US President Donald J. Trump Impeachment Megathread - Democrats commit mass political suicide

On September 24th, 2019, Nanci Pelosi did what everyone expected was some exceptional political posturing -- initiating a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

The initial "charge," such as it was, was "betraying his oath of office and the nation's security by seeking to enlist a foreign power to tarnish a rival for his own political gain." This, amusingly, was after it was discovered and widely reported on that the DNC had contacted the very same foreign power to attempt to tarnish Trump.

Specifically, this was all based on a rumor that Trump had asked the Ukraine to investigate how a prosecutor investigating Joe Biden's son for corruption had gotten fired, and withheld foreign aid until they had agreed. (He did ask the leader of the Ukraine to investigate what happened with the prosecutor, but did not hold up any foreign aid nor threaten anything of the like.)

Around this time, Trump did something they could not, and still cannot, understand: He publicly turned over all the documents. The transcript of the phone call they claimed showed him committing the crime of blackmailing the Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden for him was released, showing that Trump did nothing wrong. The only reaction the radical left had was arguing over the definition of "transcript" and spouting off a conspiracy theory about official state documents being edited.

At the same time, old video evidence of Joe Biden publicly bragging about blackmailing the Ukraine into NOT investigating his son came to light. Yes, this is exactly what they're accusing Trump of doing. The left is nothing if not subtle. Right after this, evidence came to light that Pelosi, Kerry, and Romney's kids had similar fake jobs in the Ukraine, getting paid ungodly amounts of money and embezzling US foreign aid to the Ukraine -- all things that Trump's Attorney General has openly discussed investigating.

By releasing the transcripts, the DNC was tripped up. Instead of being able to leak information from their secret investigation until November 2020, they were forced to play their hand publicly.

And they had no hand to play. The impeachment accusations came from second and third hand sources -- watercooler talk from Unelected Deep State Analysts with Trump Derangement Syndrome, outraged that President Trump refused to obey them when they felt they had a better idea as to how to run Foreign Affairs. Other allegations included that supposedly, the telepathic DNC members working in the state department knew what Trump was thinking (despite him literally saying the exact opposite) or could tell that Trump would do something even worse -- maybe something actually illegal -- in the future, and boy howdy, the imaginary Trump in their minds was a right bastard.

(As an aside, the name of the whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, has been censored across pretty much all social media, a test run of whatever censorship they're going to enact in the next few months to try and swing the election.)

At the same time, the DNC performed significant amounts of partisan political fuckery to do this all publicly, but unofficially -- preventing the GOP from bringing forth witnesses or questioning the DNC's witnesses, or even reading the double plus secret evidence the DNC supposedly had. Those GOP that did get access to the evidence have confirmed it's a 3 pound 5 ounce nothingburger.

The charges have since mutated, with them initially being changed to "bribery" -- as "bribery" focus groups easier and is easier to spew out on Twitter.

On December 18th, 2019, along party lines and with bipartisan opposition, they finally drafted their articles of impeachment -- first for "Abuse of Power" and second for "Obstruction of Congress." Neither are actually crimes nor are they impeachable offenses, even if they were true -- which the DNC has provided no evidence of, explaining that it's the Senate's job to investigate and find the evidence.

Narrator: It is not the Senate's job to investigate and find the evidence.

The "Obstruction of Congress" charge is particularly egregious, as they are claiming that Trump, by reaching out to the courts to act as mediators in his dispute over the rules with Pelosi, was obstructing her. In other words, Pelosi's stance is that the President must obey her, even if she's being a batshit insane drunk. Many legal scholars, including Alan Dershowitz, have pointed out that this is absolute bullshit.

The latest development as of this writing on December 21th, 2019, is that Pelosi is demanding that the GOP recuse itself, allowing the DNC to reshape the Senate in order to make the process "fair" -- by creating a Kangaroo court. The GOP is refusing outright, as the Senate's role during this is very specifically to take the charges and all the evidence gathered from the house -- which is none -- and vote yes or no on impeachment. They need 2/3rd majority to vote yes, and the DNC does not have the votes.

Pelosi is refusing to send over the articles of impeachment until the GOP allows her to stack the Senate against Trump, an act that Dershowitz as well as Noah Feldman, the DNC's own star legal expert witness, has said is unconstitutional and "a problem," as Trump isn't impeached until the articles have been filed. Meanwhile, the DNC has put the House on vacation until the new year, while the Senate is exploring options including forcing the articles over without Pelosi's ok. Trump and the Senate have both went to the SCOTUS to ask them if any of this is constitutional.

tl;dr: Trump may have found where the Swamp was embezzling US Foreign Aid. Many politician's children working fake jobs for huge amounts of money in the Ukraine, blatantly selling influence. This caused the DNC to freak out and try and headshot Trump. They missed. The Democrats appear to have committed political suicide, making Trump a Martyr and only realizing in the aftermath that they didn't actually get rid of him or even weaken him in any way. They also appear to realize they fucked up and are trying to slow walk it back, keeping the "he's impeached!" victory while not actually having to let anyone read the evidence or have a trial on it.


@Yotsubaaa did a great writeup here with links to various winner posts: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/nancy...kraine-phone-call.61583/page-135#post-5606264

And @Yotsubaaa did a new version very late on the 21st of December: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/presi...chment-megathread.61583/page-260#post-5754920

Which are too big to quote here.



https://archive.fo/oVGIv

WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that the House would initiate a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump, charging him with betraying his oath of office and the nation’s security by seeking to enlist a foreign power to tarnish a rival for his own political gain.

Ms. Pelosi’s declaration, after months of reticence by Democrats who had feared the political consequences of impeaching a president many of them long ago concluded was unfit for office, was a stunning turn that set the stage for a history-making and exceedingly bitter confrontation between the Democrat-led House and a defiant president who has thumbed his nose at institutional norms.

“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution,” Ms. Pelosi said in a brief speech invoking the nation’s founding principles. Mr. Trump, she added, “must be held accountable — no one is above the law.”

She said the president’s conduct revealed his “betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.”

Ms. Pelosi’s decision to push forward with the most severe action that Congress can take against a sitting president could usher in a remarkable new chapter in American life, touching off a constitutional and political showdown with the potential to cleave an already divided nation, reshape Mr. Trump’s presidency and the country’s politics, and carry heavy risks both for him and for the Democrats who have decided to weigh his removal.

Though the outcome is uncertain, it also raised the possibility that Mr. Trump could become only the fourth president in American history to face impeachment. Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both impeached but later acquitted by the Senate. President Richard M. Nixon resigned in the face of a looming House impeachment vote.

It was the first salvo in an escalating, high-stakes standoff between Ms. Pelosi, now fully engaged in an effort to build the most damning possible case against the president, and Mr. Trump, who angrily denounced Democrats’ impeachment inquiry even as he worked feverishly in private to head off the risk to his presidency.

Mr. Trump, who for months has dared Democrats to impeach him, issued a defiant response on Twitter while in New York for several days of international diplomacy at the United Nations, with a series of fuming posts that culminated with a simple phrase: “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!” Meanwhile, his re-election campaign and House Republican leaders launched a vociferous defense, accusing Democrats of a partisan rush to judgment.

“Such an important day at the United Nations, so much work and so much success, and the Democrats purposely had to ruin and demean it with more breaking news Witch Hunt garbage,” Mr. Trump wrote. “So bad for our Country! For the past two years, talk of impeachment had centered around the findings of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who investigated Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections and Mr. Trump’s attempts to derail that inquiry. On Tuesday, Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, told her caucus and then the country that new revelations about Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, and his administration’s stonewalling of Congress about them, had finally left the House no choice but to proceed toward a rarely used remedy.

“Right now, we have to strike while the iron is hot,” she told House Democrats in a closed-door meeting in the basement of the Capitol. Emerging moments later to address a phalanx of news cameras, Ms. Pelosi, speaking sometimes haltingly as she delivered a speech from a teleprompter, invoked the Constitution and the nation’s founders as she declared, “The times have found us” and outlined a new stage of investigating Mr. Trump.

At issue are allegations that Mr. Trump pressured the president of Ukraine to open a corruption investigation of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, and his son. The conversation is said to be part of a whistle-blower complaint that the Trump administration has withheld from Congress. And it occurred just a few days after Mr. Trump had ordered his staff to freeze more than $391 million in aid to Ukraine.

Mr. Trump has confirmed aspects of his conversation with the Ukrainian leader in recent days, but he continues to insist he acted appropriately.

The president said on Tuesday that he would authorize the release of a transcript of the conversation, part of an effort to pre-empt Democrats’ impeachment push. But Democrats, after months of holding back, were unbowed, demanding the full whistle-blower complaint and other documentation about White House dealings with Ukraine, even as they pushed toward an expansive impeachment inquiry that could encompass unrelated charges.

President Trump’s personal lawyer. The prosecutor general of Ukraine. Joe Biden’s son. These are just some of the names mentioned in the whistle-blower’s complaint. What were their roles? We break it down.

Ms. Pelosi told fellow Democrats that Mr. Trump told her in a private call on Tuesday morning that he was not responsible for withholding the whistle-blower complaint from Congress. But late Tuesday, the White House and intelligence officials were working on a deal to allow the whistle-blower to speak to Congress and potentially even share a redacted version of the complaint in the coming days, after the whistle-blower expressed interest in talking to lawmakers.

Although Ms. Pelosi’s announcement was a crucial turning point, it left many unanswered questions about exactly when and how Democrats planned to push forward on impeachment.
 
Ostatnio edytowane:
f6933632bf887270fda07c412e8d1826.png


Here's another interesting question: If according to all of these polls the national average for being pro-Impeachment has been steadily on the rise since he's been in office and has spiked considerably since the Ukrainian "scandal", how is it that his approval ratings have essentially flattened out in the 40-50 range and are actually projected to keep improving.

I'm not even using one of the super Pro-Trump polls like Rasmusen. If the country actually believes that he needs to be impeached over this, why aren't his approval ratings declining as that support for impeachment rises? Why is the opposite of that happening? It's like they think that people are just too stupid to ask these questions.

All polls are bullshit.
 
As far as I can tell these two new Russian's are being charged with misrepresentation of funds for donations. (ie: giving too much by hiding donor info) and lying to the FEC about said donations.


Kinda curious where this will lead but throwing this at Trumps doorstep seems a little...hopefull? Even by current DNC standards.
 
As far as I can tell these two new Russian's are being charged with misrepresentation of funds for donations. (ie: giving too much by hiding donor info) and lying to the FEC about said donations.


Kinda curious where this will lead but throwing this at Trumps doorstep seems a little...hopefull? Even by current DNC standards.
These are second-string QBs trying to throw a flawless Hail Mary pass. I'm just waiting for the sack.
 
As far as I can tell these two new Russian's are being charged with misrepresentation of funds for donations. (ie: giving too much by hiding donor info) and lying to the FEC about said donations.


Kinda curious where this will lead but throwing this at Trumps doorstep seems a little...hopefull? Even by current DNC standards.
They, illegally, donated to a Trump Super PAC, they wanted the current Ukrainian ambassador kicked out, trump offered her up but also on condition they investigate the Bidens, then she was fired.

I’m waiting to see the evidence and what the investigations turn up. It’s looking like Giuliani will be the sacrificial goat here. Such a shame for someone who had all the world’s support post 9/11 then he goes and fucks it up. He must be mentally ill in his old age.

“I don’t know those gentlemen,” Mr. Trump said Thursday when asked about the new charges, adding he hadn’t discussed them with Mr. Giuliani.

However, Messrs. Parnas and Fruman had dinner with Mr. Trump at the White House in early May 2018, shortly before they donated to the pro-Trump super PAC, according to since-deleted Facebook posts captured in a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a nonprofit U.S.-based media organization.
Lmfao
20C9DBF8-E1CF-4F72-B36A-2287B2DFD8AD.jpeg
“I don’t know these men” I just had dinner with them and took a picture with them then they donated to my super pac. Hahaha
 
Ostatnio edytowane:
Any time you see a poll hovering around 50%, remember that half of the population is of below average intelligence.

Which isn’t necessarily to say which side the idiots are on, but it’s good to keep in mind.

Any time you see a poll hovering around 50% remember the media pollster has got his finger on the scales by controlling who gets randomly polled and from where. Just as with all the polls saying Hillary would win, they were over sampling Dems. It's incredibly easy to do.
 
They're two goons who shifted millions in funds to a pro-Trump PAC under dufferent names, and moved smaller amounts to Pete Sessions, a former Republican Senator who pressed for the original US Ambassador to Ukraine to resign. They also pressured various Ukrainians to look closer into Biden. Guiliani represents them as a lawyer. He met with them the day before they got caught trying to flee the country.

Basically Guiliani was unhappy with the fact that they weren't making enough headway in digging up dirt on Biden, so he sent these two to spread cash around the Republican administration to "influence" certain hiring decisions with regards to the Ambassador to Ukraine. It worked because she got yeeted right after.

This plays into the impeachment process as these two seem to be Guiliani's main enforcers who JUST SO HAPPENED to be doing exactly what the President needed to be done to investigate Biden. Gotta admit, Trump's a genius. In order to investigate corruption he surrounded himself with people even more demonstrably corrupt.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/giuli...or-fruman-arrested-on-campaign-finance-charge


Even if they have this "smoking gun", Trump is not going to be successfully impeached or removed from office. The GOP majority in the Senate and the hyper-polarized partisan political climate has seen to that.

Look, I get that you're a commie who hates Trump. And there's no point in decrying you for it, because this is America and we're a capitalist liberal democracy with the right to free speech enshrined into national law. You have the right to be a commie and we have the right to call you an idiot for it, but it's going to get us nowhere.

The point is that even if Trump's guilt is concretely proven by this investigation, it's going to amount to jack shit simply because his party controls the Senate and are rallying behind him as a united front against the Democrats, who are now rife with infighting at multiple levels. Even the Republicans who don't like him are likely going to support him out of either party loyalty. There's not enough Democrats or "Never Trump" Republicans to get the necessary "Yes" votes for the impeachment proceedings to amount to anything.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with actual American history, but we've had a lot of presidents who were worse than Trump on every level and one of these terrible presidents was impeached. And I'm not talking about Bill Clinton either.

Andrew Johnson was impeached by Congress for corruption far worse than anything Trump has done or even anything he's been accused of. He was detested across the boards by both major parties and only got into office because he was the Vice President when Lincoln got shot.

Johnson was impeached in 1868 for myriad offenses and was still not removed from office. The impeachment failed in the Senate because of a single deciding vote.

Trump has a lot more supporting votes in the Senate in 2019 than Johnson did in 1868. Trump's party controls the Senate and has the majority of votes, and a lot of these senators either are allied with Trump or will support him to either spite the Democrats or get more votes from Trump's base in 2022.

Like him or not, but Trump's not going to be removed from office over this. The only thing that will get Trump out of the White House is either losing the 2020 Election or serving two terms and leaving after the 2024 Election. You better just let this one go and instead vote against Trump next November if you want to see him leave office.
 
>NSA whistleblower reveals the agency is spying on everyone
>15,000,000 years prison charge
>CIA whistleblower reveals Trump corruption
>We must protect whistleblowers and impeach Trump
Trump did something the CIA doesn't want him to and they want him overthrown. If this succeeds all it proves is don't fuck with the CIA's plans. Don't trust spooks.
 
They, illegally, donated to a Trump Super PAC, they wanted the current Ukrainian ambassador kicked out, trump offered her up but also on condition they investigate the Bidens, then she was fired.

I’m waiting to see the evidence and what the investigations turn up. It’s looking like Giuliani will be the sacrificial goat here. Such a shame for someone who had all the world’s support post 9/11 then he goes and fucks it up. He must be mentally ill in his old age.


Lmfao
Wyświetl załącznik 966835
“I don’t know these men” I just had dinner with them and took a picture with them then they donated to my super pac. Hahaha
Trump is not only the president of 300 million people but also one of the world's most popular reality tv stars, you really expect him to know every single person he has shaken the hands of or eaten dinner with? Trump also shook hands with Dick Masterson on camera but I doubt you consider that proof he hates Maddox.
 
Yep, the senate will never vote to impeach as long as McConnell can stack courts. Even if the public was 70/30 in favor of impeachment it wouldn’t happen. It’s basically serving as a rallying cry for the dems and to whip them into canvassing and voting. I don’t think they really needed it though.

Maybe they did since warren is so goddman boring an has way too liberal ideals. I haven’t heard shit from her on helping middle white america.
 
Yep, the senate will never vote to impeach as long as McConnell can stack courts. Even if the public was 70/30 in favor of impeachment it wouldn’t happen. It’s basically serving as a rallying cry for the dems and to whip them into canvassing and voting. I don’t think they really needed it though.

Maybe they did since warren is so goddman boring an has way too liberal ideals. I haven’t heard shit from her on helping middle white america.
Big squaw Little White Lie doesn't need heap flyovers.
 


White House Counsel Pat Cipollone sent an eight-page-long middle finger to House Democratic leaders on Tuesday, pledging resistance to the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

As a legal matter, Cipollone’s letter is nonsense. Several court decisions make it clear that the White House is not above the law. Executive privilege is real, and it sometimes prevents some inquiries into presidential behavior, but it is not an absolute privilege — especially in the context of a criminal investigation.

As a practical matter, however, Trump is likely to get away with it because there’s no one who can stop him. House investigators and others may be able to obtain a court order requiring the White House to comply with an investigation. But if Trump continues to refuse, Congress and the courts have limited options.

As Alexander Hamilton once wrote of courts: the judiciary “may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”

The constitutional mechanism, meanwhile, for dealing with a lawless president — impeachment and conviction — requires at least 20 Republican senators to vote to remove a president of their own party.

So long as Trump believes that his fellow partisans will hang together, he has little incentive to comply with a court order.
The question of how to define a “constitutional crisis” is hotly contested among scholars. Yet one common definition, according to Georgetown law professor Victoria Nourse, is “a fight among branches of government in which neither side backs down, and there is no clear resolution within the constitutional system.”

There is no resolution to the present crisis within our constitutional system. The White House announced its clear intention to violate the law. But the only sure mechanism to enforce that law, impeachment, is a paper tiger so long as Republican senators stand with Trump.

The law does not permit Trump’s extraordinary resistance to investigations

Cipollone’s letter reads less like a legal document than it does like a Sean Hannity monologue. But he appears to be arguing that the Trump administration is free to defy congressional subpoenas because the House impeachment inquiry has not given Trump “constitutionally mandated due process” that he believes he is entitled to.

Trump’s legal position appears to be that no one in his administration is under any obligation to cooperate with anyone investigating whether Trump violated the law: he has made such sweeping claims of immunity to investigation that a federal judge recently described his arguments as “repugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values.”

Let’s take these two arguments in turn: the argument that Trump may demand that the House impeachment inquiry be conducted in a certain way and the argument that Trump has broad authority to resist investigations.
Cipollone claims that the House’s impeachment inquiry should afford Trump certain rights typically associated with criminal trials, including “the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses” and “to have counsel present.” But this demand misunderstands the role of the House during impeachment.
As Hamilton explained in the Federalist Papers, the House stands in the role of “accusers” during the impeachment process while the Senate acts as “judges” over anyone impeached by the House. A House impeachment inquiry is not, in other words, analogous to a trial. It is more similar to a police investigation of someone suspected of committing a crime.

Even at a Senate trial, an impeached official may not demand the kind of due process rights that Trump seeks. A similar issue arose in Nixon v. United States (1992), a Supreme Court case involving disgraced federal Judge Walter Nixon, who claimed that his impeachment trial did not afford him due process because certain parts of that trial were delegated to a committee consisting of only a subset of the Senate.
As the Court explained, the Constitution gives the House the “sole” power to impeach and the Senate the “sole” power to try those impeachments. The Supreme Court concluded that courts have virtually no authority whatsoever to second-guess the process Congress uses during an impeachment.

The executive branch has a very limited ability to resist subpoenas emerging from an impeachment inquiry

While the courts may not micromanage the process used during impeachment, they often have an obligation to enforce subpoenas. That was the holding of United States v. Nixon (1974), an entirely different Nixon case involving then-President Richard Nixon. This was the pivotal Watergate case that required Nixon to release incriminating tapes, which eventually led to his resignation.
This Nixon case concluded that many of a president’s communications with his aides are shielded from investigators. “Human experience teaches that those who expect public dissemination of their remarks may well temper candor with a concern for appearances and for their own interests to the detriment of the decisionmaking process,” the Court explained. To ensure that presidents receive honest advice from their advisers — even when that advice is unpopular or impolitic — courts should show “great deference” to a president’s assertion that internal White House communications should be kept secret.
This deference, though, is not absolute. Allowing the president to “withhold evidence that is demonstrably relevant in a criminal trial would cut deeply into the guarantee of due process of law and gravely impair the basic function of the courts,” the Supreme Court concluded, forcing President Nixon to turn over incriminating tapes that eventually led to his resignation.

A 1997 federal appeals court decision, In re: Sealed Case, offered a fuller explanation of executive privilege, defining it as coming in two different forms. The stronger form, known as the “presidential communications privilege,” applies to communications directly with the president, or communications “authored or solicited and received by those members of an immediate White House adviser’s staff who have broad and significant responsibility for investigating and formulating the advice to be given the President on the particular matter to which the communications relate.”

This privilege is what was at issue in the 1974 Nixon case. And Sealed Case described several limitations on it: Among other things, it is “limited to communications ‘in performance of [a President’s] responsibilities,’ ‘of his office,’ and made ‘in the process of shaping policies and making decisions.’” Sealed Case also suggests that congressional committees may breach the presidential communications privilege when it seeks information that is “demonstrably critical to the responsible fulfillment of the Committee’s functions.”

Meanwhile, a weaker privilege known as the “deliberative process privilege” permits “the government to withhold documents and other materials that would reveal ‘advisory opinions, recommendations and deliberations comprising part of a process by which governmental decisions and policies are formulated.’” But this privilege is extraordinarily weak. Indeed, it “disappears altogether when there is any reason to believe government misconduct occurred.”

So House investigators have broad power to subpoena almost all executive branch communications so long as there is “reason to believe government misconduct occurred.” They have somewhat less power to seek communications involving Trump and his inner circle, but even these communications may be subpoenaed when they will reveal information that is “demonstrably critical” to the impeachment inquiry. And documents unrelated to Trump’s official duties — such as, say, his tax returns — are not subject to executive privilege at all.
The White House’s sweeping refusal to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry simply has no basis in law.

What happens if the Supreme Court orders Trump to comply with the law and he says “no”?

If a court does order the administration to comply with congressional subpoenas, Trump’s first line of defense is the fact that Republican appointees control the Supreme Court. There’s no guarantee than any such order will be upheld by this Supreme Court, no matter how clearly existing caselaw says that it should.

But let’s assume the best-case scenario for impeachment investigators. Suppose that the courts move swiftly, that they soundly reject Trump’s defiance of congressional oversight, and that the Supreme Court orders Trump to end that defiance. What comes next if Trump refuses to comply with that order?

I asked Josh Chafetz, a Cornell law professor and author of Congress’s Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers, what legal options exist shy of impeachment. His response was pretty fatalistic. “At the point at which we’re talking about ignoring court orders,” Chafetz told me, “what does ‘legal options’ even mean any more?”

The remedy, if it came at all, would have to be political. If Trump were to defy both the House and the judiciary, Chafetz predicts that the president “would outrage a decent chunk of the public” and that Trump’s approval rating would crater. That “would have the effect of turning a bunch of GOP elites against him, which, in turn, might drive his approval still lower. I think at that point it ends with his ouster.”

But Chafetz adds that he’s not especially certain of this outcome and he “could very easily see it going other ways, too.”
Trump presides over a Republican Party that is both more united and more homogenous than the party Nixon presided over. Even if President Nixon wanted to defy the 1974 Nixon decision, it’s unlikely he could have gotten away with such a decision because much of his own party would have turned against him.

For one thing, political parties were far less “sorted” in 1974 than they are today. There were still conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans and these factions wielded considerable power within their party coalitions. After Nixon left office, for example, Republican President Gerald Ford picked the leader of his party’s liberal wing as vice president.

So lawmakers in 1974 were accustomed to working across party lines because that was often the only way to find enough ideological allies to get a bill through Congress. Today’s lawmakers are far less accustomed to forming such cross-partisan alliances.

Similarly, for reasons that Princeton political scientist Frances Lee explains, Nixon-era Republicans had a particular incentive to work with Democrats that Trump-era Republicans do not. For most of the 1970s, largely due to the fact that many Southern conservatives still identified as Democrats, the Democratic Party had an enormous advantage in the battle for control of Congress. Because Republicans expected to be in the minority, they had a strong incentive to make nice with Democrats because forming bipartisan alliances was the most reliable way for Republicans to wield power.

Lee’s thesis is that when “neither party perceives itself as a permanent majority or permanent minority,” the parties tend to polarize. Why cooperate with your partisan rivals when you can undermine them and increase your own chances of gaining the majority in the process?
Republicans have a strong incentive to stick with Trump no matter how often Trump thumbs his nose at the law. Republicans don’t see Democrats as potential allies; they see them as bitter rivals trying to take something they want.

Many of the Founding Fathers, for what it’s worth, understood the risk of such a polarized system and hoped to avoid it. “There is nothing I dread So much, as a Division of the Republick into two great Parties,” future President John Adams wrote in 1780. A two-party system “is to be dreaded as the greatest political Evil, under our Constitution.”

Yet many of the men who designed the Constitution believed that they’d built a system that was immune to partisanship. The “well constructed Union” envisioned under that Constitution, future President James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, would have a “tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”

It didn’t. As anyone familiar with the musical Hamilton can tell you, the nation’s leaders split into two political parties almost immediately after the Constitution was ratified.

The framers, in other words, built our government on the assumption that lawmakers could rally together during times of crisis, rather than dividing into teams and digging in for partisan advantage. Polarized political parties simply are not compatible with a system that requires two-thirds of the Senate to remove a president — at least, if you don’t want a system where the president is immune from impeachment.

That’s likely to leave the question of whether Trump will face consequences for lawless behavior to the voters — which is ultimately where it rests in any democracy. A well-designed constitution can mitigate the risk that a corrupt executive will hold onto power but it can’t prevent the voters from repeatedly electing such a leader.
As Chafetz warns, “no constitution on its own can prevent power holders from blowing through it if there is not sufficient political will to stop them.”
One of my pet peeves is the term "lawyering up" (another one is "hiding behind the first amendment"). It's like, mother fucker, that's what you are supposed to do. I couldn't get past the first few paragraphs, but I guess the gist of it is Trump is "lawless" and Congress and the courts constitutionally can't do anything about, and that's because of only 20 Republican Senators only backing their party's president. That's not a Constitutional Crisis, it's the whole reason the constitution exists. You can't kick out a President because the opposing party thinks he is a big meanie, and apparently he hasn't broke any laws because if he did, the branch that is responsible to say so, the Judicial, would have said so. The Constitution is literally working as intended. I feel like, am I insane, or are these people insane?
 
Trump is not only the president of 300 million people but also one of the world's most popular reality tv stars, you really expect him to know every single person he has shaken the hands of or eaten dinner with? Trump also shook hands with Dick Masterson on camera but I doubt you consider that proof he hates Maddox.

I find it amazing that whenever it's a Trump issue, he's guilty in the eyes of certain people, yet Loretta Fuddy and Seth Rich just so happen to get bumped off and everyone's like "That's a crazy conspiracy". It's a shame that their lives aren't worth anything to people, because it doesn't help their confirmation bias.
This isn't like a partisan issue either, I just find it really disturbing that there isn't a desire to rid the the world of corruption, just corruption that benefits certain people.
It was the same in SK with Park Geun-Hye. She was playing the game the same way everyone else was, but she was a thorn in the side of an agenda. She had to be removed and replaced. It's not a call for justice, it's just more corruption. It worked to topple Tony Abbot in Australia, it worked to topple Barry O'Farrell in NSW. It will work for removing Boris and it will work for removing any other people who don't play the game.

It's not going to change until all the "correct" people are installed and everyone capitulates to right think.
 
Andrew Johnson was impeached by Congress for corruption far worse than anything Trump has done or even anything he's been accused of. He was detested across the boards by both major parties and only got into office because he was the Vice President when Lincoln got shot.

Johnson was impeached in 1868 for myriad offenses and was still not removed from office. The impeachment failed in the Senate because of a single deciding vote.

You're severely mischaracterizing the severity of the offense against Johnson. The reason Johnson was impeached was due Johnson removing Edwin Stanton from his position as the Secretary of War. This was in violation of the Tenure of Office Act, a law itself that would later be declared unconstitutional over fifty years later in Myers v. United States. Specifically, what Johnson did was try to remove Stanton from Office after the Senate voted to reinstate him following a suspension and replace him with Lorenzo Thomas. Stanton, who did not want to step down, complained to the Senate, barricaded himself in his office, and got Thomas arrested. The charges against Thomas were dropped because, as I've stated, the Tenure Office Act was unconstitutional, and prosecuting Thomas would have lead to judicial review of the constitutionality of the law.

In response to Johnson's efforts to fuck with the Congress' plans and concern over Johnson's use of presidential authority, they decided to impeach him. There's some other issues that are contained in the articles of impeachment about Johnson bypassing his generals to issue orders to the army directly, but the the core reason for the impeachment process was just because Johnson tried to remove the Secretary of War. Corruption doesn't play into it.

You're right in saying that Johnson was detested, but mostly by his own party. That's pretty much the only reason why this impeachment proceeding could even have taken place. In fact, Johnson was so disliked by his own party that none of the Republicans that voted to acquit him never saw public office ever again. Every Democratic Senator voted to acquit Johnson.
 
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What are the odds a Republican introduces articles of impeachment to force the Democrats hand, like how they voted on the green new deal as a laugh? It would be interesting to force them into taking a stand:

Yes, and Trump's now no longer playing nice. The man is in polical Valhalla. He shitposts all day and has two scoops each night. Plus if everyone is right about it being a trap, well...

No, and their little game of insinuation blows up in their face and the party is split. The terminally tds members will hate anyone who breaks party line, and moderates who find it a waste of time will be under fire from the far left. They might even get mad enough that the "Atheist+/I fucking love science/All Christianity is Patriarchy" wing will dust off a bible to reference Jodie or whatever that Jesus fellow's little brother is called.
And the Republicans could sit back and smuggly say "we wanted to give everyone a chance to be heard", while Pelosi struggles to hold ot together with scotch tape.
 
Trump is not only the president of 300 million people but also one of the world's most popular reality tv stars, you really expect him to know every single person he has shaken the hands of or eaten dinner with? Trump also shook hands with Dick Masterson on camera but I doubt you consider that proof he hates Maddox.

1. Trump has lied multiple times about not knowing people he actually clearly knows whenever he wants to insult or distance himself from somebody. He does this constantly. Its one of the many ways he likes to be a petty dipshit whenever he's being criticized, and its one of the oldest plays in the book.

2. This didn't happen a decade ago. It happened last year and they had dinner together...he INVITED THEM. So either Trump's just extremely forgetful due to brain worms (highly likely) or he's just doing the only smart thing to do in this situation and lying about it. Either way Guiliani is most likely getting his goose cooked, and then its simply a question of if he'll flip on his master.

he point is that even if Trump's guilt is concretely proven by this investigation, it's going to amount to jack shit simply because his party controls the Senate and are rallying behind him as a united front against the Democrats, who are now rife with infighting at multiple levels. Even the Republicans who don't like him are likely going to support him out of either party loyalty. There's not enough Democrats or "Never Trump" Republicans to get the necessary "Yes" votes for the impeachment proceedings to amount to anything.

I used to believe this but the longer things go on the more his stronghold on the Republican party seems to slip. Just recently he blasted Fox News just because they put up a poll that showed people had begun to favor him getting impeached. Trump retweets and quotes Fox constantly and the network tends to slurp his anus whenever humanly possible...but one wrong mis-step and he's after them. How long do you think Republicans will be content with being his little whipping boy, cowering and staying in line for fear of triggering a twitter rampage? This unity you seem so sure of seems to slip away further and further each day, especially with moves like pulling back from Turkey upsetting all the warhawks in the party.

Either way I find it extremely amusing. Either the Republicans are spineless wimps willing to let Trump shit in their mouths just to win elections, or they grow a spinal cord and finally put him on a leash.
 
This unity you seem so sure of seems to slip away further and further each day, especially with moves like pulling back from Turkey upsetting all the warhawks in the party.

Either way I find it extremely amusing. Either the Republicans are spineless wimps willing to let Trump shit in their mouths just to win elections, or they grow a spinal cord and finally put him on a leash.

Never underestimate the power of people with two brain cells to rally against the open socialism on offer from the Democratic party this election cycle. And Jesus Christ why the fuck would you complain about the president strong-arming the party into pulling out of a war for the first time in a fucking century.
 
Andrew Johnson was impeached by Congress for corruption far worse than anything Trump has done or even anything he's been accused of. He was detested across the boards by both major parties and only got into office because he was the Vice President when Lincoln got shot.
He also showed up to Lincoln's 2nd inauguration drunk off his ass. Keep in mind this is also his inauguration as vice president. He gave a speech the content and quality of which did not land it a spot in posterity as required to be read American political literature. It needs little description other than that he could not remember the secretary of the navy's name and asked outloud what his name was.

Shortly after, Lincoln did his much better, properly prepared speech, which we today hold in reverance as something approaching sacred. But few know the silliness that occured immediatly before it. Now you do. Spread the word.

Unfortunately, America needed to have two Johnson Vice-Presidents become president to learn it's lesson about this unassuming, yet clearly accursed surname.

Modern politicians are bad in other ways. We mostly missed out on antics like this, at least on the federal level. It's why I'm delighted any time the president does something like draw on the hurricane map, or talk shit on twitter, despite his high office. Politicians, all of them, should be assumed to be trash unless proven beyond doubt to be otherwise, especially if they're alive AND in office. I hold them in equal regard to prostitutes, for the same reasons: It is for the nature of the work that society keeps them in disdain, yet both shall be present in any society, under any form of government, regardless. Whether any society can long function without either remains to be seen.
 
And Jesus Christ why the fuck would you complain about the president strong-arming the party into pulling out of a war for the first time in a fucking century.
What Ashy was actually saying there is that Trump pulling out of Turkey is causing him to lose power over the Republicans, and for the Republicans to become fractured as the warhawk elements of the party get more and more upset by this decision.

Which is dumb, because neoconservative warhawkery has been completely shitcanned ever since McCain died, and even the dumbest hack should see the writing on the wall for that ideology by now.

Ashy may be an malicious idiot with a self-contradictory ideology who can only regurgitate MSM headlines, woke Tweets, and already refuted arguments, but at least represent his arguments accurately.
 
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