Now I've made clear (particularly on Twitter) my support for the impeachment of Trump and his removal from office. So the reader probably knows to expect a critical response to Trump's running a victory lap after the partisan acquittal on impeachment charges. Now it might seem to be arbitrary in the sense I've been a persistent critic of Trump since he announced his candidacy 5 years back--and I've mentioned multiple times not only Trump but his predecessors had also committed impeachable acts, as I've quoted Ron Paul approvingly on multiple occasions. So I didn't really push this against either Bush or Obama; is it simply personal against Trump?
No. But Trump has gone over and beyond Bush and Obama's unconstitutional extensions to the imperial Presidency. I've been saying for years now that Trump has been playing with fire. It includes, but is not restricted to, his dubious seizing of statutory "emergency" powers (regrettably ambiguously delegated by past Congressional sessions) to launch unjustifiable trade wars or to transfer funds against Congress' appropriated expenditures, his personal attacks on legislators and judges (and pushing leniency on Roger Stone, his pardon of political allies like Arpaio), his attempts to shutter investigations in which he had obvious vested interests, his retaliatory terminations of impeachment witnesses, even suggestions that he has the absolute right to pardon himself. All of these are serious violations of the fundamental construct of the rule of law. Trump doesn't acknowledge the constitutional limits on his authority. It may well be that other Presidents have quietly done similar things, even worse, but to the best of my knowledge, Trump's size and scope of misconduct is unprecedented.
The very idea that Trump would ask the leader of another country (President Zelensky of Ukraine) for a political favor (to investigate his political rival Joe Biden) and withhold allocated military aid as a de facto extortion/bribe to motivate Zelensky's cooperation is, pure and simple, a flagrant abuse of foreign policy authority. Now Trump apologists will attempt to argue there is no smoking gun, e.g., Trump doesn't directly tell Zelensky there will be enumerated consequences to not doing Trump a favor, but this is a sham rationalization: Trump went out of the way to tell Zelensky that the US doesn't get much in return from Ukraine and Ukraine has few friends it can depend on. Zelensky isn't an idiot; he knows what assistance Ukraine gets from the US.
From a standpoint of professional ethics, Trump would have to recuse himself from any discussion of Joe Biden. Even, for the sake of argument, you granted Biden had engaged in wrongdoing, there would an established process for the US and Ukraine to collaborate on investigations of wrongdoing. There is no "right to know" for Trump. The disposition of Biden is not a legitimate foreign policy objective reflecting our national interest; it reflects Trump's personal political interest.
Let's be clear. Whether Trump raised Biden's name in the Zelensky phone call is beyond dispute. Even Trump's own abridged transcript of the phone call shows Biden's name coming up in the conversation. While Trump's apologists have repeatedly tried to make the whistleblower an issue, this was no partisan fabrication or allegation; it's historical fact.
Now GOP arguments that no harm was done--the aid was eventually released (under bipartisan pressure), etc.--that removal from office seems to be disproportionate to the nature and extent of Trump's misconduct--are not unreasonable. One could argue that the impeachment process itself serves as a deterrent against future misconduct. Although I'm a persistent critic of Trump, I really don't have Trump Derangement Syndrome, at least relative to what is being said and done on Twitter every day by partisan Dems. I had been predicting Trump's acquittal for months and given the fact we are facing an election in less than 10 months gives the American people to have a direct voice on Trump's political future. So I didn't have a meltdown during the acquittal process. I do think the GOP would have been better served to show evidence of due diligence during the trial and failing to depose relevant witnesses like John Bolton was an unnecessary mistake.
That being said, I knew there would be much to disagree with in Trump's post-acquittal victory lap. For a sample relevant transcript, see here.
[W]e probably deserve that hand for all of us because it's been a very unfair situation... We had the witch hunt that started from the day we came down the elevator....We've been going through this now for over three years. It was evil, it was corrupt, it was dirty cops, it was leakers and liars. And this should never, ever happen to another president...Had I not fired James Comey -- who was a disaster, by the way -- it's possible I wouldn't even be standing here right now....Let me tell you, if we didn't win, the stock market would have crashed...We went through hell, unfairly, did nothing wrong -- did nothing wrong...And there's nothing, from a legal standpoint; this is a political thing...we first went through "Russia,Russia, Russia." It was all bullshit. We then went through the Mueller report. And they should have come back one day later. They didn't.No, as the AP points out: "A two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller that produced guilty pleas, convictions or criminal charges against Russian intelligence officers, as well as Trump associates....Five Trump aides pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with Mueller. A sixth, longtime confidant Roger Stone, was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering...Mueller’s report concluded that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was “sweeping and systematic.” Ultimately, Mueller did not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign." So, yes, Russia was implicated in wrongdoing, in support of Trump's campaign, although Mueller found no smoking gun of a quid pro quo.
I am so annoyed at a whining Donald Trump playing the victim card. This is a hypocritical, divisive asshole who has no problem demeaning other people. He's in politics which isn't a "fair game"; if you can't handle being criticized, get out of the game. Until then, man up! You're embarrassing yourself.
There's a lot of self-pitying, self-serving crap going on here. Just a few comments here. First of all, at least until 2016, James Comey was a registered Republican (now independent). Trump had made it clear that he expected loyalty from Comey. In particular, he did not like the Russia investigation. Let's point out that Trump had opened the door on the Russia controversy by openly asking Russia to uncover Hillary Clinton's missing emails, some of which may have contained classified national security information. (He has disingenuously since claimed he was "joking".) The fact is that he seemed to be asking Russia for a favor in his own political self-interest, and one could reasonably ask if Russia anticipated some quid pro quo. Trump didn't seem to realize it was wrong to solicit Russia's intervention into the 2016 campaign; even Speaker Ryan at the time rebuked Trump's "joke". Now whether the nature and extent of the Russia investigation went beyond Trump's lack of discipline in campaigning is a separate issue. But Trump opened the door to the inquiry and needs to accept responsibility for his part instead of playing the victim. The absolute last thing he should have done is anything that looked like quashing an investigation which made it look like he had something to hide.
He had expected AG Sessions to be his bitch and quash the investigation; he was infuriated that Sessions recused himself and Sessions ended up getting fired like Comey for disloyalty. The Mueller investigation was the best Trump could have asked for under the circumstances; Mueller was a Republican who had served as FBI chief under 2 administrations and enjoyed bipartisan support. No, Mueller had a responsibility to do due diligence, not to stop an investigation because Trump thought it's politically inconvenient.
Did I think the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians? No, and the Dems were hypocritical for complaining about Russians seeking to influence the 2016 election, given the historical evidence of the US attempting to influence elections elsewhere. I think Trump and his campaign were naive, amateurish and ill-advised to engage in favorable rhetoric with respect to a traditional adversary and autocratic foreign leaders; I don't think it was right to arrange meetings with Russian surrogates prior to assuming the Presidency, to encourage release of Hillary Clinton's emails, etc. All of these were examples of Trump shooting himself in the foot (maybe the one with the bone spurs). Now maybe this was a misguided way of signaling a dramatic shift in foreign policy, of taking on the Deep State. But it entailed significant risk and was unconventional. It was done without involvement with traditional allies affected by shifts in US-Russian relations. Trump was playing with fire; it was a policy not consistent with the GOP's own positions for decades. I'm not sure what he thought the upside was; maybe he hoped that he would get under Clinton's skin and/or his Trumpkins would approve. But if so, he was penny-wise, pound-foolish. That doesn't make him a victim.
No, Trump's win was NOT "one of the greatest of all time". Bush 43 also lost the plurality vote, not to mention John Quincy Adams, Hayes, and Harrison. Basically, it's true that primarily the LA Times had him winning a plurality over Clinton; over all polls, Clinton had a 3-point plurality in the polls and won the plurality by 2 points. Where Trump won the electoral college was in 3 photo-finish states (WI, MI, PA), and the polls weren't really looking at the electoral college.
Because they wanted to inflict political pain on somebody that had just won an election that, to a lot of people, were surprised. I mean, we had polls that said we were going to win. We had Los Angeles Times and a few -- a few papers actually said it was -- we were going to win but it was going to be close. And we did win. It was one of the greatest wins of all time. And they said "OK, he won." And, you know, I wrote this down because that was where a thing called the insurance policy -- to me, when I saw the insurance policy -- and that was done long before the election, that was done when they thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win. And by the way, Hillary Clinton and the DNC paid for millions -- millions of dollars, the fake dossier, and now Christopher Steele admits that it's a fake because he got sued by rich people. I should've sued him, too, but when you're president, people don't like suing.
As for suing people, Trump is constantly talking about rewriting libel laws, with the intent of a chilling effect on First Amendment rights. I have largely not commented on the Steele dossier kerfuffle in the blog--and in particular the infamous "golden showers" incident, where the allegation goes that Trump paid 5 Russian prostitutes to urinate on a Presidential Suite bed at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton in 2013 where reportedly the Obamas once stayed. Trump was supposedly taped at the scene by the FSB (KGB), and there was a rumor that Putin retained footage as a means of blackmailing Trump. Now, really, the idea that the owner of the Miss Universe pageant would one day be elected President seemed far-fetched, although Trump had briefly flirted with the idea of running in the 2012 campaign; I don't know why the FSB would have been targeting Trump at the time. But we already know Trump's attorney Cohen had been paying porn actress Stormy Daniels hush money for an affair Trump had while Melania was pregnant with their son.To me, a man sleeping around on his pregnant wife is capable of doing a lot of other disgusting things. For more discussion of the "golden showers" kerfuffle, see here.
But let's put several points into perspective: much of the intelligence in the Steele dossier was raw, uncorroborated, third-person, and Steele never pretended otherwise; it was published without his knowledge or consent. Let's point out Trump's pro-Russia tilt and openly warm rhetoric on Putin is incontrovertible and many of his close advisers have had Russian ties. Flynn met with Russian officials before Trump had taken office. Meetings of campaign/other representatives, including his eldest son, with Russians, are matters of fact. A pro-Russia tilt is not an orthodox GOP position. In fact, reportedly one of the reasons that Trump did not choose Romney as his Secretary of State had to do with Romney's anti-Russia rhetoric during the 2012 campaign, and Trump ended up unconventionally picking an oil executive who had cut business deals with Russian oil interests. I'm not necessarily arguing where there's smoke, there's fire, but Trump's own lack of self-discipline exacerbated the situation.
Now I'm not going to discuss the Steele dossier in detail here; there are issues that a DOJ watchdog group has identified, although some experts argue the general gist of the dossier has held up well as raw intelligence with elements consistent with other government intelligence. Yes, many elements were uncorroborated.
They made up facts. A corrupt politician named Adam Schiff made up my statement to the Ukrainian president. He brought it out of thin air, just made it up. They say, "He's a screenwriter -- a failed screenwriter. He tried to go in" -- unfortunately he went into politics after that. (LAUGHTER) Remember, he said the statement, which is a mob statement,"Don't call me, I'll call you." I didn't say that.I had to research what the hell Trump was talking about here. It seems to be this quote from Sept. 26:
Schiff, Sept. 26: It reads like a classic organized crime shakedown. Shorn of its rambling character and in not so many words, this is the essence of what the president communicates. We’ve been very good to your country, very good. No other country has done as much as we have. But you know what? I don’t see much reciprocity here. I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you though. And I’m going to say this only seven times so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand. Lots of it. On this and on that. I’m going to put you in touch with people, not just any people, I am going to put you in touch with the attorney general of the United States, my Attorney General Bill Barr. He’s got the whole weight of the American law enforcement behind him. And I’m going to put you in touch with Rudy. You’re going to love him. Trust me. You know what I’m asking. And so I’m only going to say this a few more times. In a few more ways. And by the way, don’t call me again. I’ll call you when you’ve done what I asked.Schiff is not claiming this is verbatim. He's paraphrasing the gist of the conversation; it's a parody and its meaning is clear from the first 2 sentences. The actual transcript calls for Zelensky to do him a favor. Trump is complaining the US does so much for Ukraine and gets nothing in return. Well, what is Ukraine getting from the US? Obviously Trump is holding millions in allocated aid. Zelensky knows that. Trump doesn't say it, but it's clearly implied. Technically, Trump doesn't make the quid pro quo explicit, but it's clear from context. And he's giving Zelensky 2 points of contact to discuss his request. Yes, Schiff is making it sound like a gangster showdown, but that's clear from his opening sentence. Schiff is not arguing his mobster analogy is factual, so Trump's protest here is idiotic.
I probably have a legal obligation, Mr. Attorney, to report corruption. But they don't think it's corrupt when a son that made no money, that got thrown out of the military, that had no money at all, is working for $3 million up front, $83,000 a month. And that's only Ukraine; then goes to China, picks up $1.5 billion; then goes to Romania, I hear, and many other countries. They think that's OK.Here Trump is making a clear reference to Hunter Biden. This is knowing bullshit. For one thing, DoD, both in 2018 and 2019, certified Ukraine corruption compliance, and Hunter Biden was appointed to the board in 2014. (Now one could question the improper appearance of Hunter taking the appointment given his dad's involvement with Ukraine as VP, but no one has alleged wrongdoing on Hunter's part.) Burisma is a private company primarily owned by an oligarch, alleged to have been involved in money laundering operations. Was Hunter Biden knowledgeable in the natural gas business (Burisma)? No. But I can point out numerous corporate boards recruiting the politically connected and/or without industry experience. Burisma says Hunter's compensation was comparable. The corruption issue had more to do with to do with corrupt prosecutors (e.g., bribes) not going after alleged criminals, like the oligarchs. In fact, Shokin, who Trump calls "very good", actually cleared the Burisma oligarch of money laundering charges from Europe. Shokin had been targeted as corrupt by the US, the EU, the IMF and local anti-corruption groups. Trump is clearly totally ignorant of the complaints against Shokin, somehow thinks Biden was somehow shaking down Ukraine to the benefit of his son. It's simply a crackpot notion, totally inconsistent with the facts.
But I told Mike [VP Pence]-- I said, "Mike, we're giving them money and, you know, you're always torn about that because we have our country to build; we have our cities to build and our roads to fix. But we are giving the money. Tell me, why isn't Germany paying money? Why isn't France? Why isn't United Kingdom paying money? Why aren't they paying money? Why are we paying the money?" Is that a correct statement, Mike? I say, "Find out what the hell is going on." And I told that to all of my people, OMB. I said -- I asked that question, "How much is Germany paying? Why isn't Germany paying? Why is the United States always the sucker?"Well, first of all, if Trump had an issue with Ukraine aid (I myself have a principled objection to foreign aid in general), he should have vetoed the aid bill funding. But once he signed the bill, he had a legal obligation to deliver the aid. He didn't, as the GAO specifically pointed out (well, he eventually released the aid on Sept. 11, under political pressure). Trump wants to call the shots that come with the American Empire but wants other nations to pay "their fair share" for America calling the shots. But the point I want to make is, why should Germany, France, the UK subsidize Ukraine's government? Trump's position doesn't seem principled; it's one thing to argue we shouldn't do it either, another thing to bitch others aren't paying their fair share. Again, this is just a bullshit rationalization for putting a hold on Ukraine aid in his quid pro quo extortion.
They took nothing. They took a phone call that was a totally appropriate call -- I call it a perfect call, because it was -- and they brought me to the final stages of impeachment. But now we have that gorgeous word. I never thought a word would sound so good. It's called, "total acquittal."No. Bringing up Biden's name in an official Presidential phone call and demanding an investigation of your chief political rival is an impeachable crime, an abuse of foreign relation authority. Whereas one could argue the House didn't make a good faith effort to subpoena relevant witnesses like Bolton and rushed impeachment in a partisan manner, the Senate acquittal was totally partisan and highly unusual in American history in the sense of no witnesses. It was clear a GOP-controlled Senate would never convict Trump over an unsuccessful attempt to extort the Ukraine government. This does not mean the Senate exonerated Trump; in fact, a number of Republicans voting to acquit termed Trump's behavior inappropriate, e.g., Portman, Alexander, Murkowski, and Collins. In many cases, it was a judgment call whether the punishment of removal from office was proportionate to the offense. Moreover, Trump didn't gain even a single Democrat vote to acquit, not even from vulnerable red state senators like Manchin and Jones. In fact, he lost Romney on the abuse of power count. So, yes, the Senate voted to acquit, but "total acquittal" is just hype.
And you know, in '18, we didn't win -- we just won two seats in North Carolina -- two wonderful seats in North Carolina that were not supposed to be won but I went and I made speeches and we had rallies and we did a great job and we won. We took two seats, nobody writes about that. If we lost, it would've been the biggest story of the year.Well, this is more about politics than acquittal, but make no mistake. No matter how Trump spins this, 2018 was a disaster for Trump. He lost the House of Representatives. And there would likely have been no impeachment if the GOP had held the House. He also unsuccessfully targeted several Senate seats, including Manchin's in WV and Doug Jones won Alabama. He's putting lipstick on a pig.
They were going to try and overthrow the government of the United States, a duly elected president. And if I didn't fire James Comey, we would have never found this stuff. Because when I fired that sleazebag, all hell broke out.No. Nancy Pelosi was previously reluctant to move on impeachment, because she knew Clinton's impeachment had backfired on the Republicans in subsequent elections. Trump is responsible for what he said and did in the Zelensky phone call. And Pelosi couldn't look the other way because Trump's crime was clearly unconstitutional. She knew Senate conviction was unlikely.
As for Comey, I'll simply point out that Trump has given multiple, conflicting rationales for firing Comey. Comey claims it's because Trump demanded fidelity to him personally, and in fact, this does reflect the reality of Jeff Sessions' termination by Trump over Sessions' recusal from the Russia investigation. No, the revelation of the Ukraine call was not connected to the Russia investigation. The fact is that Trump tried to suppress the Russia investigation, clearly unconstitutional because of its self-serving nature. Basically Trump made it look like he was trying to hide something and exacerbated the situation. He's the one who basically lacked self-discipline during the campaign and basically invited Russia to reveal Hillary Clinton's emails, his own family and associates met with Russians, etc.; he opened the door to all this speculation, and he's playing this 'poor, poor pitiful me' garbage.
But I can tell you, in my opinion, these are the crookedest, most dishonest, dirtiest people I've ever seen. They said -- this is Strzok -- God, Hillary should win, 100 million to one. This is about me. This is an agent from the FBI. Look how they let her off, 33,000 e-mails, deleted. Nothing happens to her, nothing happens. It's unbelievable. But think of that, God, Hillary should win. When these guys are investigating Hillary. Then they go to work for Mueller -- the two of them -- and when Mueller found out that everybody knew that they were a hundred percent this way, he let them go. But they deleted all of their emails and text messages.I'm not going to defend Hillary Clinton here. She knowingly violated federal government email security standards, and there's a likelihood, given the nature of her position, some of those emails contained classified information.
"Instances of classified information being deliberately transmitted via unclassified email were the rare exception and resulted in adjudicated security violations. There was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information. While Clinton’s server may have theoretically been more vulnerable, there is no solid proof it was ever compromised.
"The new report is vague about the outcome of the 91 security violations and how, if at all, they affected individuals’ security clearances. Some other episodes were deemed to be “infractions,” which typically result in no action unless there are at least three such instances, the report said."
The vast majority of messages were likely of a personal/unclassified nature, and an argument could be made that personal emails shouldn't be sent over government infrastructure.
The fact that some government employees may have personally supported Ms. Clinton doesn't impress me much, given the heavily Democratic collar counties and DC itself. Federal employees don't lose their right to vote as citizens or a right to express their opinions, so long as they don't violate the Hatch Act. And note the fact that Trump has repeatedly attacked Mueller, and McGahn testified Trump directed him to have Mueller fired. (Trump has given evasive, legalistic responses, e.g., claiming he did not use the word "fire", but refused to testify under oath.) The fact that Mueller dismissed biased investigators stands on its own merit.
Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there's something so compelling and so overwhelming and bipartisan -- bipartisan, it was 197 to nothing -- and -- other than one failed presidential candidate -- and I call that half a vote, because he actually voted for us on the other one -- but we had one failed presidential candidate, that's the only half a vote we lost. So we had almost 53 to nothing. We had 197 to nothing. And the only one that voted against was a guy that can't stand the fact that he ran one of the worst campaigns in the history of the presidency. But she said there's something so -- "It has to be so compelling and so overwhelming and bipartisan. I don't think we should go down that path because it divides the country..." -- she's right about that -- "...and it's just not worth it." That was Nancy Pelosi a year ago, right? And I think it's a shame. I think it's a shame.Do I need to point out the "one failed presidential candidate" is Sen. Romney? And actually Trump's engaging in bullshit hype here: Justin Amash turned independent last July 4, but he was elected a Republican and voted for both impeachment counts. As for the House Dems:
Representatives Collin C. Peterson of Minnesota and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey broke with their party on the abuse of power charge, while Representative Jared Golden of Maine joined them in opposition to the article accusing the president of obstruction of Congress.And Jeff Van Drew flipped parties shortly thereafter. The Trumpkins heavily targeted Dems from red states or districts, and they only managed to convert a small fraction in the House and none in the Senate.
