[Discussion] Presidential impeachment: the good, the bad, the orange

Formal impeachment proceedings were started today. Discuss.

Jayhawker wrote:

https://twitter.com/fivethirtyeight/...

A YouGov poll Tuesday asked voters how they’d feel about impeachment on the condition that Trump “suspended military aid to Ukraine in order to incentivize the country’s officials to investigate his political rival” and 55% of voters supported impeachment.

The more horrifying thing is 45% of people DON'T support it. What would it take for those huge number of people to stop supporting him? It is horrendous and frightening how much people have bought into identity politics.

They don't even bother to hide the evil these days and are doubling down on it, the Republican party is rotten to the core and should just be burned down. What is the criteria for a hate group again?

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/...

GOP Cashes in on Impeachment

Trump’s reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee on Tuesday sent an array of fundraising emails inviting conservatives to donate and join the “Official Impeachment Defense Task Force,” which was described as a group “made up of only President Trump’s most LOYAL supporters, the ones committed to fighting for him, re-electing him, and taking back the House.”

By the end of the day, party officials said, the fundraising offensive had netted around $1 million.

The effort demonstrates how the GOP sees the impeachment push as a tool to stoke the grievances of the Trump base and monetize the president’s clashes with Democrats ahead of 2020. Party officials, who for months have been playing to Trump supporters’ distaste of the left through a merchandising effort, are convinced the inquiry could turn into a cash windfall — and not just for Trump himself.

Yeah but the Democrats got over 4 million in donations each day this week. Some of it is the push for the next debate donations to come on before Sept 30. But some is "impeach the mother f*cker" money.

LeapingGnome wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

https://twitter.com/fivethirtyeight/...

A YouGov poll Tuesday asked voters how they’d feel about impeachment on the condition that Trump “suspended military aid to Ukraine in order to incentivize the country’s officials to investigate his political rival” and 55% of voters supported impeachment.

The more horrifying thing is 45% of people DON'T support it. What would it take for those huge number of people to stop supporting him? It is horrendous and frightening how much people have bought into identity politics.

Yep. I have yet to meet a conservative who thinks that Trump has done something wrong, which I'm sure wouldn't be the case if Obama had done this. Conservatives around here are crowing that the transcript completely exonerates him, presumably because he doesn't specifically say 'I'm withholding funds until you give me the dirt on Biden.' It blows my mind.

And further, I've been asking them if they would be ok with Trump asking a foreign country to investigate a political opponent. The only answer I've gotten has been 'yes'. Republican politicians might be concerned about that, but the base doesn't appear to be.

That's one reason I wonder how they'll react if Republicans turn on Trump. Now that they've gotten a taste for Trump's hateful policies and found them to their liking, I'm not sure they'll settle for less going forward.

Stele wrote:

Yeah but the Democrats got over 4 million in donations each day this week. Some of it is the push for the next debate donations to come on before Sept 30. But some is "impeach the mother f*cker" money.

I should write that in the memo sections of political donation checks.

What I have been doing with conservatives is pointing out that I remember how upset they were when they were told by Fox News that the Steele dossier was Democrats seeking foreign help to influence the election, so they must be furious that Trump did the same thing.

Conversation over.

One very troubling aspect of this whole whistleblower event that is not being discussed is this: EVERYONE in the world has had the transcript of this conversation for months.

Think about it. EVERY major national intelligence organization in the world is monitoring foreign diplomatic traffic. Particularly phone conversations between heads of state. We can assume that the FSB, BND, MI6, Mossad, DGSE, and many, many others have every f*cking word of this conversation and the others the preceded it. The fact that they have all witnessed our shyster in chief shake down a foreign ALLY like some low level mob boss should bring consternation to all of our allies and great comfort to our adversaries.

They didn't even need that. The whole "Bibi who?" ghosting after the Israeli elections should have convinced them. But... Neither of these is the first sign that Trump might not be a stable ally, not by a long shot.

Paleocon wrote:

One very troubling aspect of this whole whistleblower event that is not being discussed is this: EVERYONE in the world has had the transcript of this conversation for months.

Think about it. EVERY major national intelligence organization in the world is monitoring foreign diplomatic traffic. Particularly phone conversations between heads of state. We can assume that the FSB, BND, MI6, Mossad, DGSE, and many, many others have every f*cking word of this conversation and the others the preceded it. The fact that they have all witnessed our shyster in chief shake down a foreign ALLY like some low level mob boss should bring consternation to all of our allies and great comfort to our adversaries.

And how many other times has Trump done this to foreign heads of state?

Note well that it's Trump's own White House staffers who were bringing this up with national security folks as a problem. The answer is likely a whole lot more than we know to date...

Rat Boy wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

One very troubling aspect of this whole whistleblower event that is not being discussed is this: EVERYONE in the world has had the transcript of this conversation for months.

Think about it. EVERY major national intelligence organization in the world is monitoring foreign diplomatic traffic. Particularly phone conversations between heads of state. We can assume that the FSB, BND, MI6, Mossad, DGSE, and many, many others have every f*cking word of this conversation and the others the preceded it. The fact that they have all witnessed our shyster in chief shake down a foreign ALLY like some low level mob boss should bring consternation to all of our allies and great comfort to our adversaries.

And how many other times has Trump done this to foreign heads of state?

This..

Independent investigative reporter Murray Waas, who broke the story that "Scooter" Libby outed Valerie Plame story as well as covered the Bush administration's misrepresentation of intelligence to justify invading Iraq, wrote an article linking Trump's current Ukrainian problem with Mueller's investigation.

It meshes quite well with the background information presented in the whistleblower report and provides the why: the Trump administration was fishing in Ukraine for political cover to pardon Manafort.

NYT Review of Books wrote:

The effort by President Trump to pressure the government of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son had its origins in an earlier endeavor to obtain information that might provide a pretext and political cover for the president to pardon his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, according to previously undisclosed records.

These records indicate that attorneys representing Trump and Manafort respectively had at least nine conversations relating to this effort, beginning in the early days of the Trump administration, and lasting until as recently as May of this year. Through these deliberations carried on by his attorneys, Manafort exhorted the White House to press Ukrainian officials to investigate and discredit individuals, both in the US and in Ukraine, who he believed had published damning information about his political consulting work in the Ukraine. A person who participated in the joint defense agreement between President Trump and others under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, including Manafort, allowed me to review extensive handwritten notes that memorialized conversations relating to Manafort and Ukraine between Manafort’s and Trump’s legal teams, including Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

...

New information in this story suggests that these two, seemingly unrelated scandals, in which the House will judge whether the president’s conduct in each case constituted extra-legal and extra-constitutional abuses of presidential power, are in fact inextricably linked: the Ukrainian initiative appears to have begun in service of formulating a rationale by which the president could pardon Manafort, as part of an effort to undermine the special counsel’s investigation.

GOP Exiles Wonder What Happened To Their Party As Republicans Rally Around Trump

It’s kind of trite at this point to say, ‘Imagine if Obama had did this,’” said GOP consultant Rory Cooper about Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. “But if Obama had done this, the ‘right’ would have lost their minds.”

Cooper, once a top aide to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, said he was mystified by Republicans’ apparent belief that they could spin the memo on the call as helping Trump. “I can’t understand how anybody can read that as a good thing,” he said.

“It’s pretty clear in this summary the president asked the leader of a foreign nation to investigate a political foe,” said Jennifer Horn, a former chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican Party and a prominent Trump critic. “To hear Republican leaders that I previously had deep respect for to come out and give that knee-jerk response is stunning.”

Trump, who as late as Wednesday morning had claimed the “transcript” would show “a perfect call,” quickly changed tack to argue that it showed no explicit “quid-pro-quo.”

Even that claim, though, is belied by the “transcript,” which in reality is a reconstruction of the conversation by National Security Council staff and not a verbatim transcription.

farley3k wrote:

GOP Exiles Wonder What Happened To Their Party As Republicans Rally Around Trump

It’s kind of trite at this point to say, ‘Imagine if Obama had did this,’” said GOP consultant Rory Cooper about Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. “But if Obama had done this, the ‘right’ would have lost their minds.”

Cooper, once a top aide to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, said he was mystified by Republicans’ apparent belief that they could spin the memo on the call as helping Trump. “I can’t understand how anybody can read that as a good thing,” he said.

“It’s pretty clear in this summary the president asked the leader of a foreign nation to investigate a political foe,” said Jennifer Horn, a former chairwoman of the New Hampshire Republican Party and a prominent Trump critic. “To hear Republican leaders that I previously had deep respect for to come out and give that knee-jerk response is stunning.”

Trump, who as late as Wednesday morning had claimed the “transcript” would show “a perfect call,” quickly changed tack to argue that it showed no explicit “quid-pro-quo.”

Even that claim, though, is belied by the “transcript,” which in reality is a reconstruction of the conversation by National Security Council staff and not a verbatim transcription.

And those Republicans who bemoan this are deliberately obtuse.

Trump didn't build this radioactive T Rex made of pure racism and treason. He just found it idling in the parking lot and decided he would burn anything in the country that he couldn't shake down for cash. Now the Republicans realize they have to stop him, but not if it means damaging their precious T Rex.

So yeah, they can all go f*ck themselves. ~edit~

~mod~
The disturbingly gleeful, sexually violent rhetoric of the last sentence is inappropriate for a political discussion channel and has been removed. The rest of the post is left as written.
~Amoebic~

In the midst of calling Adam Schiff a fraud and other crap not related to the whistleblower and impeachment is an opinion piece from former Rep. Tom Coleman (R) blasting Trump at the Daily Caller. So, yeah, props on the Daily Caller of attempting to look like they're speaking to anyone other than the alt-right.

We have ample evidence from the last few years (and really, long before that as well) that they are almost to person craven, spineless, unprincipled, amoral, unfaithful, opportunistic, short sighted, unpatriotic sycophants with no interest in protecting even the most basic fundamentals of how our society functions when it conflicts even in the slightest with the short term maintenance of their grasp on power. They will drown aboard a burning, sinking ship before they even acknowledge that it's getting a bit warm in their state rooms.

The unsettling part, among pretty much everything else he says and does, is this article that says the person feeding the whistle blower is a spy. Trump reeks of a dictator and I'm sure it's safe to say that if he had his way, anyone not loyal to him would be imprisoned or executed.

It's almost as if people in the White House who found the president's actions objectionable didn't have a means to air these objections and thus enlisted a third party working within a government agency that had rules to that effect.

Paleocon wrote:

And those Republicans who bemoan this are deliberately obtuse.

Trump didn't build this radioactive T Rex made of pure racism and treason. He just found it idling in the parking lot and decided he would burn anything in the country that he couldn't shake down for cash. Now the Republicans realize they have to stop him, but not if it means damaging their precious T Rex.

So yeah, they can all go f*ck themselves.

This is critical. In 2009-2010 we let Republicans scrape the Bush stickers off their cars, put on funny hats, and call themselves "independent constitutional conservatives" or such twaddle. Any "anti-Trump" Republicans who don't go so far as to say "I was wrong, I have been wrong, I am voting Democrat in this election and so should you" is as culpable as the rest.

Burn the lifeboats.

whispa wrote:

The unsettling part, among pretty much everything else he says and does, is this article that says the person feeding the whistle blower is a spy. Trump reeks of a dictator and I'm sure it's safe to say that if he had his way, anyone not loyal to him would be imprisoned or executed.

Threatening the whistleblower is another impeachable offense. Just stack them up.

qaraq wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

And those Republicans who bemoan this are deliberately obtuse.

Trump didn't build this radioactive T Rex made of pure racism and treason. He just found it idling in the parking lot and decided he would burn anything in the country that he couldn't shake down for cash. Now the Republicans realize they have to stop him, but not if it means damaging their precious T Rex.

So yeah, they can all go f*ck themselves.

This is critical. In 2009-2010 we let Republicans scrape the Bush stickers off their cars, put on funny hats, and call themselves "independent constitutional conservatives" or such twaddle. Any "anti-Trump" Republicans who don't go so far as to say "I was wrong, I have been wrong, I am voting Democrat in this election and so should you" is as culpable as the rest.

Burn the lifeboats.

Word. I still hold lifelong grudges against them for the Iraq War. So should everyone else.

Bush handed Michelle Obama a Wherther's Original and suddenly he's not a war criminal anymore? Naw. He's still a war criminal.

I'm not sure if this got posted, but it is a much better view of this critical scandal than Stupid Watergate jokes. Sure, Trump is a f*cking moron, which is going to get a lot of people arrested, but the abuse of power is far more widespread. We really are on the verge of a full blown fascist regime. Luckily, currently several of the players are complete morons. But we run the risk of smarter folks stepping in.

NY Intelligencer : The Ukraine Scandal Is Not One Phone Call. It’s a Massive Plot.

IMAGE(https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/intelligencer/2019/09/25/25-trump-ukraine-accomplices.w700.h467.jpg)

Do we out our friends as fascist enablers? Or do we continue to act like they just have different political views and we can all play games together?

NY Times all but outs the whistleblower; its editor gives a bullsh*t excuse:
IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EFaM0V9XsAIa9_u?format=jpg&name=medium)

qaraq wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

And those Republicans who bemoan this are deliberately obtuse.

Trump didn't build this radioactive T Rex made of pure racism and treason. He just found it idling in the parking lot and decided he would burn anything in the country that he couldn't shake down for cash. Now the Republicans realize they have to stop him, but not if it means damaging their precious T Rex.

So yeah, they can all go f*ck themselves.

This is critical. In 2009-2010 we let Republicans scrape the Bush stickers off their cars, put on funny hats, and call themselves "independent constitutional conservatives" or such twaddle. Any "anti-Trump" Republicans who don't go so far as to say "I was wrong, I have been wrong, I am voting Democrat in this election and so should you" is as culpable as the rest.

Burn the lifeboats.

Exactly. Aldo Raine plain and simple. You don't get to take off that nice shiny uniform. That I won't abide.

Interesting interpretation from former CIA agent Bob Baer I saw on CNN a short time ago regarding the whistleblower: that his read is that this is a palace coup inside the White House. And the implication is that the whistleblower is just the messenger for these officials cited in the complaint.

Rat Boy wrote:

Interesting interpretation from former CIA agent Bob Baer I saw on CNN a short time ago regarding the whistleblower: that his read is that this is a palace coup inside the White House. And the implication is that the whistleblower is just the messenger for these officials cited in the complaint.

Even if you're right, it's a helluva causus belli for that coup.

This is who the apologists are covering for.

And then there's Rudy:

Even among the president’s closest allies, Giuliani is now the subject of scorn. When I reached him by phone this morning, following House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s release of the full whistle-blower complaint at the center of the Ukraine scandal, he was, put simply, very angry.

“It is impossible that the whistle-blower is a hero and I’m not. And I will be the hero! These morons—when this is over, I will be the hero,” Giuliani told me.

“I’m not acting as a lawyer. I’m acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government,” he continued, sounding out of breath. “Anything I did should be praised.”

Heh, is that a quote or a poorly written SNL sketch?

IMAGE(https://media2.giphy.com/media/vXyMtXgsEovjG/source.gif)