The Trump Impeachment Trial is now underway. This is only the third such occurrence in US history.
Shortly after 2 p.m., Chief Justice John Roberts, who is presiding, was escorted into the Senate by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), Roy Blunt (R., Mo.), Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.).
Everyone in the chamber rose to their feet, including members of the public and press who looked on from the balconies. The only sound was the scratching of reporters’ pens. Then Chief Justice Roberts spoke.
“Senators, I attend the Senate in conformity with your notice for the purpose of joining with you for the trial of the President of the United States. I am now prepared to take the oath.”
Senators were then called in alphabetical order to the Senate clerk’s desk to sign their names in an oath book. All of the senators were present for the swearing-in except for Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.), who is at home with a family member facing a medical issue, according to his office. He plans to be sworn in next week, before the trial begins in earnest.
Trial Adjourned
The Senate trial adjourned until Tuesday at 1 p.m. following the swear in process.
Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a national holiday.
Two Articles of Impeachment
- The first article of impeachment stems from Mr. Trump pressing Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, including by withholding almost $400 million in aid to help Kyiv combat Russian aggression.
- The second article accuses Mr. Trump of impeding Congress’s investigation by preventing witnesses from testifying and defying subpoenas for documentary evidence.
Trump Violated the Law
Regarding point 1, earlier today, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan Congressional watchdog concluded Hold on Ukraine Aid Violated Law.
Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law. OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA).
The withholding was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA.
The GAO doesn’t enforce penalties for its legal decisions. Thus any it’s up to Congress to come up with a remedy.
This impeachment process is the remedy.
What About Witnesses?
What witnesses are called and what evidence is admitted is up to the majority.
If four Republicans defect, the Democrats may catch a break. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will otherwise set up rules and ram them through.
Witnesses are a potentially a two-edged sword. Both Trump and the Democrats have reasons to both want them and not want them.
And if there are witnesses, we are going to hear a lot about Hunter Biden.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Trump can be removed from office and still run in 2020. (it will be his first term technically) In fact, part of me wants to see that happen just for the lulz
Why would the GOP nominate such damaged goods. At that point they will all rally behind Pence like they did Ford in 76.
No he cannot, because Schiff read out twice in the Articles that he will be removed and no longer qualified to serve in any capacity for the USG. The President is an employee of the USA corporation, which is why they didn’t allow him to work without a salary as he requested. So he receives it but then gives it away to various charities.
And if they succeed in removing Trump, Pence will go next, and rapidly, because all they will have to establish is that he knew what Trump was up to in Ukraine-Burisma-Biden business and he’s out.
Then Pelosi will realise what makes her twitch and giggle all the time these days: fulfilling her ambition to be the First Female President of the United States!
So Biden embezzled Ukraine and Warren lied about being an Indian to get into college and dems have zero problems with them running for the next president.
It is too bad that not a single American was charged in meddling in Ukraine’s internal affairs back in 2014 when the country was beset by a political revolution that tossed out the old crooks in power and replaced them with new crooks. The revolution was followed by a civil war that has claimed over 13,000 Ukrainian lives and a redrawing of political boundaries. From what I have read, the chief American culprit was Victoria Nuland, then the Assistant Secretary of State for East European Affairs.
It is too bad that the GAO never investigated the US role in the Ukrainian revolution.
What you call a civil war is actually Russian aggression.
The former Ukrainian leadership was probably one of the most corrupt national governments in human history (at least till Trump) resorting to poisoning the opposition who was so hated by Putin. Viktor Yanukovych had zero independence from the Kremlin. The 2014 Ukrainian revolution was a spontaneous uprising that went on for months centered upon the Euro Maidan Square in Kiev. I know it was because I watched every single day of it on live webcams from the square, and the revisionist history being peddled by the Kremlin and Trump and the shills of the GRU that it was somehow manipulated by the EU or US is just pure bullshit.
At the end of the months of protesting the riot police simply went in guns blazing and killed a number of the protesters and it is a fact that several Russian military sharpshooters were among those doing the killing. The reaction in Ukraine was so violently anti Russian that Yanukovych and other high government officials fled the country. They now live VERY comfortably in Russia as guests of Putin, and it turns out that Yanukovych had been looting the nation on Putin’s behalf all along.
Then Putin started a war in the east of Ukraine after violently seizing the Crimean Peninsula that is part of Ukraine as well. Yes there are older and more rural people there who miss the old Soviet Union, but unfortunately for them they resided in a sovereign nation, Ukraine, but Putin just did what he has done before, in Georgia for example. Get a group of Russian sympathisers together and hand them all Russian passports, then declare the region free of the federal government after arming them with weapons and supplying missile systems, tanks, etc. These actions break all international laws related to sovereignty. Putin’s goals are to retake the entire old Soviet empire and then some.
No one former Soviet territory is large enough to stand up to the Tsar Vladimir on their own. Russia is once again a dictatorship that threatens global stability and peace. And Putin’s stooge in the Oval Office will make sure that the USA becomes a second rate nation as Putin wants, because Putin blames the US for the Soviet collapse, never mind that communism just does not work.
Putin is by ny definition of the word an EVIL man, and he selected the single most evil American to be his lap dog in the US.
Trump has to go, if he is not removed from office the USA will fail. And the morons of the right are cheering Putin on and hoping for just that failure. They nurture sick little dreams of racist yeoman citizens with no government at all, preppers and tinfoil hat wearing nuts that want the US to fail. It did not take much for Putin to manipulate those. But, when their dreams of the USA collapsing come true they are going to find out the hard way that life in a Putin controlled world is going to be far more brutal and far less free than they ever thought possible, you will cry and beg and pray for Obama to return and save your ass. You just have no concept of the scope of brutality Putin is capable of. He makes Hitler look like a total amateur.
The new Ukrainian Government are actual National Socialists. Real ones
In 2014, I remember reading about Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist who initially sided with the Nazis when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941. Read more about Bandera here: http://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/09/stepan-bandera-nationalist-euromaidan-right-sector/
When the Germans came into Ukraine they were greeted by most of the population as liberators. Liberating them from what? The bloody bolsheviks who only a few years earlier had perpetrated the most bloody massacres and starvations known to man at that time.
Context, Watson, context!
This is a no win for Moscow Mitch, if he allows legitimate witnesses to testify about the Ukraine scandal to be called Trump is toast. Trump broke the law and his clown car lawyer and comic book goons are flat out guilty, we all know that.
If the turtle looking senate leader refuses to allow witnesses, or uses witnesses to turn the trial into a chaotic circus, such as Rand Paul has promised to do, the GOP will pay for it in November with a blue tsunami. Please remember that the democrats took the house in 2018 and the only reason they did not retake the senate was there were way more democrat seats on the voting block than GOP, this time the shoe is on the other foot. Notice 2018 versus 2020:
2018 “Among the 33 Senate seats up for regular election in 2018, twenty-three were held by Democrats, two by independents who caucused with the Senate Democrats and eight by Republicans.”
2020 “Including the special elections in Arizona and Georgia, Republicans will be defending 23 seats in 2020, while the Democratic Party will be defending 12 seats.”
The Hill lists as the 5 most vulnerable senators 1 democrat (Jones of Alabama of course; he could beat a republican child rapist but isn’t going to beat three contenders that are not proven yet to be rapists) and 4 republicans.
The four are McSally of AZ and she is really hurting in the polls; Tom Tillis of NC who used to be critical of Trump but now is in lockstep with him, in a purple state that has been getting bluer every election. His is the lowest approval rating in the senate. Susan Collins is in danger, her waffling and ultimate betrayal of her electorate on the Kavanaugh confirmation that triggered a CrowdPAC fund for whoever the democratic challenger that got nominated would be, to the tune of $4 million which is huge in Maine, her opponent will start with a war chest that Collins cannot match. But, the challenger also has not got much of a record, to many it looks like the lady woke up one day and said to herself I think I will run for Collins’ senate seat. It will be close but don’t underestimate the loathing for Collins in Maine. And, Cory Gardener of CO; the state has turned pretty blue, the legislature and governor are solidly democrat now, the new governor Polis is even a gay democrat, and Gardener only won his seat in 2014 by 2 points. Worse for him the very popular former governor Hickenlooper is running as his opponent.
This is very important, and the conduct of the impeachment trial should the GOP not take it seriously is GOING to just wreck them in November.
In that event, with a dem majority in the senate, there will be a second impeachment likely in 2021, and this time it will be with Chuck Schumer as senate leader. There are so many things Trump can be impeached on they can hold annual impeachments for the next 20 years. The man is a walking crime wave.
Those 5 seats are probably gone no matter what happens in the senate with impeachment, but, if Moscow Mitch and the GOP acquit Trump without a FAIR trial they will lose a lot more than that. Nothing will electrify the left as much as a sham trial, and a fair trial would see Trump removed from office, deny it if you want to, the GOP has so little credibility left the only way they win in 2020 is with Sanders as the democratic nominee.
“Walking crime wave” – love it!
I saw an interview with voters in McConnell’s district this AM on MSNBC. All seemed negative on McConnell. Payback for jumping on the Trump clown car can be a bitch, Mitch!
If your 77 years old and very wealthy…whats to worry….the entire congress is old and getting older…most of them have their full pensions and their own personal wealth….you think McConnell is really that worried?
If the republicans could vote anonymously, Trump would be out. A lot of republicans hate Trump too. Not because of anything he’s done. Because he cut to the front of the line. He’s not even a politician and he won. The biggest hater still alive is Mitt Romney. McCain despised him more, but he’s 6 feet under.
McCain was terrified that his actions in the ME – he was in charge of a major foreign affairs agency or think tank or something – many of which involved coordinating terrorist cells, some of whom later became our enemies (or so it has been told in the press, which might itself be deception). I suspect that’s why T insulted him in public. His military people had already given him some of the background on McStain. And of course McC was the one who got the dossier to the FBI. Interesting… a Dem paper supposedly (probably mainly written by Mrs. Ohr and colleagues), then shopped through an asset in Russia – actually or electronically – to the Steele guy who has admitted that he got it all from someone else he trusted, who then got it to…
McCain.
So the Establishment went to war with Trump probably not so much of his vulgar character but because of his dangerous, sophisticated allies – Flynn, Rogers, Sessions and many more. They all might get their funds cut or, gasp!, even worse, exposed as crooks and liars.
This was a good interview on the Daily Show!
Rick Wilson – Being An Anti-Trump Conservative And “Running Against The Devil”
Interview | 1/14/2020
“Running Against the Devil” author Rick Wilson excoriates his fellow conservatives for being unwilling to stand up to President Trump and offers advice for Democrats in 2020.
Very good interview. Recommended reading” “The Age of Illusions” by Andrew Bacevich. I wish Bacevich were running for president instead of Trump.
GAO is a department in the legislative branch of government, not of the judicial branch. It is staffed by accountants, not lawyers, and its declarations of legality or illegality are utterly meaningless.
“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.”
― Franz Kafka
How many times has the GAO found other president’s actions illegal? How many times did the GAO find Obama’s actions illegal? I’m going to go out on a limb and guess A LOT of times. How many times did this result in ANY punishment? I’ll guess never.
The GAO allegation is a complete crock. It’s a shame that your anti-Trump disposition inhibits your judgement: https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2020/01/16/gao-trump-violated-impoundment-control-act-hold-ukraine-aid/
Mish doesn’t have an anti-Trump disposition though.
Yes he does, but he’s quite charming about it, generally speaking.
Is Mish finally coming around? Seems like last week impeachment was an unsubstantiated witch hunt.
The Senate trial needs to answer the following questions:
It’s entirely reasonable to conclude yes to 1, but no to 2.
Not sure how to handle the 2nd article, but somehow the House prosecutors are going to have to argue about what responsibility the President has to provide access to Congress, with Trump lawyers taking the other side. The 2nd article may be a lost cause. I think that obstructing the Mueller investigation would have been a stronger case.
The witnesses that are called should be able to provide insight and expertise on those arguments only, and I don’t see how calling Hunter to testify answers any of those critical questions.
“Is Mish finally coming around? Seems like last week impeachment was an unsubstantiated witch hunt.”
It is a coup. They have been out to get Trump from BEFORE day one.
Yes, I agree, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t do anything wrong.
If it were me, knowing that the Dems were out to get me, I’d be really careful with everything. He’s slipped up pretty badly twice now. First in obstructing the Mueller investigation, and secondly with using foreign aid to try and get some dirt on Biden. That’s on him.
Even the Mueller people – who detest him – weren’t able to accuse him of obstructing the investigation. Or did I miss something? They floated possible obstructions in their 10 point list, but nothing was solid enough that they could recommend impeachment based on any of them. And that’s all they had, really marginal process-type stuff. They gave over all documents, most staff were interviewed, and no doubt extensive tangential investigations not to do with Russia collusion were delved into, legally allowed, but ethically disgraceful. And he survived.
I think we can safely conclude that he didn’t really obstruct them, otherwise he would have been hung, drawn and quartered by now instead of this shabby impeachment without any criminal act in the Articles.
Yeah, I think you missed a few things.
Mueller claims that he isn’t able to charge a sitting President with a crime because of presidence. There’s a method of charging and removing a President, and that responsibility falls on Congress.
Muller published an entire volume of the report that was dedicated solely to obstruction by the President as a historical record to preserve the evidence. Once the President leaves office, the Justice Department can bring charges against him based on the evidence in the report.
The DOJ explicitly stated this was not true. That statement by Mueller was made as a talking point to deflect obvious criticism that they found no crime. Even if you don’t buy that, name any part of the Mueller report that established any incontrovertible facts that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the election. He found none – and indeed he said precisely that under oath to Congress.
The obstruction ‘process crimes’ were also very feeble. Nothing like hiding documents, causing witness to lie etc. etc. All inuendo. In short:
All just talking points!
If any of them were substantive, don’t you think they would be in the Articles of Impeachment? Of course they would be. But they aren’t. Because there was no there there.
The entire investigation is a huge stain on US political history, but also proof positive that the Deep State narrative – no matter how fuzzy in terms of specifics – is on the money. It’s not a new thing, anyway. Various well-informed authors have been lamenting it since around the 1920’s….
Indeed, ALL States have to deal with it, which is why there is a checks and balances system in the American Republic. However, ALL systems can be subverted by corruption. The main corrupters since 2016 haven’t been Trump – even though he’s no angel for sure – but the ones trying to obstruct and even break his Presidency, from before he even took the oath of office no less. More than half the House Managers going up to the Senate today called for impeachment several years ago.
Shabby!
My understanding is that obstruction was not an article because of a political decision. They were considering it, but decided to protect Dems that didn’t support impeachment before Ukraine. That’s the rumor, at least.
I agree that many have been calling for his removal long before he did anything to justify his removal — that doesn’t mean he hasn’t done anything worthy of being removed. Knowing this, he should have been extra careful, but he’s done 2 really stupid things now: obstruction, and Ukraine.
Calling Hunter would be an attempt to catch people tied to the past administration in a Ukraine natural gas, Manafort/Podesta money laundering scheme theory. Trump is also mad as hell about Russians usurping other sources of natural gas to most of the EU through the Gulfstream 2 pipeline.
Is the GAO non partisan? It is turning out to be that there is a lot of government corruption going on.
The OPCW is supposed to be non partisan, but there is a huge corruption scandal over the Douma, Syria incident, that the mainstream media is suppressing.
The federal government, top to bottom, hates Trump. If you go to any federal building where there’s a public TV, it will almost certainly have CNN on.
But why do they hate him so much?
I suspect it’s because he came in on a truly anti-establishment wave which took them by surprise. Sessions was known as the most honest pol in DC and he backed him early. The Breitbart crowd was all in and before the election their main target, as recounted by Bannon recently in a long interview, was the ‘moderate’ Republicans in Congress, the RINO’s. They wanted to boost Main Street at the expense of Wall St versus the current paradigm since WW II which is the opposite, with think tanks and university economists pushing that view almost exclusively brainwashing most of the new elites to share that view without even understanding what they were spouting and promulgating in turn.
Plus they had Flynn, the most highly regarded deep intelligence officer. Military intelligence is senior to civil, including FBI and CIA, NSA etc. Anything those guys have, the military people can see too. Everything. Flynn knew where all the bodies in the Intel Community were buried, but also probably tons of stuff in the Admin State. And Admiral Rogers blew the whistle on thousands of surveillance no-nos including FISA abuses in December ’16 after the election. Trump fled to his golf course because Trump Tower was being surveilled. The DS people must have panicked and launched their ‘insurance policy’ which was to discredit and hopefully kick out this unwanted Pres. who might be able to expose them all once he had the keys to the White House and access to intel from Flynn and Rogers.
It’s about Obama’s people in part, but probably it’s more about the entire Deep State establishment in DC which is far more influential than any White House, all of whom come and go. The Special Executive Service (?) people get paid more than the President. They probably have complete immunity as part of the deal since they have to do a lot of stuff which wouldn’t pass muster if it got out in public. They are twisted and have the ability to believe that anything they do is for the good of the country. And seemingly they really are above the law, which even Presidents have to heed.
So I think the Trump administration was – and still might be – a huge threat to them. Barr is a system man, but he is going after only one specific thing, just the 2016 Russian-collusion false accusation business, not the whole swamp – of course not. He’s a Bush man after all, and loves Director Wray and Rosenstein and Comey and all those crooks – heck he even hired Epstein or some such way back when.
But still Trump is a threat. They have successfully kept him on the back foot his entire presidency, playing defense and painting him – again successfully – as a mob boss and traitor. If he ever manages to get head above water and goes on offense, heads will roll.
And it will be a good thing.
But probably no such thing will ever happen.
I call BS. The entire system is stuffed with partisans. I’m not arguing for Trump — how the hell would I know whether he “broke the law” or not. I’m just saying everything coming out of Washington stinks like a blown out wax seal under a toilet. The best thing for this country and world might be a meteor strike during the impeachment trial.
Amen!
Sweet meteor of death 2020.
well said!
Hmmmm…. GAO also has TDS?
Mish – FWIW Trump has already been impeached. He can wear that however he wants but the longer the Senate Trial goes on the worse he comes out looking. Any other President would win under the current economic circumstances in a landslide but Trump repeatedly has felt the need to cheat in order to win. Only time will tell if he pays the price for this but the truth is he never had to do any of it.
Trump is better than any cat. Whether you like or dislike the guy he is one lucky dude and gets away with things most of us would never even consider. Hoping for myself that he is getting close to #9.
Do you think most people are ethical ?
Is winning the electoral college now considered cheating?
No but bribing a foreign country to investigate a political opponent is. The bottom line is he cant help himself despite the fact that he doesnt need to do it. I voted for him once but the dude literally doesn’t realize that he can win legitimately. But it is as if he doesn’t recognize this himself.
A political opponent that may not win his party’s nomination. I’m not sure that was ever his motive in the first place. I think this may go back further to the money laundering with Manafort and Podesta’s brother, they were guilty as hell, and how that ties back to the past administration as many of these Pentagon folks currently on Trump’s ass had their hands all over the 2012 coup. This story has never been told. The surface isn’t even scratched for that matter. This political opponent of course being in the past administration rather prominently. Then the whole natural gas, Gulfstream 2 pipeline comes into the economic politics between Russia and Ukraine as well.
So when Biden admits on TV that he threatened to withhold a billion dollars in USG aid unless they fired the prosecutor investigating Burisma who was paying his drug-addict son $50,000 a month for work he had no background in, that’s okay with you?
If it isn’t okay, is it just not okay to investigate it because he’s running for President?
Pray tell.
Trump is a tool if he thinks this is about corruption. Likewise with the Dems. Putin is running circles around America. This week he started working on 2024 elections In Russia. Putin will have a hand in every America election until his death.
I wasn’t talking about Trump. I was answering Casual Oberver’s point that “bribing a foreign country to investigate a political opponent” is a serious no-no. If he believes Trump did that (a stretch at best), what does he think about what Biden admitted (leverage a billion dollar grant into firing a prosecutor investigatng a company his son was working in).
It’s amazing to me how many people just buy into partisan talking points/spin without thinking for themselves.
Trump made his own mess. Of course there is partisanship but Trump is just poor at playing the political game and gets caught more often then not doing illegal crap. He is a poor excuse for a leader which is why Putin is using him until he no longer proves useful.
Casual, you seem to keep dodging the question.
We know Trump asked the Ukrainian president to look into possible Biden corruption at Burisma. That seems entirely right given what we know, the Biden’s boasts and his entirely unsuitable son given a plum job. As head of law and order, Trump should ask for this to be investigated. Bear in mind too that Trump would know a lot more about this scandal than the general public know. I doubt very much that he would have asked for anything unless the intelligence services know exactly what happened.
The story I am hearing is that US aid money was cycled into the Ukraine, then cycled back out into the hands of certain private individuals, so the corruption is on a far greater level than had previously been alleged, and the corruption from the Bidens already in plain sight is bad enough. If the corruption was far worse than we know, and Trump has this in his back pocket, I would expect him to expose it and put it onto the record. This impeachment trial could get interesting, and the Dems appear to have taken the bait.
Good points, but I don’t think the US President (any of them since JFK at least) has the power to do what you suggest. Clearly he doesn’t have the power to declassify certain documents. He had to delegate that to Barr – an old insider – who has released nothing of substance. Maybe he’s waiting until after Durham is finished and the country will be in for a paradigm busting series of revelations, but I for one am not holding breath.
Neither Durham investigation nor the upcoming trial are likely to expose that which ‘They’ don’t want exposed.
The impeachment business is a ginormous election talking point. They float something up which can be labelled ‘impeachment’ so Trump is impeached. He is an impeached President. A huge insult, a wound. Then the Republican Senate, either decisively or with a Kavanaugh 2.0 process (unlikely given how ghastly that was – they won’t be trusting Dems to behave like Senators again), fails to remove him. They are hoping for 55 votes against so that he is ‘saved by a traitorous minority.’
Then they run an election against an impeached President for one, but also – and perhaps more importantly given how weak their field is despite Mish’s insistence that it’s 50-50 and that Biden and Klobuchar are qualified candidates with a shot at winning, that will be their main, and perhaps only, talking point: if you vote us in, the rabid 24/7 hatefest in the media will stop, things will go back to normal, and you get a chance to be a part of history by throwing this Mob Boss Criminal Orange Man Bad pus…y-grabbing bigot out on his ass and ideally into a jail after he’s prosecuted by SDNY for something.
Compelling stuff.
Because they have nothing else to run on at all.
Economy humming; no new wars for first time in a while; stocks high, wages up, small town America doing very well, inner city stuff improving where they are allowed to try (except in the Sanctuary City jurisdictions where most of what they pick up on is human waste) and so on. If you are not infected with TDS, life is actually pretty good. You can’t watch television because it’s non-stop angst, anguish, anger and bile, but everything else is fine.
So that’s what the impeachment is about: wounding and tarnishing the Republicans for failing to remove their own President who has not been accused of any crime.
Really, you have to give it to those guys. They understand hardball politics and can run rings around the R’s. Unfortunately for them but fortunately for us, they also don’t understand Americans. Theirs is a higher calling, how to make a better world for everyone that they get to run and control.
I hope Durham has something. But probably it will be low-hanging fruit and in back rooms somewhere there will be some arm-twisting to get certain people – like the Clintons and Brennans – to back off and go away. But we won’t see any of that stuff.
Putin is using him!!
Only lefties believe these ancient commie stories – because it is lefties who colluded with them in the first place!
One of whose last names was Schiff!
If you want to persuade people who have yet to buy into the narratives depicting the guy as a criminal low IQ idiot, you’ll have to do better than the Putin stuff. That works for the Dem types to rile them up further. Maybe you even believe it yourself – in which case all I can do is offer my condolences for clearly – in your movie – the country is a living nightmare run by Demons. The only problem is that if you want to get rid of him/them, you have to win the elections. And if you want to do an end run around elections and rather remove by impeachment, you have to build a convincing case with some clear facts and evidence.
Just nattering on about Putin this and Putin that is talking to your own team. As it happens, seems to me that Putin has been one of the most effective leaders in the past century or so, doing great good service to his country and citizens. I think it’s a great pity the neocon types won’t let us make friends with them more, but since they are deep into building a new Eurasian civilisation and chomping at the bit for Brexit to finally be over with so they can begin to work on incorporating Europe into it so from Beijing to Lisbon will be all one large, multipolar, multi-ethnic, multi-religous, multi-lingual 21st century civilisation. They have bigger fish to fry than which puppet President sits in the WH pretending to be in charge of its rogue Deep State!
And so it goes!
Kinda it is because this not the EC that was intended in the Constitution and hasn’t been since the Jefferson/Adams election of 1800. If it were Trump would not have been elected president and perhaps neither would Hillary. It is nothing but another form of domination by the two parties and is direct opposition to anything most countries would call a democracy. It will probably not removed but hopefully can be circumvented by the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact which now has something over 190 electoral votes and moving the the 270 required to get rid of this antiquated 18th century turd. Sadly probably not before the 2020 election.
Trump is the true crook and has been for decades. He isn’t wrong about a lot of the issues the country has faced (globalization, loss of middle class jobs etc) but that doesn’t excuse him trying to rig the next election. If Joe or Hunter Biden testify Trump is going to come out looking worse. Trump continues to step on his own positive successes and step on his message. If he loses the election he will have no one to blame but himself. In the end two wrongs don’t make a right.
Trump is a crook, but not the only one. What baffles me is why people are bothered if he held up funds to encourage Ukraine to investigate corruption, but not bothered in the least that Biden held up funds to prevent the investigation of corruption. If one is illegal, so is the other.
Loan guarantees are not the same as aid granted by Congress. Also the heart of the Ukraine issue has Russia at it. Trump sides with Putin acolytes in the Ukriane. Obama and Biden are on the side of a democracy in Ukraine. Putin is literally at the center of every US foreign policy decision since 2009.
So for democracy sake, Obama and Biden orchestrated coup d’etat in Ukraine. Right? Yanukovych was elected just three years before coup d’etat. He was fourth president since 1991. What about 25 years of dictatorship in Belorussia or 35 years in Kazakhstan?
No one would legitimately argue that the Obama/Biden foreign policy to deter Russia worked. Putin actually held his own and then some but he was playing chess and Obama was playing tiddly winks. His interest was to never see Clinton elected as she knew best what he was up to in the Ukraine and other former Soviet block countries. Putin is literally driving elections all over Europe and America and driving foreign policy with influencing domestic elections. In the end Trump siding with Putin on nearly everything is making the White House a puppet regime of Putin. The ukraine is ground zero in everything Russia has been doing and does to this day. Putin’s greatest achievement to increase his own influence was to get anyone but Hillary elected. If someone is willing to cooperate more with Putin, he will dump Trump like used toilet paper.
No offense, but trying to make a distinction between one type of aid and another is an extraordinarily weak argument. It’s clear on it’s face that Biden was using US foreign policy for personal benefit. I’m sorry, but this is just another case where if something is done by one’s own party, it’s all good, but if it is done by the other, it must be condemned. Both parties are the same.
Agree but someone has to go first. If Trump had no used the aid and merely publicly stated that Biden has done it it would have had more credibility. Looks like the whole ball of wax is going to come undone soon.
Stop reading Guardian.
Try reading books written by those who visited Ukraine and Russia and think beyond 2 party politics of America.
I’m former citizen of Ukraine and I already heard lots American fantasies about democracy in Ukraine
Unfortunately tour former country has to pick between the two. The choice should be easy given Putin is one choice.
Predictions (for fun):
Short trial most likely otherwise too much systemic dirty laundry will be aired, injurious to all involved. (Can’t have that in the Senate, can we?!)
The GAO business is a valid but subjective point, not a ‘high crime’ etc. Executive Privilege will hold, since otherwise the whole trial has to be put on hold as it works its way through various courts. Even expedited straight to SC, it will take a few weeks or months. So not many witnesses is most likely. They will try the case as developed up until impeachment, which is actually what is supposed to happen anyway. The trial is not supposed to be a further investigation, let alone of new evidence and charges exploding frequently in the media (a la Kavanaugh hearings).
Trump will not be removed, but will get 55 votes or more against him, a great wound both personally and politically.
But he will wear this as a badge of honor in the upcoming campaign.
His opponents will lay it on thick with ongoing talking points – and more to be announced during the trial no doubt – both sides thus waging a classic ‘throw the crooks out’ campaign.
Both sides will truly and deeply hate the other to an unprecedented degree. The country will not recover for a generation or more – TDS will morph into NDS (National Derangement Syndrome).
Later in the year, there will be prosecutions against some who have engineered the ‘resistance’ against him since before the 2017 inauguration. The media will downplay it, but his side will feel vindicated, and about half the independents out there will decide that ‘fair is fair’ and pull the lever in Trump’s favor. The Left is simply too strident, angry and generally negative to generate enthusiasm; anger only gets you so far.
And then he will win in a landslide to the joy of the majority, the chagrin of the minority and despair of TDS metrolandia.
I agree with some of this with the exception of the prediction on independents. I think 2020 will be impossible to predict as there will be close to 20M new Latino voters in the mix in the southwest including Texas. Trump may have tipped the balance in the upper midwest to win in 2016 but I think it is quite possible that some states considered Republican in the south may swing to Democrats in 2020 and after.
“The GAO business is a valid but subjective point, not a ‘high crime’ etc.”
Pretty much my opinion but Judge Napolitano thinks Trump should be removed from office
Probably he’s paid to rile up Trumpsters on Fox.
Ratings.
What I keep coming back to in all this High Crime Impeachment Reality TV TragiComedy, is that the people who have engineered non-stop ‘resistance’ using largely underhand – if barely legal – means coordinated with 24/7 negative coverage and now culminating in this rather thin process crime impeachment drama are all guilty of far worse infractions themselves in terms of honouring their oaths of office, upholding the Constitution.
The reckless way they are using impeachment to try to get a few more votes in the Senate in the 2020 election is truly disgusting. And the damage they are doing to the general population’s faith in the system will take time to repair unless they themselves are outed and impeached or otherwise punished.
It’s a nasty period and looks like it’s going to get far worse.
Pity. America used to be much more fun!
I tried to reply but it got lost in ether… oh well…ah, this one worked.
Meanwhile, in another zone of La-La Land:
what I wrote before was that the people hounding T for three years and counting now are far more guilty of breaking oaths of office, undermining the constitution etc. than he is. It’s a bad business and is going to provoke a really nasty electoral atmosphere and, if they lose again, non-stop resentment for another four years. The Republic has lost its way…
More witnesses would mean more truth. Trump needs to let his people testify.
The Senate is no place for truth!
Truth is like poetry. And everybody f*ckin’ hates poetry. – Movie “The Big Short”.
… and nothing will ever happen because this is just about acting.