenders...

Stengah wrote:
Keithustus wrote:

Delay is only good. That gives Trump’s legal team and Congressional Republicans yes, time to prep, but also time for the entire Department of Justice to collect facts as to who knew what when as part of their ongoing criminal investigations. And of course delay means the Senate can actually spend time now where it matters more now: COVID response and appointee confirmations. (I’m tempted to elude to the stupid spat now over filibustering, but there’s a whole Biden administration thread for that.)

If it were a more complicated case, sure, but this is extremely straightforward. They don't need to call witnesses because they themselves are both the witnesses and the victims. They don't need any time to dig up hidden evidence or experts to walk them through what it all means, it was all done in plain view: just play his speech and show his tweets.

The issue I have with delaying it is that I fear that will give many of the Republicans enough time to convince themselves (or be convinced by Republican leaders) that they weren't as close as they were to being publicly executed by a mob. The ongoing investigations will certainly help expose other conspirators, but I don't think they'll turn up anything useful that can be used against Trump in the Impeachment trial. He's not the type to involve himself in any actual planning, so he likely wasn't involved in busing in militia members or giving them tours of restricted areas. I don't think they'll turn up any better evidence against Trump than we already have. They'll help nail the congress members & other Trump lackeys that helped though.

What this does is allow McConnell to promise all sorts of things about Biden's initial slate of legislation to get compromises out of the Democrats during their most effective period of legislating just so he can turn around and either ignore the promises or do what he was going to do anyway.

Pretty sure they aren't buying it anymore, but it's transparent at this point that he'll always be pretending to negotiate whenever a future decision is out there.

Jolly Bill wrote:

What this does is allow McConnell to promise all sorts of things about Biden's initial slate of legislation to get compromises out of the Democrats during their most effective period of legislating just so he can turn around and either ignore the promises or do what he was going to do anyway.

McConnell is probably trying to negotiate for the filibuster ban to be removed.

And yes. McConnell will break his promises. You know how I know? He’s a Republican.

Stengah wrote:
Keithustus wrote:

Delay is only good. ...

If it were a more complicated case, sure, but this is extremely straightforward.

I wish that were the case. It is not, even setting aside politics.

First, as a primer of the pure legal aspects of the charge of inciting sedition and violence, see here. TLDR: it's a tough, unclear case, which is unlikely even for an unknown defendant to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, required for criminal conviction.

Secondly, Senate-convicting federal officers who have already left office is not a slam dunk. This alone will lose several Republicans and possibly a few Democrats. There is precedent against the argument and for conviction, but it is not a clear and well-established rule. This objection alone means some Senators justifiably believe that there is literally no reason to even pay attention during the trial.

Stengah wrote:

They don't need to call witnesses because they themselves are both the witnesses and the victims. They don't need any time to dig up hidden evidence or experts to walk them through what it all means, it was all done in plain view: just play his speech and show his tweets.
...
I don't think they'll turn up anything useful that can be used against Trump in the Impeachment trial.

Untrue that they do not need to call witnesses.

Yes, they were witnesses and victims of the violence, but they were not careful witnesses to President's Trump's thoughts and actions. His tweets and speeches are only part of the story.

There are two key lines of questioning that need to be examined to prove President Trump's culpability beyond all doubt for the insurrection. That isn't a real legal or political burden of proof, but probably is what is required in this trial, as I'll discuss below. Otherwise he walks on the argument that all he did was build a matchbox, he didn't light it. 'Trump didn't incite violence, Q and the Proud Boys incited violence'.

1. What did President Trump know throughout December and into January 5th about the level of threat on January 6, and how did he respond?

On the one hand, it's possible that he was perfectly innocuous and upstanding in his steadfast calls that the election was a sham, and meant only for his supporters to show strength through their presence and shouting with their march to the Capitol. Simply, he wanted people to be outside the Capitol to attempt to persuade Congressional Republicans to completely set aside electors from some states. BLM had certainly set a standard of taking over streets and the exteriors of federal property to have their side listened to all summer. President Trump could have believed MAGA folks would act comparably for one important day, his last chance to remain in office. Perhaps, he might be able to show, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies believed that the large crowds they knew would be protesting that day were not predicted as of January 5th to have much chance of conducting violence. Maybe all the intelligence products prepared and sent to the DOD, DHS, and White House never even mentioned the possibility of sedition. There is still dispute, for instance, in how forcefully the DC Mayor had requested National Guard support in the days before, and how seriously those requests were taken within the Pentagon. DOD timeline which conspicuously omits details such as general threat assessments.

If that is all or mostly true, then one could argue without conceit that President Trump's conviction could be unreasonable.

On the other hand, maybe the signals were clear. Maybe DHS and FBI repeatedly told the WH Chief of Staff that they expected violence. Maybe President Trump said "Na, that's okay. They're good people, the best."

What if, though, it was corroborated so tightly but then he or ket WH staff responded "Na, that's okay...McConnell and Pelosi both told their sergeants-at-arms that no other federal law enforcement would be needed."?

2. What was President Trump doing on January 6th between when the protest became a riot just after 1 pm when they overran Capitol barricades, when they began or eventually broke their way into the Capitol around 2:15, and before he finally transmitted his video that everyone should go home at (can't find precise time, 4-something pm?)? What had he before events started briefed his most vital subordinates (acting DHS secretary, DOD leaders, etc.) as to how they should respond to the possibility of violence?

January 6 Timeline

On the one hand, perhaps he was cautiously watching his mob overrun the gates but had a reasonable belief that they would simply remain outside? Perhaps he had told his deputies to prepare for backing up Capitol Police, but due to events outside his direct control those instructions or those forces never got there in time?

But on the other hand, it seems instead that he got his popcorn out and was entertained, that he was literally calling Senators while this was going on and asking them to delay the votes. When precisely were those calls? To whom? How much detail did he have....from them or from anyone else...of what was actually going on? We have all seen so many videos and reports of 1/6 that it's easy to forget that most of that wasn't available until afterward, unless someone happened to be watching rioters' livestreams. Did anyone in the White House or Oval Office have any of those playing live?

Lastly, as to burden of proof, remember that this, unlike any normal jury, IS a jury of his peers: rich, well-educated, well-connected arrogant puffballs with only a tenuous grasp of how it feels to live day to day outside the DC Beltway. Ten House Republicans voted to impeach. I've been following all of their twitter feeds since then, and as you can predict, they have not become very popular with their voters. Why would Republican Senators ignore that? No, while we know that a good number of Senators are fair, moral, upstanding leaders, that probably is far from 67 of them. The rest listen too much to their guts and their biases, or at the very least, the political winds of the day. Lindsey Graham in particular is someone I have less than 0 belief in his credibility on, having initially been frank and honest when telling Republicans that the GOP would destroy itself and they would deserve it if they nominate Trump, to being besties, to on January 6th saying enough was enough, to now being besties. He and others like him will only convict if there is NO doubt linking Trump to the riots to the violence. It doesn't make sense to me how someone could think it justified for a president not to be convicted for summoning a mob that came uncomfortably close to killing legislators and the VP, but somehow that's the world we're in.

My prediction: acquittal. Rationale: not purely because of politics. Not because of the constitutional uncertainty. Not because of fading memory. I am sad to predict that former President Trump will be acquitted by the Senate because of BAD LAWYERING. Who do Senate Republicans listen to? Republicans. Who sways them? Smart Republicans or ones with lots of political capital. Who in the House has that? Members such as Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Did any Republican House leaders vote to impeach? Yes, one: Liz Cheney. Who is presenting evidence and argument during the Senate trial, i.e. who are the prosecutors conducting the case? SEVEN HOUSE DEMOCRATS. Who do Republican Senators NOT listen to, like ever? HOUSE DEMOCRATS. So even if they are amazing, and persuade the most skeptical of Americans that Trump de facto did it, what language will they have been speaking while doing so? They'll be speaking Democrat. With only Democrats in charge of how to persuade Senate Republicans of anything, they may as well not be speaking English, because as a whole, they are already on different planets.

The impeachment managers are:

edit: see January 23rd comment below
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.)
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.)
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.)
Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.)
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.)
Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas)

I am unfamiliar with the others, but in what parallel universe are Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler capable of persuading Senate Republicans of anything?

Trump gives Bundy associates 10 year permit to graze on BLM managed territory

Snuck this one in at the last moment. Just love the praise for them

Keithustus wrote:

Well thought-out comments about the reality of the situation.

You suck (as does reality).

You're probably right about the outcome but I really hope you're wrong. The Twitter harassment from angry Trump voters is one reason it shouldn't wait, it gives them more time to chicken out and vote in favor of the guy who was willing to sacrifice their lives to keep himself in power. If nothing the Democrats say can convince the Republicans to impeach than waiting longer won't help anything.

There's literally no upside to waiting. It doesn't look like they intend to though.

thrawn82 wrote:

There's literally no upside to waiting.

There is if you want to wait for people to forget that Charles Schumer called the insurrection an "erection."

NYT: Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General
Trying to find another avenue to push his baseless election claims, Donald Trump considered installing a loyalist, and had the men make their cases to him.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department’s power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results.

The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to bolster Mr. Trump’s continuing legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians. Because Mr. Rosen had refused the president’s entreaties to carry out those plans, Mr. Trump was about to decide whether to fire Mr. Rosen and replace him with Mr. Clark.

The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed?

The answer was unanimous. They would resign.

Mr. Rosen refused. He maintained that he would make decisions based on the facts and the law, and he reiterated what Mr. Barr had privately told Mr. Trump: The department had investigated voting irregularities and found no evidence of widespread fraud.

But Mr. Trump continued to press Mr. Rosen after the meeting — in phone calls and in person. He repeatedly said that he did not understand why the Justice Department had not found evidence that supported conspiracy theories about the election that some of his personal lawyers had espoused. He declared that the department was not fighting hard enough for him.

As Mr. Rosen and the deputy attorney general, Richard P. Donoghue, pushed back, they were unaware that Mr. Clark had been introduced to Mr. Trump by a Pennsylvania politician and had told the president that he agreed that fraud had affected the election results.

Unbeknown to the acting attorney general, Mr. Clark’s timeline moved up. He met with Mr. Trump over the weekend, then informed Mr. Rosen midday on Sunday that the president intended to replace him with Mr. Clark, who could then try to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College results. He said that Mr. Rosen could stay on as his deputy attorney general, leaving Mr. Rosen speechless.

Unwilling to step down without a fight, Mr. Rosen said that he needed to hear straight from Mr. Trump and worked with the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, to convene a meeting for early that evening.

Even as Mr. Clark’s pronouncement was sinking in, stunning news broke out of Georgia: State officials had recorded an hourlong call, published by The Washington Post, during which Mr. Trump pressured them to manufacture enough votes to declare him the victor. As the fallout from the recording ricocheted through Washington, the president’s desperate bid to change the outcome in Georgia came into sharp focus.

Quite a less-clear story from a Pentagon embed from Vanity Fair:

On the evening of January 5—the night before a white supremacist mob stormed Capitol Hill in a siege that would leave five dead—the acting secretary of defense, Christopher Miller, was at the White House with his chief of staff, Kash Patel. They were meeting with President Trump on “an Iran issue,” Miller told me. But then the conversation switched gears. The president, Miller recalled, asked how many troops the Pentagon planned to turn out the following day. “We’re like, ‘We’re going to provide any National Guard support that the District requests,’” Miller responded. “And [Trump] goes, ‘You’re going to need 10,000 people.’ No, I’m not talking bullsh*t. He said that. And we’re like, ‘Maybe. But you know, someone’s going to have to ask for it.’” At that point Miller remembered the president telling him, “‘You do what you need to do. You do what you need to do.’ He said, ‘You’re going to need 10,000.’ That’s what he said. Swear to God.”

...

On the morning of January 6, as Miller recounted, he was hopeful that the day would prove uneventful. But decades in special operations and intelligence had honed his senses. “It was the first day I brought an overnight bag to work. My wife was like, ‘What are you doing there?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know when I’m going to be home.’” To hear Patel tell it, they were on autopilot for most of the day: “We had talked to [the president] in person the day before, on the phone the day before, and two days before that. We were given clear instructions. We had all our authorizations. We didn’t need to talk to the president. I was talking to [Trump’s chief of staff, Mark] Meadows, nonstop that day.”

...

What did Miller think of the criticism that the Pentagon had dragged its feet in sending in the cavalry? He bristled. “Oh, that is complete horsesh*t. I gotta tell you, I cannot wait to go to the Hill and have those conversations with senators and representatives.” While Miller confessed that he hadn’t yet emotionally processed the day’s events, he said, “I know when something doesn’t smell right, and I know when we’re covering our asses. Been there. I know for an absolute fact that historians are going to look…at the actions that we did on that day and go, ‘Those people had their game together.’”

Miller and Patel both insisted, in separate conversations, that they neither tried nor needed to contact the president on January 6; they had already gotten approval to deploy forces. However, another senior defense official remembered things quite differently, “They couldn’t get through. They tried to call him”—meaning the president.The implication: Either Trump was shell-shocked, effectively abdicating his role as commander in chief, or he was deliberately stiff-arming some of his top officials because he was, in effect, siding with the insurrectionists and their cause of denying Biden’s victory.
...

As is their format from these embedded reports, this Vanity Fair article is lengthy and disorganized but quite quite engrossing. Topics include civilian-military control failures and how the various top DOD and NSI figures do and don’t get along based on their histories.

And the F-35 is the MyPillow of jet fighters!

Keithustus wrote:

Quite a less-clear story from a Pentagon embed from Vanity Fair:

On the evening of January 5—the night before a white supremacist mob stormed Capitol Hill in a siege that would leave five dead—the acting secretary of defense, Christopher Miller, was at the White House with his chief of staff, Kash Patel. They were meeting with President Trump on “an Iran issue,” Miller told me. But then the conversation switched gears. The president, Miller recalled, asked how many troops the Pentagon planned to turn out the following day. “We’re like, ‘We’re going to provide any National Guard support that the District requests,’” Miller responded. “And [Trump] goes, ‘You’re going to need 10,000 people.’ No, I’m not talking bullsh*t. He said that. And we’re like, ‘Maybe. But you know, someone’s going to have to ask for it.’” At that point Miller remembered the president telling him, “‘You do what you need to do. You do what you need to do.’ He said, ‘You’re going to need 10,000.’ That’s what he said. Swear to God.”

Am I reading this correctly? Miller is stating that Trump suggested they would need 10,000 troops in DC?

Yes, a SECDEF who didn’t like Trump much told his embedded reporter that WH meeting occurred the day before the insurrection. VF articles are abysmal at establishing timelines, especially their continual ambiguous pronoun use, so there’s no telling when the reporter had this conversation with Miller. And it’s hearsay of course.

CORRECTION EDIT to my long post yesterday assessing impeachment-conviction chances. I had an article up from the wrong January. The impeachment managers for this impeachment are a different list:

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), lead manager
Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.)
Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.)
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas)
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.)
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.)
Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands)
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.)
Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.)

I’m not terribly familiar with any of them, though Rep. Raskin’s name has popped up a lot recently. And it’s nice to see a non-voting member of Congress get something to do in this country for once.

So a few days ago the Associated Press reported that the group that organized the January 6th rally, Women for America First, had at least six former (or current) Trump campaign staff members working for it. Their names were listed as staff members on the rally permit Women for America First submitted to the National Park Service.

The Center for Responsive Politics, the folks who run the Open Secrets website that tracks money in politics, found that the Trump campaign paid $2.7 million to those people and to organizations owned by those people through at least mid-November.

For example, the rally’s “VIP Lead” was Maggie Mulvaney (a niece of former top Trump aide Mick Mulvaney), who was paid $138K in 2020 to be the Trump campaign’s director of finance operations and manager of external affairs. One of the rally's operations managers was Megan Powers. For the past two years Powers was the Trump campaign’s director of operations and was paid nearly $300K for her services.

The problem is that it will be hard to prove there's more of this blatant connection because Women for America First is a dark money PAC that doesn't have to disclose where it go money from and the Trump campaign funneled nearly $800 million of campaign expenditures through a shell company and, according to campaign finance laws, only has to disclose the name of that shell company, not who was ultimately paid.

There’s also the relevance problem that applying for a permit to assemble is literally the purpose of 1st Amendment protected activity, even had President Trump personally paid each member of the crowd to travel to and participate there or not. Impeachment team would have to show that that line of money was intended or at least negligently connected to some kind of nefarious intent to be more than simply acknowledged without objection by Trump legal.

Charges against the insurrectionists are getting more serious

(CNN)The Justice Department revealed new charges against a Texas man who allegedly participated in the Capitol attack and posted online death threats against Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a US Capitol Police officer.

Garret Miller of Texas faces five criminal charges stemming from the Capitol insurrection, including trespassing offenses and making death threats. [against a member of Congress] Miller allegedly tweeted, "assassinate AOC," according to court documents.

He also said the police officer who fatally shot a Trump supporter during the attack "deserves to die" and won't "survive long" because it's "huntin[g] season."

And his lawyer is full of sh*t. Hyperbole my ass. Your client only regrets it because he was caught.

Clint Broden, a lawyer for Miller, told CNN Saturday that his client "certainly regrets what he did."

"He did it in support of former President (Donald) Trump, but regrets his actions. He has the support of his family, and a lot of the comments, as viewed in context, are really sort of misguided political hyperbole. Given the political divide these days, there is a lot of hyperbole," Broden said.