Donald Trump forcing his signature on US currency while the dollar value is declining and expected to slide. Junk Trump money?

Good article🙏

How a weaker dollar is quietly making life more expensive.

"Travis Madeira, a fourth-generation lobsterman who founded the lobster-shipping business LobsterBoys with his brother, makes about 80% of his sales to Americans, unlike some competitors who primarily export."

Echo reporting by Matt Sedensky published by Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A hidden force is quietly pushing up costs for everything from your summer vacation to your weekly grocery bills: a weaker U.S. dollar.

The dollar has fallen about 10 󠀥% against other major currencies since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, a pullback potentially playing a role in Americans’ concerns about affordability.

“It’s kind of a hidden tax,” says economist Thomas Savidge of the conservative-leaning American Institute for Economic Research. “What your dollar is going to be able to buy is going to shrink.”

Historic dollar decline:  The U.S. 💲Dollar Index, which measures the greenback against other major currencies, logged its steepest six-month drop in more than 50 years in the first half of 2025. Though the decline hasn’t deepened, the dollar index is still about 10% lower than the start of Trump’s term.

A strong dollar makes imports cheaper and can help keep inflation in check. A weak one can increase prices on foreign goods but boost American exports.

U.S. presidents have long voiced support for a strong dollar even as they pursued policies that, at times, pushed the currency lower. Trump has suggested a strong 💲dollar puts the U.S. at a disadvantage and that a weak dollar helps American industry. And as with most things with Trump, he’s been more blunt in his messaging.

“You make a hell of a lot more money with a weaker dollar,” he said last year, one of a number of public statements showing his preference for seeing the 💲dollar decline.

A look at where the 💲dollar stands and what it means for you:
Big multinationals benefit

Trump isn’t alone in seeing benefits of a weaker buck.

In recent months, corporate earnings calls have been peppered with talk of how a weaker dollar has helped companies from Philip Morris to Coca-Cola, with executives pulling out C-suite phrases like “favorable currency impact” to note how the dip brought tailwinds outside the U.S. that added to bottom lines.

“In many cases, we’ve got a weaker dollar, which is not unhelpful,” Elie Maalouf, the CEO of InterContinental Hotels, said on a February call as the company announced higher profits and revenues.

For big multinational companies that do business overseas, a weaker dollar can spur sales for products that suddenly become cheaper. 

Nevertheless, the vast majority of U.S. businesses are not operating beyond the border. For those catering to domestic customers, it’s a different story, particularly if they are reliant on importing goods.

Travis Madeira, a fourth-generation lobsterman who founded the lobster-shipping business LobsterBoys with his brother, makes about 80% of his sales to Americans, unlike some competitors who primarily export.

“The exporters are gonna have the advantage when it comes to the dollar weakening,” says Madeira, who is paying more to import bait and buy Canadian lobsters. “These guys are gonna have a little bit of a lever on us.”

Smaller companies are hurt:  Even among companies that do have a presence outside the U.S., the dollar’s fall can have an impact. While many big companies hedge currency to try and insulate themselves or push more sales overseas, smaller businesses are often more susceptible to the turbulence.

David Navazio, CEO of Pennsylvania-based Gentell, which makes bandages and other medical supplies, operates plants in Brazil, Paraguay, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. In each location, the dollar has fallen, increasing Gentell’s costs.

Gentell has had to raise some prices to reflect the currency fluctuation, which stacks on top of other challenges, including tariffs and war-related spikes to fuel costs.

“A year ago, none of these were concerns,” he says. “And it always hurts the consumer.”

Other currencies rise:  For the American consumer, the reality of a declining dollar is most obvious during foreign travel or when making a purchase directly from an international seller.

Cross the border into Mexico, the top foreign destination of Americans, and your dollar is about 16% weaker versus the peso compared with early 2025. Declines of about 10% to 17% have been recorded elsewhere, including against the Swiss franc, South African rand, Danish krone, Swedish krona and the Euro.

As for goods imported to the U.S., there is an impact, but it’s harder to gauge. Many economists estimate that, in advanced countries like the U.S., only about 5% to 10% of a currency dip is passed on to consumers.

But, they are an added stress when prices are already affected by other factors, like inflation.

Take coffee, ❗one of the grocery items that has seen the biggest price hike in the past year. Brazil is the biggest source of coffee for the U.S. and the dollar has fallen around 13% versus its real. Currency fluctuations can hit harder in developing economies and, while only a fraction of the change may feed into coffee’s ballooning price, every bit can pile up. Coffee prices are up nearly 19% in the U.S. in the past year, according to government data.

Expect more movement:  Currency values are constantly moving and, while the dollar’s recent fall is notable, it has reached lower levels at points in the presidencies of each of Trump’s predecessors, back through the creation of the

💲Dollar Index in 1973, when Richard Nixon was at the helm.

Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economist and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, says while “a lot of policies that Trump is doing are something of a cancer for the dollar,” he believes that it was destined to fall no matter who was in charge.

“The dollar had been on a 15-year bull run,” he said. “I would argue the dollar is still wildly overvalued and over the next maybe five or six years, it might fall 15%.” ⚠️ (IOW....ouch❗💥 is seems like consumer prices will never "drop like a rock", described by Trump. But, wait 🤪, Trump is forcing his name on U.S. currency so it is a given that our dollar will soon be like junk paper.🤣)

What does that mean for American consumers❓ Rogoff says commodity prices are likely to rise, particularly with the impact of the Iran war on fuel prices.

“They’re just going to go up,” he says, “no matter what the dollar’s at.”

___
Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://x.com/sedensky

Thank you President Bidne for visiting the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France where World War One veterans are interred

Echo news reported by Chris Megerian and Zeke Miller

BELLEAU, France (AP) — President Joe Biden closed out his trip to France by paying his respects at an American military cemetery that Donald Trump notably skipped* visiting when he was president, hoping his final stop Sunday will draw the stakes of the November election in stark relief.

Before returning to the United States, Biden honored America’s war dead at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery about an hour outside Paris. He placed a wreath at the cemetery chapel before an expanse of white headstones marking the final resting place of more than 2,200 U.S. soldiers who fought in World War I.

It was a solemn end to five days in which Trump was an unspoken yet unavoidable presence. On the surface, the trip marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day and celebrated the alliance between the United States and France. But during an election year when Trump has called into question fundamental understandings about America’s global role, Biden has embraced his Republican predecessor — and would-be successor — as a latent foil.

With headstones lying in a sweeping curve, the 42.5-acre Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in France, sits at the foot of Belleau Wood. The cemetery contains the graves of 2,289 war dead, most of whom fought in the vicinity and in the Marne Valley in the summer of 1918. The memorial chapel sits on a hillside, decorated with sculptured and stained-glass details of wartime personnel, equipment and insignia. Inscribed on its interior wall are 1,060 names of the missing. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered and identified. In 1940, during World War II the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery chapel was damaged due to heavy fighting in the vicinity. All damage was repaired except for one shell hole in the chapel, left as a reminder of what took place.

Belleau Wood adjoins the cemetery and contains many vestiges of World War I. A monument at the flagpole commemorates the valor of the U.S. Marines who captured much of this ground in 1918.

Presiddnt Biden capped off a five-day trip to France paying his respects with a wreath-laying at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial before returning to Washington. 

President Biden spent much of the trip to France honoring American veterans – but the subtext of Sunday’s expedition is also aimed at Trump, who scrapped his 2018, journey to the World War I memorial and later faced criticism for denigrating US veterans.

*In 2018, Trump, at the time, was in Paris to commemorate the centennial of the end of World War I with other world leaders, blamed weather and safety issues for eschewing the cemetery visit. The president’s Marine One helicopter cannot fly in low cloud cover, a decision that is made by military and security officials. But there did not appear to be a backup plan, and Trump did not make any statements of regret over not being able to visit the cemetery.

CNN later reported that Trump referred to the fallen US service members at Aisne-Marne in crude and derogatory terms. A former senior Trump administration official, who declined to be named, confirmed reporting from The Atlantic magazine, which cited sources who said Trump rejected the idea of a cemetery visit and proceeded to refer to the fallen soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.”

Republicans deliberately instigate expensive election chaos

Associated Press echo report:

#RepublicansAreTheProblem

PHOENIX (AP) — Ten months after Donald Trump lost his 2020, reelection bid in Arizona, supporters hired by Arizona Senate Republicans were preparing to deliver the results of an unprecedented partisan election review that is the climax of a bizarre quest to find evidence supporting the former president’s false claim that he lost because of fraud.

Arizona 2020 election audit in Maricopa County turned out to increase the President Biden 2020, winning vote margin.

Nearly every allegation made by the review team so far has crumbled under scrutiny. Election officials in Arizona and around the country expect more of the same Friday from the review team they say is biased, incompetent and chasing absurd or disproven conspiracy theories.

“Every time Trump and his supporters have been given a forum to prove this case, they have swung and missed,” said Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election attorney and vocal critic of Trump’s push to overturn the election.

The unprecedented partisan review — focused on the vote count in Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa — is led and funded largely by people who already believe that Trump was the true winner, despite dozens of lawsuits and extraordinary scrutiny that found no problems that could change the outcome. They’ve ignored the detailed vote-counting procedures in Arizona law.

Despite being widely mocked, the Arizona review has become a model that Trump supporters are eagerly pushing to replicate in other swing states where Biden won. Pennsylvania’s Democratic attorney general sued Thursday to block a GOP-issued subpoena for a wide array of election materials. In Wisconsin, a retired conservative state Supreme Court justice is leading a Republican-ordered investigation into the 2020 election, and this week threatened to subpoena election officials who don’t comply.

No matter what the reviews in Arizona and elsewhere purport to find, they cannot reverse Biden’s victory.

In Arizona, five people are scheduled to publicly outline the findings for two top Republicans in the state Senate chamber, including Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, a cybersecurity consulting firm with no election experience. He served as the head of the review team despite his prior work to promote “stop the steal” election conspiracies.

Shiva Ayyadurai, who has developed a loyal following for promoting COVID-19 misinformation on social media, will discuss his review of signatures on mail ballots. It’s not clear why he is qualified to do so. Ayyadurai, who is known as Dr. Shiva to his fans, has a Ph.D. but is not a medical doctor.

Ben Cotton, a computer forensics expert, will outline his analysis of vote-counting machines. Cotton has walked back his allegation that a key elections database was deleted.

Also scheduled to speak are Ken Bennett, a former Republican secretary of state, and Randy Pullen, a former chairman of the Arizona Republican Party. Both served as liaisons between the Senate and the review team.

They’ve been tight-lipped about their findings, but Bennett told a conservative radio host this week that he will “have a brief report about where Maricopa County failed to meet and comply with state statutes and election procedures.”

A document purported to be a leaked draft of the Cyber Ninjas report circulated late Thursday. It said a hand count of ballots confirmed Biden’s victory and showed a net gain of 360 votes for him. It also outlined a series of alleged shortcomings and recommended changes to state election laws.

Republican Senate President Karen Fann said in a text message the document was “a leaked draft from three days ago,” but did not dispute its authenticity. 

In fact, Fann would not say if the findings from the draft had changed over the course of the week, citing a nondisclosure agreement. (OMG!)

“I have signed an NDA,” she said. “I will not break my word.”

The hand count’s confirmation of a Biden victory goes against Trump’s narrative that widespread election fraud cost him the election. It also undercuts claims by some of this closest allies that vote-counting machines from Dominion Voting Systems, which were used in Maricopa County, changed votes.

“Unfortunately, the report is also littered with errors & faulty conclusions about how Maricopa County conducted the 2020, General Election,” Maricopa County officials said on Twitter.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, controlled 4-1 by Republicans, has vehemently defended the vote count. Republican Chairman Jack Sellers has called the review “a grift disguised as an audit.” GOP Supervisor Bill Gates said Thursday that the review’s reliance on funding from out-of-state Trump allies means the findings won’t be believable.

“The people who are funding this audit, the people who have called for this audit, we all know what they want it to find,” Gates said. “They want it to find that Donald Trump won Maricopa County.”

The Senate has agreed to spend $150,000 on the audit, plus security and facility costs. That pales in comparison to the nearly $5.7 million contributed as of late July by Trump allies.

Another Republican county supervisor, Clint Hickman, has been the subject of an outlandish conspiracy theory claiming a fire that killed 120,000 chickens at his family’s egg farm west of Phoenix was a ruse to destroy evidence of Trump’s victory.

Maricopa County’s vote count was conducted in front of bipartisan observers, as were legally required audits meant to ensure voting machines work properly. A partial hand count spot check found a perfect match.

Two extra post-election reviews by federally certified election experts also found no evidence that voting machines switched votes or were connected to the internet. The Board of Supervisors commissioned the extraordinary reviews in an effort to prove to Trump backers that there were no problems, but Fann and others backing her partisan review were unpersuaded.

Election experts predict the report could misinterpret normal election procedures to claim something nefarious or elevate minor mistakes into major allegations of wrongdoing.

“They’re minor procedural issues, and to try and amplify them to the point where they cast doubt on the election is nothing more than sore loserism,” said David Becker, a former lawyer in the U.S. Department of Justice voting section who founded the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

Biden won Maricopa County by 45,109 votes and Arizona by 10,457 votes. Minor procedural issues wouldn’t affect a margin that large, Becker said.

In July, Logan laid out a series of claims stemming from his misunderstanding of the election data he was analyzing, including that 74,000 mail ballots that were recorded as received but not sent. Trump repeatedly amplified the claims. But they had innocuous explanations.

Friday’s report stems from a process that began nearly a year ago. Trump and his allies, after their claims of election fraud were repeatedly dismissed in court, searched frantically for a way to block the certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6. Two top Republicans in the Arizona Senate came through, issuing a sweeping subpoena for all ballots in Maricopa County, the machines that counted them and a trove of election data. They said they would use the materials to conduct a “forensic audit.”

A court battle over the validity of the subpoena delayed the delivery of materials until April, three months after Biden took office. The review was supposed to take about 60 days but has been repeatedly set back, most recently because Logan and four others on his team contracted COVID-19.

The review has energized Trump supporters who hope it will prove he was the legitimate winner of the election and lead to his return to the White House, despite extraordinary scrutiny finding no fraud that would affect the election’s outcome.

Fann, the Republican Senate president, says the review is not intended to overturn the 2020 election but will find ways the Legislature can improve election laws.

Not all Republicans, even in the Senate, trust whatever results will come out of the review.

“They’re going to have to justify their existence, so they’re going to have to come up with something,” GOP Sen. Paul Boyer said Thursday. “And God knows what that is.”
___

Associated Press writer Bob Christie contributed.

Thank you January 6th Commission for seeking truth about the seditionist attack on the US Capitol

‘A hit man sent them.’ Police at the Capitol recount the horrors of Jan. 6 as the inquiry begins. #Hitman45 !- The New York Times

Witnesses for the first January 6th Commission hearing — officer Harry Dunn and Sgt. Aquilino Gonell of the U.S. Capitol Police, and Metropolitan Police Department officers Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges.

An Associated Press report by Aaron Morrison

Racism of rioters takes center stage in Jan. 6 hearing.

It had only been hinted at in previous public examinations of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection: Scores of rioters attacked police officers not just with makeshift weapons, stun guns and fists, but with racist slurs and accusations of treason.

Four officers, two from the U.S. Capitol Police and two from the D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, on Tuesday detailed the racism and bigotry they encountered during the violent assault on the Capitol. Their direct, harrowing accounts laid out the hours when the pro-police sentiment of supporters of former President Donald Trump was pushed aside, consumed by the fury of wanting to keep him in the White House.

Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn told lawmakers about an exchange he had with rioters, who disputed that President Joe Biden defeated Trump in the last presidential election. When Dunn, who is Black, argued with the rioters that he voted for Biden and that his vote should be counted, a crowd began hurling the N-word at him.

"One woman in a pink ‘MAGA’ (Make America Great Again) shirt yelled, ‘You hear that, guys, this n——— voted for Joe Biden!’” said Dunn, who has served more than a dozen years on the Capitol Police force.

“Then the crowd, perhaps around 20 people, joined in, screaming “Boo! F——— n—— !” he testified. He said no one had ever called him the N-word while he was in uniform. That night, he sat in the Capitol Rotunda and wept.

Ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a member of the panel, said the Capitol and D.C. officers would provide insight into “what it was like to be on the front lines.”

However, Dunn was also speaking to the experience of being an African American police officer, who make up 29% of roughly 2,300 officers and civilians serving on the Capitol Police force.

January 6th Congressional Commission on July 27, 2021

Dunn said another Black male officer told him that, while confronting the rioters on Jan. 6, he was told to “Put your gun down and we’ll show you what kind of n—— you really are!”

The panel’s chairman, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, pressed Dunn further about how he felt being an African American officer facing down racists and enduring racial slurs in the halls of democracy.

“It’s just so disheartening that people like that will attack you just for the color of your skin,” Dunn replied. “Once I was able to process it, it hurt. My blood is red. I’m an American citizen. I’m a police officer. I’m a peace officer.”

While Black Americans make up roughly 13% of the U.S. population, they were roughly 11% of all police officers in 2016 across a sampling of 18,000 local law enforcement agencies in the U.S., according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Over 71% of officers were white in 2016.

It’s this kind of treatment endured by Black men and women in law enforcement that policing experts say makes recruitment and diversity among U.S. police forces challenging. The law enforcement profession has also struggled with its origins in America, dating back to the slave patrols in the early 1700s formed to capture people who escaped slavery and terrorize the enslaved into submission. Although many African Americans have served valiantly on local and federal police forces since the civil rights movement, data shows Black Americans are still arrested in disproportionate numbers and more likely to be fatally shot by police.

Another Capitol Police officer, Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, wiped away tears as he recalled the story of his immigration to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic, only to face fellow Americans who considered him a traitor for defending the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“It was very disappointing,” Gonell said. “I saw many officers fighting for their lives against people, rioters (and) citizens, turning against us.”

Gonell, an Iraq War veteran, also called out the disparate law enforcement response to the overwhelmingly white crowd of rioters and the response to racial justice protests in 2020 that followed the murder of George Floyd and the police involved deaths of other Black Americans.

“As America and the world watched in horror what was happening to us at the Capitol, we did not receive timely reinforcements and support we needed,” he said. “In contrast, during the Black Lives Matter protest last year, U.S. Capitol Police had all the support we needed and more. Why the different response?”

Indeed, law enforcement agencies in dozens of cities last year showed overwhelming force toward BLM demonstrators. Many used chemical dispersants, rubber bullets and hand-to-hand combat with largely peaceful crowds and some unruly vandals and looters. By the end of 2020, police had made more than 14,000 arrests.

In January, as images and video emerged from the attacks on the Capitol, a racist and anti-Semitic element among the rioters became apparent. One man was pictured inside of the Capitol building carrying a Confederate battle flag.

And in the nearly seven months since the attacks, more video investigations revealed several rioters had flashed white supremacist gang signs and “white power” hand signals during the insurrection.

Gonell also called out the hypocrisy he perceived from many of the rioters who profess to support law enforcement — “the thin blue line” — but did not agree with those protesting over Floyd last summer.

“There are some who expressed outrage when someone simply kneeled for social justice during the national anthem,” Dunn said. “Where are those same people expressing outrage to condemn the violent attack on law enforcement officers, the U.S. Capitol, and our American democracy?”

“I’m still waiting for that,” he said.

Morrison reported from New York. He is a member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity team.

No #IMpotus45 witnesses will exculpate Donald Trump under oath - GOP Senators must face the truth

Associated Press (AP) echo report published in the Chattanooga Times Free Press (Tennessee) by Colleen Long, Mike Balsamo, Eric Tucker, Laurie Kellman, Alan Fram, Zeke J. Miller and Matthew Daly in Washington, who contributed to this report.

Since the AP report was published on November 13, 2019, the following headline was released in Time.com:
Ukraine Ambassador Bill Taylor, a Key Player in the Impeachment Inquiry, to Leave Post

Obviously, Donald Trump has zero witnesses who can give testimony under oath to exculpate his guilt in the Ukraine quid pro quo impeachment #IMpotus45.

Impeachment witness says Trump asked about Ukraine probes

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time a top diplomat testified under oath Wednesday that Donald Trump was overheard asking about "the investigations" he wanted Ukraine to pursue that are central to the #IMpotus45 impeachment inquiry.

William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, revealed the new information as the House Intelligence Committee opened extraordinary hearings on whether the 45th president of the United States should be removed from office.

Taylor said his staff recently told him they overheard Trump when they were meeting with another diplomat, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, at a restaurant the day after Trump's July 25, 2019, phone call with the new leader of Ukraine (Volodymyr Zelensky) that sparked the impeachment investigation.

The staff explained that Sondland had called the president and they could hear Trump on the phone asking about "the investigations." The ambassador told the president the Ukrainians were ready to move forward, Taylor testified.

The hearing Wednesday was the first public session of the impeachment inquiry, a remarkable moment, even for a White House full of them.

It's the first chance for America, and the rest of the world, to see and hear for themselves about Trump's actions toward Ukraine and consider whether they are, in fact, impeachable offenses.

An anonymous whistleblower's complaint to the intelligence community's inspector general — including that Trump had pressed Ukraine's president to investigate Democratic foe Joe Biden and Bidens' son and was holding up U.S. military aid — ignited the rare inquiry now unfolding in Congress.

The country has been here only three times before, and never against the 21st century backdrop of real-time commentary, including from the Republican president himself. The proceedings were being broadcast live, and on social media, from a packed hearing room on Capitol Hill.

The session unfolded in measured, quietly dramatic tones. Taylor, a former Army infantry leader, his voice weathered after a 50-year career in foreign service, paused for sips of water during what he acknowledged was a lengthy recitation of facts. It took 40 minutes.

The scene, with Republican questioning still to come, was offering the credibility that Democrats wanted to set the stage and sway public opinions, but Trump still offered counter-programming.

Moments after the hearings began, his Trumpzi reelection machine sent out an email blast: "FAKE IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS HAVE BEGUN! ... I WANT TO RAISE 3 MILLION DOLLARS IN THE NEXT 24 HOURS."

At the start, Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the Intelligence Committee, outlined the question at the core of the impeachment inquiry -- whether the president used his office to pressure Ukraine officials for personal political gain.

"The matter is as simple and as terrible as that," said Schiff of California. "Our answer to these questions will affect not only the future of this presidency but the future of the presidency itself, and what kind of conduct or misconduct the American people may come to expect from their commander in chief."

Republicans lawmakers immediately pushed Democrats to hear in closed session from the anonymous whistleblower.

Schiff denied the request at the time but said it would be considered later.

"We will do everything necessary to protect the whistleblower's identity," Schiff declared.

The top Republican on the panel, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, accused the Democratic majority of conducting a "scorched earth" effort to take down the president after the special counsel's Russia investigation into the 2016 election failed to spark impeachment proceedings.

"We're supposed to take these people at face value when they trot out new allegations?" said Nunes, a top Trump ally. He derided what he called the "cult-like atmosphere in the basement of the Capitol" where investigators have been interviewing witnesses behind closed doors for weeks. Transcripts of those interviews have been released.

(MoooooveOn stupid!) Nunes* called the Ukraine matter a "low rent" sequel to the Russia probe. "Democrats are advancing their impeachment sham," he said.

Both Taylor and the other public witness, George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department, defied White House instructions not to testify. They both received subpoenas to appear.

The veteran foreign service officers delivered heartfelt history lessons about Ukraine, a young and hopeful democracy, situated next to Russia but reaching out to the West.

Kent, in his opening remarks, directly contradicted a core complaint against Joe Biden being raised by allies of the White House, saying he never heard any U.S. official try to shield a Ukraine company from investigations.

Kent acknowledged that he himself raised concerns in 2015 about the then vice president's son, Hunter Biden, being on the board of Burisma, a Ukraine gas company. He warned that it could give the "perception of a conflict of interest." But Kent indicated no one from the U.S. was protecting the company from investigations in Ukraine as Republicans have implied.

"Let me be clear; however, I did not witness any efforts by any U.S. official to shield Burisma from scrutiny," Kent said.

The career diplomat did not go into detail about the issues central to the impeachment inquiry, but he voiced his concerns with them.

"I do not believe the United States should ask other countries to engage in selective, politically associated investigations or prosecutions against opponents of those in power, because such selective actions undermine the rule of law regardless of the country," he said.

So far, the narrative being unspooled in weeks of investigations for the inquiry is splitting Americans, mostly along the same lines as Trump's unusual presidency. The Constitution sets a dramatic but vague bar for impeachment, and there's no consensus yet that Trump's actions at the heart of the inquiry meet the threshold of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Trump calls the whole thing a "witch hunt," a retort that echoes Nixon's own defense.

At its core, the inquiry stems from Trump's July 25 phone call with Ukraine's newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy when he asked the Zelenskiy for "a favor."

Trump wanted the Ukraine government to investigate Democrats in the 2016 election and his potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, all while holding as leverage military aid the young democracy relies on as it confronts an aggressive Russia.

The anonymous whistleblower first alerted officials to concerns about the phone call. The White House released a rough transcript of the conversation, with portions deleted.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was initially reluctant to launch a formal impeachment inquiry. But she pressed ahead in September after the whistleblower's complaint.

Over the past month, witness after witness has appeared behind closed doors to tell the investigators what they know.

Whether Wednesday's proceedings begin to end a presidency or help secure Trump's position, it was certain his chaotic term had finally arrived at a place he could not control and a force, the constitutional system of checks and balances, that he could not ignore.

Unlike the Watergate hearings and Richard Nixon, there is not yet a "cancer-on-the-presidency" moment galvanizing public opinion. Nor is there the national shrug, as happened when Bill Clinton's impeachment ultimately didn't result in his removal from office. It's perhaps most like the partisanship-infused impeachment of Andrew Johnson after the Civil War.

*Devin Nunes Demands Satirical Internet Cow Stop Making Fun Of Him… Or Else

Trump-Putin duo lie leaders - echo opinion from Kansas

Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, shake hand at the beginning of a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland, Monday, July 16, 2018. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Echo letter from Leavenworth Kansas published in the Leavenworth Times newspaper, from Pat Davidson in Leavenworth.

Two liars in Helsinki

(At the Helsinki news conference) two of the most powerful liars on planet Earth each complemented one another.

One lies because he can. Any disagrees with Russia's Vladimir Putin and you will have an accident or die of some type of bizarre exposure to chemicals or radiation.

The other is our President Donald J. Trump. I don’t know why he lies. He is very successful, very wealthy, has a beautiful wife and is the president of the United States.

That being said, they are both liars, and you have to be some kind of ignorant to continue to believe what a known liar says.

Donald Trump was born wealthy, never had to worry about a roof over his head or where his next meal came from, yet those who work paycheck to paycheck seem to think that he knows what they need.

Donald Trump managed to avoid the draft with college deferments and “bone spurs” yet he is now the commander in chief of our military. Donald Trump has done very little in his life that did not benefit him. When he says that the new tax system will cost him money, he’s lying.

I should get a bigger refund on my taxes, but if I want to buy a car or another product that uses overseas materials, it’ll cost me more due to his trade policies.

He has already attacked my paycheck as a federal retiree by expressing a desire to stop my cost of living raises. He lies so much, I don’t know what I can believe.

Some point to the campaign promises he’s made, and the attempts to fulfill them. Some are being completed to some degree, but there are some that are not.

He appears to need attention to an extent that borders on mania, doing anything or saying anything to get time on television or in newspapers.

I just hope whoever has the football keeps a tight grip on it. As I’m typing this, the news is carrying a story that he is saying that he misspoke yesterday.

Somebody must have broken through his ego shield and convinced him that he made a big mistake with his comments, but again, I’m sorry, I can’t believe this statement either.