Trump Is Going to Burn Down Everything and Everyone, and Republicans, That Means You

[Pete F.]

Donald Trump’s Oval Office performance art masterpiece Wednesday was one for the ages, a pity-party, stompy-foot screech session by President Snowflake von Pissypants, the most put-upon man ever to hold the highest office in the land. If you watched his nationally televised Oval Office press conference, Trump’s shrill, eye-popping hissy fit scanned like the end of a long, coke-fueled bender where the itchy, frenzied paranoia is dry-humping the last ragged gasps of the earlier party-powder fun.

Between calling Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) a panoply of Trumpish insults (and for the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to be held for treason), engaging in his usual hatred of the press, talking about Mike Pompeo’s intimate undergarments, and quite obviously scaring the #^&#^&#^&#^& out of Finnish President Sauli Niinisto—who looked like he was the very unwilling star of an ISIS hostage video—Trump spent the day rapidly decompensating, and it was a hideous spectacle. All the Maximum Leader pronunciamentos won’t change the reality that Donald John Trump, 45th president of the United States, has lost his #^&#^&#^&#^&.

In private, Republicans are in the deepest despair of the Trump era. They’ve got that hang-dog, #^&#^&#^&#^&-in-the-dirt fatalism of men destined to die in a meaningless battle in a pointless war. They’ve abandoned all pretense of recapturing the House, their political fortunes in the states are crashing and burning, and the stock market bubble they kept up as a shield against the downsides of Trump—“but muh 401(k)!”—is popping.
Rick Wilson

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-...s-you?ref=home

[wdmso]

A Blow job and a dress saved with jizz on it... and lying under oath was. good enought to attempt to impeach clinton ..

But Republicans and other trump supports .. see nothing ..even if is in the transcript of the call.. and now all the treason and lock them up Mantra (sound familiar) is played out .. except for his base of course... but he dosnt act or sound like a totalitarian Leader... who will never go under oath and thinks he cant be compelled.. while in office.. and above the law ... PS who keeps a dress for a year or as a souvenir?? Lewinsky mentioned to Tripp that she intended to have the dress, which she had been saving a souvenir,
But once again their picking on Trump
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[Sea Dangles]

I think you meant to write THEY’RE picking on Trump. Whenever you are confused just remember it stands for THEY ARE. I know it gets a little dizzying as you have a lot of choices but this may help you get it right on occasion. Once you get it right you should be good to go forever. 😉
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[Pete F.]

-Mob boss wants something. Asks “nicely” so he can claim it wasn’t a demand.
-Mob lawyer tries to make demand happen & hide behind attorney-client privilege.
-Underboss & Capos carry out different parts of the plan.
-They get caught & all claim not to know the whole.
The end.
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[The Dad Fisherman]

Originally Posted by Sea Dangles

I think you meant to write THEY’RE picking on Trump. Whenever you are confused just remember it stands for THEY ARE. I know it gets a little dizzying as you have a lot of choices but this may help you get it right on occasion. Once you get it right you should be good to go forever. 😉
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Example:

“Their safe space they’re looking for is over there”
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[Got Stripers]

Putin and his KGB buddies sit around after the day is over sipping Russian vodka and laughing their a*sses off at how easy it is to play Trump and get him to do their dirty work for them. Shame on the GOP to sit back while Trump and his attorneys Barr and Rudy continue to disparage and discredit the work done by our intelligence community. If you think this makes America safer you have your MAGA hat to tight.
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[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by wdmso

A Blow job and a dress saved with jizz on it... and lying under oath was. good enought to attempt to impeach clinton ..

But Republicans and other trump supports .. see nothing ..even if is in the transcript of the call.. and now all the treason and lock them up Mantra (sound familiar) is played out .. except for his base of course... but he dosnt act or sound like a totalitarian Leader... who will never go under oath and thinks he cant be compelled.. while in office.. and above the law ... PS who keeps a dress for a year or as a souvenir?? Lewinsky mentioned to Tripp that she intended to have the dress, which she had been saving a souvenir,
But once again their picking on Trump
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get some facts.

clinton’s affair didn’t get him
impeached. lying under oath got him impeached. he also got disbarred. there might not be a profession outside of politics that has less scruples in it than lawyers, and even they decided clinton was too sleazy to be associated with them.

trump will likely get impeached, I’d bet he does, there’s too much momentum for the democrats to stop. like clinton, there is zero chance the senate votes to remove him. Unlike Clinton, Trump will wear his impeachment by this House, as a badge of honor. you still have no idea who he is, how he operates, how he won the election against the most inevitable candidate ever. all you see is what cnn shows you, much of which is true, but it’s not the whole
story. you’re missing some key parts to how he operates, and why he’s successful.

he won just about every state that was possibly up for grabs. how do you suppose he did it? did the russians hand it to him? or were the voters in those states sick of being called deplorable, sick of being called bitter clingers, sick of being ignored, and tired of the media’s dishonesty?

there is a chance that impeachment is a big, big help to him. Pete doesn’t see it, i doubt you or Spence see it. CNN won’t spend a lot of time discussing it.
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[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

-Mob boss wants something. Asks “nicely” so he can claim it wasn’t a demand.
-Mob lawyer tries to make demand happen & hide behind attorney-client privilege.
-Underboss & Capos carry out different parts of the plan.
-They get caught & all claim not to know the whole.
The end.
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tell me if i have this straight. because he didn’t explicitly threaten to withhold aid ( like Biden did), that means he actually was threatening to withhold aid. and doing it in more sinister fashion than if he had just overtly threatened it?

if he extorts them, he’s guilty of extortion. if he doesn’t threaten them in any way, that means he’s also guilty because he implied it.

so it’s literally not possible for trump to ask someone to do something, without there being an underlying threat? no matter what he does, he’s guilty of extortion.

he’s a mob boss now? i thought he was too stupid and thoughtless to be as crafty as a mob boss?

wow.


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[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by The Dad Fisherman

Example:

“Their safe space they’re looking for is over there”
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you’re on a roll lately!
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[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

tell me if i have this straight. because he didn’t explicitly threaten to withhold aid ( like Biden did), that means he actually was threatening to withhold aid. and doing it in more sinister fashion than if he had just overtly threatened it?

if he extorts them, he’s guilty of extortion. if he doesn’t threaten them in any way, that means he’s also guilty because he implied it.

so it’s literally not possible for trump to ask someone to do something, without there being an underlying threat? no matter what he does, he’s guilty of extortion.

he’s a mob boss now? i thought he was too stupid and thoughtless to be as crafty as a mob boss?

wow.


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Since you claim to love the Nation and the Constitution and think it should be followed quite literally and that the rule of law is important, you should think carefully about excusing Trump's malignant and corrupt abuse of power to obtain personal benefit.

Here is a little explanation of what the Constitution means when it says "bribery" is impeachable and what that means and how it applies to Trump.

Now that Congress has launched an impeachment investigation into President Trump’s effort to use the Ukrainian government to target a political rival, much ink has been spilled on the question of whether Trump’s actions amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors” for which he may be impeached. In analyzing the president’s conduct, some commentators have pointed to one of the two specific grounds for impeachment enumerated in the Constitution: bribery. Yet by and large, those who have examined Trump’s efforts to put pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as potential bribery have done so through the narrow lens of modern federal statutory criminal law.

But that is the wrong place to look when considering impeachment. In fact, the Founders had a broader conception of bribery than what’s in the criminal code. Their understanding was derived from English law, under which bribery was understood as an officeholder’s abuse of the power of an office to obtain a private benefit, rather than for the public interest. This definition not only encompasses Trump’s conduct—it practically defines it.

The Ukraine scandal began in the spring of 2019, with a series of contacts between Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Ukrainian officials. In mid-July, Trump made the decision to withhold nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine that had already been appropriated by Congress. The White House offered no explanation, except to blame “interagency delay.” A week later, Trump spoke by phone to the recently-elected Ukrianian president Volodymyr Zelensky. The memorandum released by the White House describing that call—which is consistent with the accounts of the whistleblower complaint that first brought this scandal to light—reads like a classic shakedown.

According to the memo, after exchanges of flattery, Trump states that “we do a lot for Ukraine” and that “[w]e spend a lot of effort and a lot of time," and goes on to complain that the relationship is not always “reciprocal.” Zelentsky then raises the question of military aid to Ukraine, to which Trump immediately responds “I would like you to do us a favor though,” and proceeds to ask Zelentsy to investigate two unfounded conspiracy theories: one involving the server containing emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election, and the other involving the thoroughly debunked claim about then-Vice President Biden, his potential re-election opponent. Trump asks Zelensky to work with Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate his potential opponent and so aid his own re-election campaign—and Zelensky appears to agree. There can be no misunderstanding that Trump was using his official power in the conduct of foreign policy to get a foreign government to investigate his political rival.

Recall that Article II, section 4 says the president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” In contrast to the prescriptive definition of “treason” in Article III, section 3, the term “bribery” is not defined there or elsewhere in the constitutional text. Some of Trump’s defenders have taken advantage of that silence by attempting to apply the standard in the modern federal criminal bribery statute, arguing that impeachment for bribery is off the table unless there is a quid pro quo. They claim that Trump’s conduct falls short of that standard because he did not explicitly link the withheld aid to the requested investigation of a political rival.

In fact, Trump’s conduct almost certainly satisfies the modern statutory standard for bribery. As Randall Eliason has explained, a quid pro quo “need not be stated in express terms; corrupt actors are seldom so clumsy, and the law may not be evaded through winks and nods.” We have little doubt that a prosecutor would be able to establish a quid pro quo based on what was said on the call and the surrounding facts and context. (As an aside, Trump’s conduct also likely qualifies as extortion. As Professor James Lindgren has explained at length, historically there has been a substantial overlap between the concepts of extortion and bribery, and around the time of the Founding, the terms were often used to describe the same conduct.)

But even if Trump’s actions do not satisfy the modern criminal standard for bribery, the argument from Trump’s defenders is misplaced—because the federal statute isn’t the relevant statement of the law in the context of impeachment.

The Founders had no intent of tying the constitutional definition of bribery to federal criminal statutory law. On the most basic level, no federal criminal code existed at the time that the Constitution was drafted. Beyond that, the Framers had no reason to believe that Congress would enact federal criminal statutes in the future. As Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz explain in their comprehensive book on impeachment, “To End A Presidency,” criminal law was understood to be the province of the states, and there was very little federal criminal law at all until the mid-20th century. To the extent there was federal criminal law, it followed the common law model. That is why the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors can’t be limited by federal statutes. The same goes for bribery—as there was no general federal bribery statute at all until 1853.

As Zephyr Teachout describes in her study, “Corruption in America,” the statutory definition of bribery—and its interpretation by courts—has evolved dramatically over the course of the nation’s history, from a broad conception in the early days of the Republic to today’s more narrow definition, which requires a clear quid pro quo and a very specific “official act.” Indeed, the idea of an explicit quid pro quo as a necessary element of a bribe is a recent development, borrowed from contract law in the later half of the 20th century.

As Tribe and Matz point out, the current narrow statutory definition of bribery has been influenced by considerations that have no relevance to impeachment. In a 2016 opinion overturning the bribery conviction of former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell, for example, the Supreme Court cautioned that an expansive reading of the criminal bribery statute “would raise significant constitutional concerns” because it “could cast a pall of potential prosecution over” public officials and would put federal prosecutors in the position of determining and regulating “the permissible scope of interactions between state officials and their constituents.” As that decision indicates, modern courts have been reluctant to accept a broad interpretation of “bribery” that would risk giving unelected federal prosecutors too much power and discretion to involve themselves in state and local politics. Whether or not one agrees with these concerns as applied to federal prosecutors, they have little bearing on the constitutional definition of “bribery” for the purposes of impeachment—and there is therefore no reason that bribery in the constitutional sense should be constrained along these lines. Impeachment does not implicate federalism, and it is an inherently political process, as the Founders well understood.

The history of impeachments provides further support for the point that the concept of “bribery” in the Constitution is not dependent on the elements of a federal criminal statute. In 1912, 60 years after Congress enacted a federal bribery statute, the House of Representatives conducted impeachment proceedings against Judge Robert Wodrow Archbald. On July 8, 1912, the House Judiciary Committee issued a report recommending 13 articles of impeachment against Judge Archbald. The committee’s report included a section analyzing the constitutional meaning of “treason,” “bribery,” and “high crimes and misdemeanors.” It explained that, “[i]t is well-established by the authorities that impeachment ... under our Constitution are not limited to statuable crimes and misdemeanors or to offenses indictable under the common law and triable in the courts of ordinary jurisdiction.” The report quotes John Randolph Tucker’s commentaries on the Constitution in explaining that,

if Congress had ever failed to have fixed a punishment for the constitutional crime of treason or had failed to pass an act in reference to the crime of bribery, as it did fail for more than a year after the Constitution went into operation, it would result that no officer would be impeachable for either crime, because Congress had failed to pass the needful statutes defining crime in the case of bribery and prescribing the punishment in the case of treason as well as bribery. It can hardly be supposed that the Constitution intended to make impeachment for these two flagrant crimes depend upon the action of Congress. The conclusion from this would seem to be inevitable that treason and bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors in respect to which Congress had failed to legislate would still be within the jurisdiction of the process of impeachment.

Ultimately, the House adopted all 13 articles of impeachment recommended by the Judiciary Committee. The Senate found Judge Archbald guilty of five of those charges and removed him from office.

In short, the Founders’ conception of bribery—and thus the scope of that term in the Constitution—cannot be understood with reference to modern federal statutes and the interpretation of those statutes by modern courts. As Tribe and Matz explain, “the Framers were concerned with abuse of power, corruption, and injury to the nation. At no point did any delegate link the ultimate safeguard against presidential betrayal to intricacies of a criminal code.”

So what did the Founders understand “bribery” to refer to when they included that term in the Constitution as one of two specific impeachable offenses? There is every reason to believe that the drafters of the Constitution had in mind a scope that easily encompasses Trump’s conduct.
At the time the Constitution was drafted, when people thought of bribery, they thought in broad terms of the corrupt use of an official’s public power to achieve private ends. To the Founders, bribery was not a concept rooted in traditional criminal law at all, and so was not defined with the precision that is required when applying a criminal statute. According to Teachout’s study, “[b]ribery and extortion were ... considered per se corrupt, but such crimes were rarely punished criminally, so invocations of bribery were rarely in reference to criminal law standards, and were more often in reference to the use of a gift, political office, or flattery to persuade someone to change a course of action.”

The meaning of bribery at the Founding was derived from English law. In the Judge Archbald impeachment proceedings, the House noted that “[t]he offense of bribery had a fixed status in the parliamentary law as well as the criminal law of England when our Constitution was adopted, and there is little difficulty in determining its nature and extent in the application of the law of impeachments in this country.” While we have not attempted a full survey of the English law on bribery, contemporary treatises are informative. For example, William Hawkins’s “A Treatise of the Pleas of the Crown,” which was originally published in 1716, contains the following description of bribery:

Bribery in a large sense is sometimes taken for the receiving or offering of any undue reward, by or to any person whatsoever, whose ordinary profession or business relates to the administration of publick justice, in order to incline him to do a thing against the known rules of honesty and integrity; for the law abhors any the Ieast tendency to corruption in those who are any way concerned in its administration, and will not endure their taking a reward for the doing a thing which deserves the severest of punishments.

Similarly, “Russell on Crimes,” originally published in 1819, described bribery as “the receiving or offering [of] any undue reward by or to any person whatsoever, in a public office, in order to influence his behaviour in office, and incline him to act contrary to the known rules of honesty and integrity.”

Some of the earliest bribery statutes enacted by the American states tell the same story. For example, as Teachout describes, “[a] 1797 Delaware list of ‘indictable crimes’ described bribery broadly, as ‘an offense against public justice,’ constituted by undue reward for one in the administration of public justice, in an attempt ‘to influence him against the known rules of law, honesty, or integrity, or [constituted by] giving or taking a reward for offices of a public nature. He who accepts and he who offers the bribe are both liable to punishment.’” As Tribe and Matz explain, consistent with these definitions, in identifying bribery as a specific ground for impeachment the Founders were concerned primarily with “[t]he corrupt exercise of power in exchange for a personal benefit.”

The understanding of bribery at the Founding maps perfectly onto Trump’s conduct in his call with Zelensky. As noted above, Trump made clear to Zelensky that he was asking him for a “favor”—not a favor to benefit the United States as a whole or the public interest, but a favor that would accrue to the personal benefit of Trump by harming his political rival. Trump’s request that Zelensky work with his private attorney, Rudy Giuliani, underscores that Trump was seeking a private benefit. And Trump was not seeking this “undue reward” (to quote “Russell on Crimes” and the Delaware statute) as a mere aside unrelated to the president’s official role. Rather, he did so in the course of an official diplomatic conversation with a head-of-state.

The transcript makes clear that Trump tied together the request for personal favor with the delivery of military aid. But even if he had not made such a direct connection, this sort of corrupt use of public office to obtain a private benefit fits squarely within the definition of bribery when the Constitution was written.

Moreover, given the specifics of the allegations against President Trump, it is noteworthy that nothing worried the Founders more than the possibility that the president would be corrupted by a foreign power. As Gouverneur Morris said about impeachment during the Constitutional Convention, “[The President] may be bribed by a greater interest to betray his trust; and no one would say that we ought to expose ourselves to the danger of seeing the first Magistrate in foreign pay without being able to guard [against] it by displacing him.”

As members of Congress conduct impeachment proceedings and—if the facts warrant—draft articles of impeachment, they should view bribery as the Framers did. The offense of bribery, in the Framers’ view, did not require meeting the narrow, specific elements established by a judicial gloss on a federal statute that would not be articulated for centuries to come. Instead, the Founding generation understood bribery broadly, as covering the corrupt abuse of power to obtain personal benefit. There is little doubt that Trump’s conduct falls within the scope of the constitutional definition. Indeed, Trump’s attempts to use his immense foreign policy power for personal and political gain rather than the public good is a realization of the Framers’ worst fears and the very definition of impeachable bribery.



Disclosure: The authors work for Protect Democracy, which has represented Lawfare editors Benjamin Wittes, Jack Goldsmith, Scott Anderson and Susan Hennessey on a number of separate matters.

[wdmso]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

get some facts.

clinton’s affair didn’t get him
impeached. lying under oath got him impeached. he also got disbarred. there might not be a profession outside of politics that has less scruples in it than lawyers, and even they decided clinton was too sleazy to be associated with them.

trump will likely get impeached, I’d bet he does, there’s too much momentum for the democrats to stop. like clinton, there is zero chance the senate votes to remove him. Unlike Clinton, Trump will wear his impeachment by this House, as a badge of honor. you still have no idea who he is, how he operates, how he won the election against the most inevitable candidate ever. all you see is what cnn shows you, much of which is true, but it’s not the whole
story. you’re missing some key parts to how he operates, and why he’s successful.

he won just about every state that was possibly up for grabs. how do you suppose he did it? did the russians hand it to him? or were the voters in those states sick of being called deplorable, sick of being called bitter clingers, sick of being ignored, and tired of the media’s dishonesty?

there is a chance that impeachment is a big, big help to him. Pete doesn’t see it, i doubt you or Spence see it. CNN won’t spend a lot of time discussing it.
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Momentum isnt what he might get impeached for.. and you know that . You just dont care what he has done. That much is certian.. i guess calli ng the whistleblower treasonous. Isn't intimidating a witness's
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[Jim in CT]

so trumps bribery ( which you are merely inferring because he didn’t say it) is impeachable. but biden’s explicit, overt, irrefutable bribery, isn’t disqualifying.

is that about right?
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[wdmso]

Originally Posted by wdmso

Momentum isnt what he might get impeached for.. and you know that . You just dont care what he has done. That much is certian.. i guess calli ng the whistleblower treasonous. Isn't intimidating a witness's.. answer this will Trump speak under oath. Will he let pompano testify or will he claim executive privilege..to avoid the facts
All i can say is independents and if berine bows out Trump cant count on a split ticket to shave votes from the dems nominee
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[spence]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

so trumps bribery ( which you are merely inferring because he didn’t say it) is impeachable. but biden’s explicit, overt, irrefutable bribery, isn’t disqualifying.

is that about right?
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Homework Jim.
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[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by wdmso

Momentum isnt what he might get impeached for.. and you know that . You just dont care what he has done. That much is certian.. i guess calli ng the whistleblower treasonous. Isn't intimidating a witness's
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political momentum, so far, is all this is. pelosi could
no longer hold off the lunatics, and they scheduled impeachment discussions
before anything if this latest controversy was revealed. again, you have talib selling “impeach the
motherf*cker” t shirts, you have maxine waters saying he deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison in solitary confinement, you have spence here who couldn’t bear the thought of coming here for weeks after the election.

trump broke your brains.
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[Jim in CT]

pete we appreciate your concern that he’s going to bring the party down.

if that happens ( it’s possible) we will do what we did after the 2008 election, when we got annihilated. We’ll figure it out, that’s what we do. we don’t riot and throw hysterical fits and demand safe spaces.

you have a presidential
candidate (Harris), trying to get Trump banned from twitter, because Trump on Twitter doesn’t help her get what she wants.

First Amendment? only exists if exercising those rights, helps democrats win elections.

make that wrong.
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[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

pete we appreciate your concern that he’s going to bring the party down.

if that happens ( it’s possible) we will do what we did after the 2008 election, when we got annihilated. We’ll figure it out, that’s what we do. we don’t riot and throw hysterical fits and demand safe spaces.

you have a presidential
candidate (Harris), trying to get Trump banned from twitter, because Trump on Twitter doesn’t help her get what she wants.

First Amendment? only exists if exercising those rights, helps democrats win elections.

make that wrong.
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You are distracting. Again. There is a transcript. There are documents. The IGIC says this is all credible. Try focusing on that.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by Pete F.

You are distracting. Again. There is a transcript. There are documents. The IGIC says this is all credible. Try focusing on that.

lots of people say it’s credible. it’s subjective.

so you have a comment about Harris trying to ban Trump on Twitter?
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[wdmso]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

political momentum, so far, is all this is. pelosi could
no longer hold off the lunatics, and they scheduled impeachment discussions
before anything if this latest controversy was revealed. again, you have talib selling “impeach the
motherf*cker” t shirts, you have maxine waters saying he deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison in solitary confinement, you have spence here who couldn’t bear the thought of coming here for weeks after the election.

trump broke your brains.
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You need to learn how to read .. and understand what Trump did or asked to be done is inexcusable at any leval of politics but to be done by the POTUS seen as acceptable By his Secretary of State then many attempts to hide or keep the info suppressed from committee and the public .. Since when has winning an election allowed any POTUS to do as they please.. didnt help Nixon or Clinton.. but some how this in your eyes is just political.. not enforcement of acceptable practices procedures and to protect the national security of our country .. Sadly your Man Trump sees these check and balances as obstruction to his power and position as if when elected he rubbed a genie lamp and was given dominion over the United States
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[Jim in CT]

i can read. you need to be more honest. what he did, is only inexcusable
when he does it.

it was ok for obama
to ask for politically-beneficial
favors from russia regarding missiles and his re election.

it was ok when biden explicitly threatened to withhold funds from ukraine unless he got what he wanted.

and it was ok for senate democrats to ask ukraine to look into their political rivals.

all those things are ok, but inexcusable when trump does them.

a little consistency is too much to ask?
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[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

lots of people say it’s credible. it’s subjective.

so you have a comment about Harris trying to ban Trump on Twitter?
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I disagree with her

You are distracting. Again. There is a transcript. There are documents. The IGIC says this is all credible. Try focusing on that.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by wdmso

You need to learn how to read .. and understand what Trump did or asked to be done is inexcusable at any leval of politics but to be done by the POTUS seen as acceptable By his Secretary of State then many attempts to hide or keep the info suppressed from committee and the public .. Since when has winning an election allowed any POTUS to do as they please.. didnt help Nixon or Clinton.. but some how this in your eyes is just political.. not enforcement of acceptable practices procedures and to protect the national security of our country .. Sadly your Man Trump sees these check and balances as obstruction to his power and position as if when elected he rubbed a genie lamp and was given dominion over the United States
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wdmso, they were calling for
his impeachment from day one. it’s been their obsession. that doesn’t mean this wasn’t an impeachable offense. but you have to
admit, they’ve humiliated themselves a few times in the desperation to bring him down.

this isn’t objective fact. plenty of
left leaning constitutional lawyers, plenty of people who aren’t trumplicans, are saying this is wrong. i don’t know what to believe, how can i when half say one thing, half say the other.

i do know that similar ( not identical) behavior was totally acceptable when democrats did it and benefitted from it. That’s why i say this is political, and not based on principles. Tell me that Biden should be forbidden from running based on what he did, and i’ll put a lot more credibility on what you say. otherwise, it’s nothing but partisan.
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[detbuch]

Originally Posted by wdmso

what Trump did or asked to be done is inexcusable at any leval of politics

Why is it inexcusable if it is not only legal, but perfectly in line with treaty obligations?

As for levels of "politics," they are so broad and full of deception that it would be laughable to expect them to be excusable. "Politics," as we know it, and is practiced, is mostly spin, deceit, biased framing, slanting, most anything short of illegal (and that too if you can get away with it, especially if the Press is on your side).

[wdmso]

Originally Posted by detbuch

Why is it inexcusable if it is not only legal, but perfectly in line with treaty obligations?

As for levels of "politics," they are so broad and full of deception that it would be laughable to expect them to be excusable. "Politics," as we know it, and is practiced, is mostly spin, deceit, biased framing, slanting, most anything short of illegal (and that too if you can get away with it, especially if the Press is on your side).

No spine
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[wdmso]

[QUOTE=Jim in CT;1175762]wdmso, they were calling for
his impeachment from day one. it’s been their obsession. that doesn’t mean this wasn’t an impeachable offense. but you have to
admit, they’ve humiliated themselves a few times in the desperation to bring him down.

this isn’t objective fact. plenty of
left leaning constitutional lawyers, plenty of people who aren’t trumplicans, are saying this is wrong. i don’t know what to believe, how can i when half say one thing, half say the other.

i do know that similar ( not identical) behavior was totally acceptable when democrats did it and benefitted from it. That’s why i say this is political, and not based on principles. Tell me that Biden should be forbidden from running based on what he did, and i’ll put a lot more credibility on what you say. otherwise, it’s nothing but partisan.
[size=1][i]Posted from my iPhone/Mobile
Republicans wanted to impeach Obama.. he never gave the a reason... learn your history he dodge the muller report. but wasnt absolved and now this .. its called a pattern of behavior ps what you insist biden did is a debunked lie told to you by right wing blogers .. the only fact is his son had a job.. everything else didnt matter untill the phone call came out?? Why is that?? Is Ukraine the only corrupt country? Now china was asked as well?? .
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

this isn’t objective fact. plenty of
left leaning constitutional lawyers, are saying this is wrong. i don’t know what to believe, how can i when half say one thing, half say the other.

i
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Who besides Dershowitz, comprises your plenty?

[Jim in CT]

Pete, first you started a thread suggesting that Trump actually, truly wanted to incite a civil war. Here, you're saying he wants to burn everything to the ground.

Which is it?

You're coming completely un-glued, even for you. He's probably going to get impeached. There is absolutely no way he gets removed, he will be in power until at least January 2021, unless something else comes out.

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by wdmso

No spine
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

Wellll . . . alrighty then . . . get some spine and tell us how Trump requesting something he has a treaty right and obligation to ask is not only "inexcusable" but also lacks "spine".

[Jim in CT]

[QUOTE=wdmso;1175794]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

wdmso, they were calling for
his impeachment from day one. it’s been their obsession. that doesn’t mean this wasn’t an impeachable offense. but you have to
admit, they’ve humiliated themselves a few times in the desperation to bring him down.

this isn’t objective fact. plenty of
left leaning constitutional lawyers, plenty of people who aren’t trumplicans, are saying this is wrong. i don’t know what to believe, how can i when half say one thing, half say the other.

i do know that similar ( not identical) behavior was totally acceptable when democrats did it and benefitted from it. That’s why i say this is political, and not based on principles. Tell me that Biden should be forbidden from running based on what he did, and i’ll put a lot more credibility on what you say. otherwise, it’s nothing but partisan.
[size=1][i]Posted from my iPhone/Mobile
Republicans wanted to impeach Obama.. he never gave the a reason... learn your history he dodge the muller report. but wasnt absolved and now this .. its called a pattern of behavior ps what you insist biden did is a debunked lie told to you by right wing blogers .. the only fact is his son had a job.. everything else didnt matter untill the phone call came out?? Why is that?? Is Ukraine the only corrupt country? Now china was asked as well?? .
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

"Republicans wanted to impeach Obama"

Who? When? How much time did they spend trying to do that?

"he never gave the a reason"

I agree 100%.

"learn your history...he dodge the muller report. but wasnt absolved"

Again, I agree. But a prosecutor's job isn't to absolve. It's to charge or not charge. My knowledge of history isn't the problem, your knowledge of civics is the problem.

"what you insist biden did is a debunked lie told to you by right wing blogers .. the only fact is his son had a job"

Noo, it's thoughtless kool aid drinkers who won't question anything about their side, who say it's all myth. He got that job, a job he had zero qualifications for, at the very time his dad was the point man on Ukraine. Just a coincidence. Of course there's no smoking gun, but an awful lot of fishy things.

WHere is your evidence that Trump asking them to investigate Biden was political, not a genuine attempt to see if there was any wrongdoing? Can you prove his intent? Nope. I'm not saying it wasn't political, but the fact is, there was enough there to look into it. Furthermore, where is your evidence that withholding military aid was a way to blackmail Ukraine to investigate Biden, as opposed to it being a way to get the Europeans to pony up more? But it's OK when you rely on circumstantial evidence, dumb hen I do it with Biden. The only explanation for that hypocrisy, is politics.

When circumstantial evidence suggests Biden was acting unethically, you put your fingers in your ears and ignore it. When circumstantial evidence suggests Trump acted unethically, by jiminy that's good enough for you.

All that matters, is the politics.

If what Trump did is disqualifying, so is doing what Biden did. I'm saying treat them both the same, give them each the same benefit of the doubt, or the same lack of benefit of the doubt. Isn't that the very definition of "fair"?

Have fun making that wrong.

[Pete F.]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

Pete, first you started a thread suggesting that Trump actually, truly wanted to incite a civil war. Here, you're saying he wants to burn everything to the ground.

Which is it?

You're coming completely un-glued, even for you. He's probably going to get impeached. There is absolutely no way he gets removed, he will be in power until at least January 2021, unless something else comes out.

He threatens to destroy everything or that it will just self-destruct unless he wins, though you might claim it is just puffery.