Donald Trump’s time in public office has resulted in many seemingly impossible events.
Such as turning me — an unabashed center/lefty — into a fan of a right-wing politician who, in this instance, is Liz Cheney.
Cheney is a Republican House member from Wyoming. She’s No. 3 on the GOP congressional leadership chart. She voted on Jan. 13 to impeach Donald Trump, deciding that Trump’s incitement of an insurrection was too much for her … and for the nation.
Rep. Cheney is right. Trump was as wrong as wrong can be to bellow his encouragement for the riotous mob to march on Jan. 6 on Capitol Hill to “take back our country.”
Cheney is now the target of Trumpkin Corps members among her colleagues in the House. They want to remove Cheney from her leadership post. The House GOP caucus, though, decided overwhelmingly to keep her in that position. Good for them.
Good also for Liz Cheney for standing up for the Constitution.
Adam Kinzinger has joined Liz Cheney in the purgatory pit of the once-Grand Old Party.
What did the two Republican members of Congress do to qualify for the roles as political pariahs? All they did was stand by the Constitution and vote to impeach Donald J. Trump while Trump was still president of the United States.
They aren’t the only lawmakers headed to the Trump cultists’ version of hell. Eight others also voted with their Democratic colleagues on Jan. 13 to impeach Trump for the second time in his term as president.
Cheney’s tenure as the No. 3 ranking member of the GOP caucus is now being threatened by the Trump suck-ups within Congress. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida ventured to Wyoming to drum up support for someone to mount a primary challenge against Rep. Cheney in 2022.
We are witnessing in real time the cratering of a once-great political party. Adam Kinzinger is looking to create a new conservative political action committee dedicated to what he calls real conservative values.
Politico reported: “Look it’s really difficult. I mean, all of a sudden imagine everybody that supported you, or so it seems that way, your friends, your family, has turned against you. They think you’re selling out,” the Illinois congressman said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The visible and conscious anger being expressed by many Republicans against those who dared to challenge their guy in the White House has drawn some fierce push back in the media … from some surprising sources, I should add.
Chris Wallace, the Fox News Channel stalwart, over the weekend suggested that Republicans should devote more of their energy toward condemning the spewage that comes from QAnon conspiracist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and less time criticizing those who followed their conscience and the Constitution in impeaching Donald Trump.
Adam Kinzinger’s family and friends accuse of him being “possessed by the devil.” That kind of idiocy tells me all I need to know about what has infected the GOP.
Donald Trump’s defense in his second impeachment trial is beginning to take shape.
It will not center on the high crime for which the House of Representatives impeached him. What he did was visible on TV screens around the world: He incited the terrorists to storm Capitol Hill on the Sixth of January and seek to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election that determine Joe Biden the winner.
Instead, the former president’s defense will hinge on some constitutional language that suggests that the House acted beyond the scope of its power by impeaching a man who no longer would be serving in the office of president.
Except for this little item: Trump was president when the House impeached him on Jan. 13. He left the office a week after that. The Senate is trying him now to prevent him from seeking public office ever again.
As I ponder this event, which begins on Feb. 9, I am left to wonder whether a second acquittal for Donald Trump will be on a technicality. You know, the kind of verdict that hardline prosecutors detest when they lose cases in which they present incontrovertible evidence, only to see it swept aside because of some technical matter.
You can bet your final dollar that the House managers who present their case will rely solely on the evidence that everyone saw with their own eyes and heard with their own ears. Think as well about the fact that senators will be hearing this evidence in the very scene of the crime that the rioters committed … at Donald Trump’s behest.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered the single count leveled against Trump to the Senate. The House managers have a steep hill to climb if they hope to persuade 17 GOP senators to do the right thing and vote to convict Trump.
However, as we have seen with all too much maddening regularity, congressional Republicans too often exhibit cowardice when faced with political repercussions. Donald Trump is now a cult leader in exile … but the cultists who follow him remain committed to him far more than to the country they profess to love.
Let’s just start by acknowledging that Donald John Trump has crossed into the realm of “history-making president.”
The U.S. House of Representatives today impeached Trump for the second time in his single term as president of the United States. That’s for the history books, man.
Here’s another history-making aspect: 10 Republican House members joined their Democratic colleagues in casting “yes” votes on impeachment.
Is the president standing tall today after this event? Hardly.
He will walk out of the White House for the final time no later than Jan. 19, when he high-tails it to Florida a day ahead of President Biden’s inaugural.
I reject the notion that this impeachment is overly divisive, or that it tears at the nation’s quest for unity. Donald Trump has done a marvelous job all by himself of widening the divide among Americans. The vote today — 232-197 — does not signal an increase in that chasm. To me it merely signals the start of another political era, one that highlights restoration of the presidency.
To be sure, there now will be a Senate trial. It will occur after Trump is gone. I am not even close to believing that the Senate will muster up the two-thirds majority it needs to convict Trump of “incitement of insurrection,” but it might.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the leading Senate Republican, expressed support for impeachment. That means he could vote to convict Trump of inciting that riot on Capitol Hill. Were he to make that declaration ahead of a vote, it could provide some form of political cover for other Republican senators who otherwise might want to hide in the weeds.
To my ears, I heard nothing that gave me pause for supporting Trump’s impeachment today. All I heard from many of Trump’s defenders were “what about” arguments from those who said, “What about those protests last summer?” or “What about Democrats who endorsed the violence then?”
What happened then has nothing to do with what Donald Trump did this past week? He incited a mob to storm the seat of our democratic government and to seek to overturn the results of a free and fair election.
For that act, Donald Trump made history today by becoming the nation’s first-ever two-time impeached president.
Nice going, Mr. President. Now … get the hell out of my house!
The third-term Wyoming member of Congress today cast a vote that well could cost Cheney her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
She voted to impeach Donald Trump on an allegation of “incitement of insurrection.” Why is this courageous? Consider the following …
She represents an entire state that has just a single House seat apportioned to it. Wyoming, moreover, cast just a shade less than 70 percent of its votes for Trump in the 2020 presidential election. That means that Cheney’s “congressional district” is one of the most pro-Trump districts in the nation.
This vote today well could put Cheney’s political career in jeopardy if it angers enough of the Trumpsters out there who stand by their guy no matter what. Not only that, GOP hardliners in the House are considering how to respond to their colleague’s decision to break ranks with the Trump base of supporters in Congress.
I salute Rep. Cheney for standing on the principle of standing for the Constitution and forgoing allegiance to an individual politician.
I hasten to add that Liz Cheney comes from rock-ribbed Republican political tradition. She is the daughter of Dick Cheney who served, in order, as a congressman from Wyoming, White House chief of staff for President Ford, secretary of defense in the Bush 41 administration and vice president of the United States in the Bush 43 administration.
Whatever political threat she might face — from her House colleagues or from the voters at home — for standing up for the rule of law apparently didn’t faze Liz Cheney.
When the U.S. of Representatives impeached Donald Trump in late 2019, I was certain that we had just witnessed the rough draft of the first line of Trump’s obituary.
It would read: Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States and the third president impeached by the House …
Silly me. I didn’t envision that the draft would be rewritten by what we are witnessing now in real time, which is the undermining by the defeated president of the Constitution he took an oath to defend and protect.
It now might read: Donald Trump, 45th president of the United States who sought to challenge the validity of a free and fair election that resulted in his defeat for re-election to a second term …
How might that hold up? Well, I don’t know. We have another 60 or so days to go before President-elect Biden takes the oath as the nation’s 46th president. There’s still more time for Biden’s predecessor to something really foolish, reckless or maybe even illegal!
I am heartened by the reality that looms just down the road, which is that Joe Biden will become President Biden at noon on Jan. 20. There is nothing Trump can do to forestall that event from occurring. President Biden will take the oath, accept the congratulations from Chief Justice John Roberts, hug and kiss his wife, children and grandchildren; they all will take part in an inaugural parade.
Then the president will enter the Oval Office and get to work.
Trump, meanwhile, will recede into the background. He won’t be silent. He won’t go quietly. Trump will have played out all his limited number of options. He’ll be gone.
That obituary remains to be written. Indeed, I wish him a long post-presidency life. Donald Trump needs to hear and see how history will chronicle the mess he left for his successor to clean up and repair.
The impeachment we all endured seems so long ago. It has become old news, thanks to the tactics Trump is using to undermine our democratic process.
I don’t think it can get any more significant than that. Then again, we are dealing with a man who is capable of damn near anything to hold onto power.
I want to bring up an issue that is getting next to zero attention among the media as we hurtle toward this highly anticipated presidential election.
It is that Donald J. Trump is the first impeached president in U.S. history who is running for re-election.
Yep. The first one! Ever!
Remember that the House of Representatives impeached Trump on two counts: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Trump went to trial in the Senate and was acquitted.
Why and how? Because almost all of the Senate’s Republican majority — with one notable exception — gave Trump a pass on the abuse of power he exhibited when he solicited from Ukraine a political favor and then obstructed Congress’s efforts to get to the truth of what happened.
Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah was the lone Republican to vote to convict Trump on abuse of power.
So now Trump wants a second term in office after being impeached by the House. How should that play? How does he sell himself as deserving re-election even after the House impeached him?
He calls it all a hoax. Which is fine with the GOP bloc that stands with this guy.
Many of the rest of us don’t see it that way. I believe Trump should have been tossed out of office because he sought Ukrainian help in digging up dirt on Joe Biden. Not good, Mr. President. Plus, he ordered top aides to refuse to comply with congressional summons to appear before committees to talk openly about what they knew and when they knew it. Also not good, Mr. POTUS.
Here we are. Donald Trump wants another term in office after being impeached by the House because he broke the law.
I almost couldn’t believe what my own ears had heard come from the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Nancy Pelosi actually said she is keeping possible impeachment of Donald Trump in her “quiver” of weapons to use against the president as he seeks to name a successor to the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Wow, man! Let’s ponder that one.
The House already impeached Trump. The Senate led by Republicans acquitted him in trial. The House, though, made its point by impeaching Trump on charges that he abused the power of his office and obstructed Congress’s effort to learn the whole story behind alleged “collusion” with Russians who interfered in our 2016 presidential election.
Is the speaker serious? Is she really prepared to impeach Donald Trump again?
Let me be clear on this point: I do not want the House to re-impeach Donald Trump. My reluctance has nothing to do with the merits of an impeachment. It has everything to do with the blowback I believe would occur if the House were to proceed with such a drastic move.
It might be merely that Pelosi, as tough a pol as there is in Washington, is firing a barrage across Trump’s bow. She wants him to hear from her that she is quite serious in preventing Trump from acting on his appointment prior to the presidential election.
Pelosi told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos this morning that she is not taking anything out of her arsenal of weapons to use against Trump.
It enrages me in the extreme to hear Mitch McConnell thump his chest anticipating a quickie hearing and vote on a lifetime judicial appointment that is likely to affect the balance of power for a generation.
I am hopeful there can be a way to forestall this pending appointment … without impeaching Donald Trump. I fear such a move would loose the hounds that well could propel the president to a second term.
I can barely type those words without breaking into a cold sweat.
I am acutely aware that Donald Trump’s impeachment and Senate trial are now part of our nation’s history, that Trump will be remembered forever as the nation’s third impeached president of the United States.
I cannot get past the cowardice demonstrated by all but one of the Senate’s 53 Republican members in giving this corrupt narcissist a pass on what he did, which was to extort the leader of another country into providing political dirt on Joe Biden, the man now in position to defeat Trump in the upcoming election.
Nor can I understand the logic behind that Senate acquittal, given that since then Trump has committed — allegedly — at least two more heinous acts.
One is that he reportedly sought to move the British Open golf tournament to a resort he owns, thus seeking actively to flout the clause in the Constitution that prohibits the president from profiting materially from his public office. It’s called the Emoluments Clause and this reported solicitation is simply the latest such example of this blatant corruption.
The other is the hideous betrayal of his oath as commander in chief to care for the troops under his command. I refer to the allegation that Russia paid Taliban terrorists bounties for every American serviceman and woman killed in Afghanistan. If there is a more “impeachable offense” than that, I am totally unaware of it.
This is the bargain that every House Republican and all but one Senate Republican delivered when they decided that the “perfect phone call” to the Ukrainian president in July 2019 wasn’t enough to toss Trump out of office.
I am enough of a realist to know that impeaching Trump again is likely out of the question. I also am enough of an idealist to hope that the election this November will take care of the corruption that has influenced damn near every political decision Trump has made while sitting in the Oval Office.
Of course, an election result doesn’t prevent criminal prosecution of Donald Trump once he quick-steps out of the White House for the final time. Oh, allow me to wish once again that the day comes after this next election.
The United States Army is about to lose a patriot, someone who shed blood on the battlefield for the country he loves.
And why? Because he had enough of a conscience to testify under oath before Congress about things he heard from the commander in chief … things that led the commander in chief’s impeachment by the House of Representatives.
Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman became a household name during that troubling episode. He has served more than two decades in defense of the nation. He once worked as a staffer for the National Security Council and reported to Congress that he heard Donald John Trump ask for a political favor from a foreign head of state in exchange for weapons the United States would provide that nation.
Trump called Vindman a “never Trumper” and dismissed his testimony as fake.
According Vindman and his lawyer, Trump’s anger reportedly got in the way of Vindman being promoted to full colonel.
This is despicable if true. I happen to believe it is true. Thus, the nation is now the poorer because a war hero and a patriot is surrendering his service to his beloved country.
This is so par for the course for this president.
“The President of the United States attempted to force LTC Vindman to choose: Between adhering to the law or pleasing a President. Between honoring his oath or protecting his career. Between protecting his promotion or the promotion of his fellow soldiers. These are choices that no one in the United States should confront, especially one who has dedicated his life to serving it,” Vindman’s lawyer, David Pressman said.
Thus, according to Pressman, Trump engaged in standard bullying of a career public servant.
This is another chapter to add to Trump’s growing list of disgraceful acts — allegedly! — while masquerading as commander in chief.
