Tag Archives: Trump impeachment

national news

Issues debate will be buried under impeachment avalanche

I was hoping for a robust debate in 2020 about the issues that should be driving the next presidential election campaign.

Silly me. It ain’t gonna happen.

I forgot about the impact that the impeachment of Donald J. Trump would have on the presidential campaign debate. Which means it will destroy it. The impeachment of the president is going to bury the issues debate under an avalanche of recrimination, back-biting, conspiracy nonsense and partisanship.

Oh, the humanity!

With so many issues that need a national reckoning, we are headed for an election season that will be tainted by the near-certain impeachment of the president of the United States of America.

Don’t misunderstand me. Impeaching a president is important stuff. An impeachment focuses attention on the fitness of the president. It forces us to debate whether the president should remain in office. I happen to believe he does not; I also believe he never should have been elected to the presidency in the first place.

I also take a small measure of comfort in knowing that more Americans share my view of the election result than those who voted for Trump.

However, my hope was that we could engage in a robust debate over, say: climate change, energy production, taxes, health care, job growth, infrastructure repair/renovation, education, gun violence, immigration reform … you know, things that ought to rivet our attention.

That won’t happen. I am sorry to acknowledge that Trump’s impeachment and pending trial in the U.S. Senate is going to scarf up so much of our attention as we plow ahead into a critical election year.

I wish it weren’t so.

national news

Partisanship is alive and festering in this pending impeachment

The highly partisan nature of the House of Representatives vote today on the impeachment inquiry into Donald J. Trump reveals a fundamental shortcoming in this process.

It remains a highly partisan, divided endeavor. Republicans voted “no” on the inquiry resolution, while all but two congressional Democrats voted “yes.”

The resolution lays out the rules and procedure that the House will follow from this moment forward as it decides whether to impeach the president on grounds that he violated his oath of office.

If only it wasn’t so damn partisan!

Looking back at the impeachment proceeding that resulted in President Nixon’s resignation from office in 1974, I am reminded that Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues in the search for the truth about the Watergate break-in and who was behind the coverup of the crime.

Nixon, the Republican president, quit when GOP senators told him eventually that he was toast, that a Senate trial would convict him. Indeed, during the Senate Watergate hearings in 1973, it fell to a GOP senator, Howard Baker, to ask famously, “What did the president know and when did he know it?”

And then came the question from the committee’s Republican legal counsel, Fred Thompson, who would go on later to be elected to the Senate alongside Sen. Baker of Tennessee: “Are you aware of … any listening devices in the Oval Office?” Thompson asked White House aide Alexander Butterfield, who answered “yes.”

Are there any Republicans now who are willing to exhibit that kind of courage? No. They are digging in to defend a president who has actually acknowledged that he sought political help from a foreign government. They are challenging the “process,” calling it a “Soviet-style” inquisition.

The partisanship being exhibited here reminds me of the shamelessness we saw during President Clinton’s impeachment in 1998. Republicans were hell bent toward impeaching the Democratic president, whose Democratic allies in Congress were equally hell bent in protecting him from the GOP attack dogs.

It’s playing out all over again.

But we have this major wrinkle: We’re now staring straight into a presidential election.

You want partisanship? Let’s hang on with both hands.

national news

Why not have a vote on impeachment?

I believe House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is making a mistake by holding off on a preliminary vote among House members over proceeding on an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump’s conduct as president of the United States.

Pelosi said today she won’t hold that vote. She said there is no requirement to do such a thing. Although she is correct, that doesn’t make it any less important. The speaker did say that she is open to possibly reassessing that decision if circumstances warrant it.

Why is such a vote needed? It would put members of the House — on both sides of this debate — on the record: do they support the inquiry or not?

I see nothing wrong with establishing for the record who wants to proceed and who doesn’t.

I happen to support the impeachment of Donald Trump. He has committed impeachable offenses by seeking foreign government help in his re-election effort. He has endorsed the idea of foreign interference in our elections. That is a fundamental betrayal of the oath of office he took the moment he became president and he deserves only to be booted out of office.

I want to know who among our members of Congress — all of whom work for us — endorses the notion of impeaching Donald Trump or at the very least of proceeding toward that end through a comprehensive inquiry into all the offenses the president has committed.

national news, political news

This impeachment thing appears to be growing more tentacles

As I seek to follow the ongoing impeachment crisis threatening the presidency of Donald Trump, I am getting a sense that the story is getting bigger than many Americans would prefer.

Just three weeks ago we learned about a phone call that Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodormyr Zellenskiy in which he sought a favor from Ukraine in exchange for releasing money to help Ukrainians fight Russian aggressors.

The phone call prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to launch an impeachment inquiry. The thought as I understood at the time was that the House would move rapidly toward an impeachment vote by Thanksgiving. It would be a narrowly focused matter: whether the president violated his oath by seeking foreign government help in his re-election and seeking foreign help in digging up dirt on Joe Biden, a potential foe in the 2020 presidential election.

Now it seems as if this story is getting many more tentacles.

Trump appeared to suggest that the vice president, Mike Pence, had conversations with Ukrainians as well; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at first denied knowledge of the Trump-Zellenskiy phone conversation, then acknowledged he was “on the call”; questions have now arisen about Turkey and whether the president’s decision to abandon our allies in Kurdistan in the fight against ISIS is somehow related to a Trump Towers deal in Istanbul.

My head is spinning, man.

Does all of this come together quickly? Can there be an impeachment vote by Thanksgiving? Can the Senate commence a trial and make a decision by, say, spring 2020? Is all of this getting so muddy that we won’t have a resolution until after the 2020 presidential election?

As if it needed to get more complicated. The juxtaposition of a re-election fight and an impeachment muddies matters beyond anything the nation has experienced. President Clinton was a lame-duck second-term president when the House impeached him in 1998; President Nixon was in the same boat when the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment in 1974. Neither man faced re-election.

This whole scenario is vastly different. Moreover, it keeps growing in its complexity as more Cabinet officials get sucked into the debate over what they knew and when they knew it.

I need something to settle my nerves.

I also want this saga to end — either through impeachment and Senate conviction, or at the ballot box — with Donald Trump vacating the Oval Office for a final time.

national news

The full Donald was on display … waiting to see if appears here

Donald Trump was in full crass/disgraceful/boorish mode while standing among the faithful in Minneapolis, Minn.

He ventured to the Twin Cities ostensibly to target an audience he thinks might help him win re-election in November 2020. He lost Minnesota to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election … but not by very much. Trump believes he can parlay that close finish to victory next time.

How would he accomplish such a feat? One way, I suppose, is for him to go directly after the individual he believes poses the most direct threat to his re-election. That would be former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Trump crassness was on full display, particularly when he said Biden’s only claim to being an effective VP was that he learned how to “kiss (Barack) Obama’s a**.”

Ohhh, the crowd loved it! They screamed, they hollered, they cheered themselves hoarse. The Donald loved the reaction.

I am one who is utterly astounded that the president of the United States would say such a thing about any American citizen, let alone a former vice president of the United States and a man who likely has more friends on the Republican side of the aisle than Donald Trump.

Trump, though, behaves in a boorish fashion that I believe far exceeds the behavior we have ever witnessed in a head of state/commander in chief.

They reported that the arena in Minneapolis was full. I expect the American Airlines Center in Dallas, where Trump will stage another political rally next week, also will be full. I mean, he’s coming straight into the heart of Trump Country — even though Hillary actually collected more votes than Trump in Dallas County.

Still, Dallas is surrounded by Trump-friendly communities and the president will be able to display to a highly receptive audience how low he can go.

I’ll be in the crowd listening to this individual’s idiocy.

My fervent hope — at this moment — is that I don’t puke.

national news

Trump mounting strange defense

Donald Trump’s reaction to the looming impeachment decision in the U.S. House of Representatives reminds me of the tactic he employed when special counsel Robert Mueller was examining The Russia Thing.

The president then chose to denigrate, disparage and all but defame Mueller’s probe, all the while proclaiming he did nothing wrong during the 2016 campaign.

My thought then was: If he is innocent of wrongdoing, why not just turn everything over and let the proverbial chips fall? He didn’t. Mueller finished his work, essentially absolving Trump of colluding with Russians who attacked our electoral system, but leaving the door open for Congress to decide the obstruction matter.

Now the House is marching toward impeaching the president. He calls the House action “unconstitutional,” which of course it isn’t. He has declared he won’t cooperate in any way, then changed his mind and said he would cooperate if the House treats him “fairly,” whatever that means.

My question today is similar to what it was then: If he did nothing wrong, is he hiding something he doesn’t want anyone to see?

Just cooperate, Mr. President, and let the House do the job that the U.S. Constitution empowers it to do.

national news

My gut is rumbling: Trump just might survive this mess

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I hate it when my gut starts to rumble. I get this queasy feeling down deep about certain matters occurring.

One of them is forcing a serious gut-churn way down yonder. Donald Trump, my innards are telling me, just might survive all this mess he has created. He appears likely at this moment to be able to avoid conviction in the U.S. Senate, if it is handed articles of impeachment from the U.S. House of Representatives; but even impeachment isn’t a lead-pipe cinch, even though the entire Democratic House majority is on board with an impeachment inquiry and potentially with actual impeachment.

Donald Trump has proven to be the master of evasion and, no, I am not referring to young Donald “evading” military service during the Vietnam War. Think for a moment about all the incidents during the 2016 presidential campaign that would have shattered a candidate’s dreams of winning the White House.

He said the late John McCain was a Vietnam War hero “only because he was captured”; he mocked a Gold Star family that criticized him at the Democratic National Convention; he mimicked and ridiculed a New York Times reporter afflicted with a crippling physical disability; Trump then admitted on that “Access Hollywood” recording to grabbing women by their pu*** because his “celebrity” status allowed him to do whatever he wants.

Imagine another politician, Democrat or Republican, getting away with that hideous campaign behavior. It boggles my mind.

So, now he’s president. He has acknowledged asking a foreign government for re-election help. He has admitted to asking an overseas power for help in digging up dirt on a potential 2020 opponent. He is on record telling Ukrainian officials that they can have help to fight the Russian-backed rebels if they did him a “favor, though,” meaning they had to do the favor before he would release the military assistance.

What does the current strife mean for the president? It means, to me, that his slipperiness has been able to deliver him from what should have been certain political doom.

Has this guy’s luck run out?

I hope it has. I fear he might find a way to avoid catastrophe.

national news

Yes, it’s time to impeach the president of the United States

You may now count me as an American who has changed his mind on whether to impeach the president of the United States, Donald Trump.

I had been in the camp of those who said impeachment was a potential political loser. I had joined House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in digging in against impeaching Trump. Why not wait until the 2020 presidential election? Why allow the Democratically controlled House to impeach Trump, only to allow the Republican-controlled Senate to acquit him?

That’s all changed. In my view, the president has delivered impeachable offenses to the House and to the Senate.

We had that memo taken from the transcript of the phone call Trump had on July 25 with Ukrainian President Volodyrmyr Zellenskiy, when Trump asked Zellenskiy for help in getting him re-elected. Oh, and then he asked for that “favor, though,” when he indicated he would withhold shipment of arms to Ukraine until after Zellenskiy did as Trump had asked.

The president is not allowed to seek foreign government assistance in that manner. It’s in the law. It is implied in the Constitution. Trump has broken the law and broken faith with the oath he took to defend the Constitution.

The House must not wait any longer than it needs to wait.

As for the Senate, I remain skeptical about that body’s collective courage, doubting senators will be able to muster the two-thirds majority it needs to convict the president and, thus, boot his sorry backside out of office.

Trump won’t cooperate with the House committees seeking information about what the president said and when and to whom he said it. He keeps insisting that he did nothing wrong, that his phone conversation with Zellenskiy was “perfect.” OK, then, why does he dig in and resist at every turn? Why does Trump insist that he didn’t ask Zellenskiy for dirt on a political foe, Joe Biden, when the memo already published suggests that he did that very thing?

He blasts the media, Democrats and even the few Republicans who’ve shown the guts to criticize the president. Trump says the impeachment drive is “illegitimate” and calls it an attempted “coup” to reverse the results of the 2016 presidential election.

Come on! The House is pursuing a legal attempt to hold the president accountable for his own acknowledged actions.

And then we have the whistleblower, acting under the protection of a law that aims to protect these individuals who reveal corruption in our government. One of them has filed a report with credible evidence that Trump has sought to use the power of his office for personal political gain. He or she has “indirect” knowledge. Then we hear about a second individual with “direct” knowledge of what already has been alleged.

Trump wants to reveal the identity of this individual, or both individuals. He is threatening them with the same punishment we hand out to those convicted of espionage.

If that isn’t witness tampering, or obstruction of justice or abuse of power then there is no standard that fits any of those misbehaviors.

Donald Trump needs to be impeached. The House needs to act with deliberate speed.

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Changing my mind on impeachment

Donald John Trump is forcing me to rethink my resistance to the notion that he needs to be impeached.

I’m allowed to change my mind, yes? Hey, politicians do it all the time. Bloggers are allowed to reconsider their own statements.

I do remain dubious — although decreasingly so — about whether an impeachment is going to result in the president’s removal from office. The House of Representatives now has enough votes among Democratic members who favor impeaching him.

Then what? The issue goes to the Senate, which must have a trial. Conviction requires two-thirds of senators to agree that the president is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. Republicans comprise the majority in the Senate; conviction would require about 20 GOP senators to convict, which doesn’t — at this moment — appear likely to occur.

OK, why the change of mind?

Donald Trump clearly has violated his oath of office. He has admitted to soliciting help from Ukraine’s president in his re-election; he also has admitted to asking him for dirt on Joe Biden, a potential opponent in 2020. Those two matters, right there, are grounds for impeachment.

It gets worse. He withheld military aid until Ukraine agreed to “play ball” with him; Ukraine, you see, wants to purchase weaponry it uses against Russian aggressors who invaded the country.

Trump is making it damn near impossible to stem the tide of impeachment that is swelling daily if not hourly. He alleges that his accusers are committing acts of treason. He is growing increasingly combative and irrational. The president’s rage looks to me to be getting the better of him.

I have held out for the notion of letting the 2020 election remove the president from office. I am beginning to believe that we shouldn’t wait for that event to occur.

None of this fills me with joy. It merely fills me with resolve to repair what is damaging our system of government. The damage is being inflicted by the president of the United States.

national news

Trump takes aim at protected whistleblower

As if Donald John Trump wasn’t in enough hot water …

The president of the United States asked a foreign leader for re-election help and for dirt on a political foe; that’s bad enough right there. Then he suggested he would withhold money to help the foreign leader’s country in its fight against an aggressor nation until he got the help he sought; that makes it even worse.

House Democrats are gearing up for an impeachment effort against the president.

Is the president defending himself on the merits of what he has asked the Ukrainian president? Oh, no!

He has decided to take aim at the intelligence official who blew the whistle on what he or she believes is occurring, which is that the White House is trying to subvert the Constitution and is seeking to cover that effort up!

Trump wants to “interview” the whistleblower. Hmm. Is that, um, tampering with someone who is protected under federal law?

And then we see Trump talking about the whistleblower being “almost a spy,” and suggesting/implying that we need to treat spies the “way we used to” treat them, “when we were smart.” Does that mean execution?

The whistleblower’s lawyer has issued a warning that any effort to interfere with his client’s effort would violate federal law.

This individual, who reportedly comes from the intelligence community, is protected under the law to do what he or she has done. This person has presented, to my way of thinking, credible accusations that the president has violated his oath of office. He has solicited foreign government help in assuring his re-election. Trump has sought help from foreign governments for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

Furthermore, the president has put our national security at risk by withholding money to pay for weaponry that Ukrainians want to help them fight the Russians, who have invaded Ukraine; he would release the money if the Ukrainians decided to “play ball” with Trump’s re-election team.

Now he wants to know the identity of the person who has outed him? He threatens something “bad” happening if that individual doesn’t reveal his or her identity?

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we have yet another “long national nightmare” in the making.