Congress can investigate based on Mueller's statements but they cannot really *do* anything about it except impeach. Once again, I must ask: they could impeach if they wanted to, so why haven't they?
You've asked this question a number of times. I cant tell if you're asking rhetorically or not. The answer is nuanced, but broadly comes down to: Is it politically expedient to do so? The answer is: "It's unclear". Anyone (literally, anyone) who says otherwise is making assumptions.
Mostly rhetorically, yes. Still, if the goal is to try and discredit Trump enough so that he loses a reelection bid then there is no person more able--and willing--to derail Trump than Trump himself. Impeachment means that he *must* appear before Congress and in the process of the hearings they ask him questions; the answers to those questions become a matter of public record--the Congressional Record, in fact--and thus the longer Trump speaks the more likely he is to contradict himself or become annoyed to the point where he says something he probably shouldn't say out loud in public. At that point, it doesn't matter whether the Senate decided to let him keep his political office or not. I probably should not give them ideas but I cannot be the only person to think of that.
At this moment in time, "impeachment" is the only card the Democrats have left to play. There is no point in them trying to keep it held closely to their chest because everyone knows what that card is.
In what alternate universe does Trump show up for his impeachment hearing?
Hey, Donnie, if you really don't want illegal immigrants, then maybe ... I don't know... perhaps...
Stop hiring them!
Well, not to mention: The absolute WORST way stop illegal immigration is to harm the economy of a people who you think might immigrate illegally under an adverse economic situation.
70% of our vegetable imports. 40% of our fruit imports. 93% of avocados. 71% of our tomatoes. And 1.5 billion in beer sales. So, basically, if you EVER visit the produce section, you are going to be spending 5% more every time you go. How long do you think that essentially non-existent tax cut is going to last based on these numbers (even if you got one)??
His solution to literally EVERY dispute internationally is "throw a tariff on them". Great, then what?? We clearly can't meet our needs domestically for the above mentioned products, so the Mexican companies we get them from will just raise the prices by 5%. We aren't going to magically change our climate and land mass and start producing more tomatoes.
You've also got the administrative costs associated with this, which are likely to be substantial. For products like cars, I suspect that tariffs will have to be applied many times as some of the major companies will include multiple border crossings during processing of the various components.
For business there's also the difficulty of planning. Much of the rationale for trade agreements is not directly to do with reducing tariffs, but promoting a stable environment in which to plan. The lack of stability has been a major criticism by business in the UK of the Brexit process, but Trump's love of chaos takes the problem of planning to a whole new level.
"For a long time, migration from Mexico to the United States has been largely driven by low-skilled, unauthorized workers seeking economic opportunity. However, in recent years, migration patterns have changed due to factors including the improving Mexican economy, stepped-up U.S. immigration enforcement, and the long-term drop in Mexico’s birth rates.
More Mexican immigrants have returned to Mexico than have migrated to the United States, and apprehensions of Mexicans at the U.S.-Mexico border are at a 40-year low."
So why's he lying here?
The only way, he thinks, to get people to keep blindly believing everything he lies about is to tell his gullible followers 'zomg we're being invaded and attacked by brown people'. He reinforces their fears, because they already don't like foreigners it's not a stretch to believe foreigners with their foreign languages are subhuman invaders. They want to be safe and as long as daddy Trump promises to save them, they will gladly give him everything.
Pathetic. "Scary immigrants" are his go to distraction. And it works, the media will be led by the nose by the conman again. It will get people to stop talking about his terrible policies and his crimes.
I agree there's no emergency, but the crisis being referred to is not primarily about Mexicans. Rather it's individuals and caravans crossing Mexico from countries in South America. The pressure being put on Mexico is an attempt to force them to prevent those would-be immigrants from travelling through Mexico to get to the US.
We've somehow gone from "Mexico is going to pay for a wall" to "American consumers may pay up to 25% more for produce". And they'll swear this was the slogan and rallying cry all along. We've always been at war with Eastasia.
I agree there's no emergency, but the crisis being referred to is not primarily about Mexicans. Rather it's individuals and caravans crossing Mexico from countries in South America. The pressure being put on Mexico is an attempt to force them to prevent those would-be immigrants from travelling through Mexico to get to the US.
This is North Korea. This is why you do not sit down at a table with them. This is why if you do, you don't throw a tantrum and storm away. This isn't a publicity stunt. This is human lives.
This is North Korea. This is why you do not sit down at a table with them. This is why if you do, you don't throw a tantrum and storm away. This isn't a publicity stunt. This is human lives.
Good god. This was just part of what was ordered to be released by a judge and was part of what was redacted in the Mueller Report in regards to Mike Flynn. This is the President's personal lawyer in no uncertain terms asking him to report back to them any damaging info about the President and basically doing everything but actually offering a pardon.....in a goddamn voicemail. This was in the MIDDLE of the investigaiton:
If he were as lawless and obstructive as you suggest then why hasn't be been impeached yet? Incidentally, I am not excusing anything--we all knew Trump was smarmy and had both dirt on his hands and skeletons in his closet long before he became a candidate, much less POTUS.
I know that "the Dept. of Justice has a standing policy not to indict a sitting President" annoys many of you, but I implore you to stop and think about that policy for a second. Let us presume that Congress could appoint an investigator who could then charge the POTUS with a crime of some sort, resulting in a trial which would presumably occur in the House, much like an impeachment. Suppose also that Hillary had won in 2016 but the Republicans controlled the House--how long would it have taken them to indict her on something? 2 months? 6 months? 1 year? Go back in time now--how long would it have taken Republicans to indict Obama, or Democrats to indict Bush, and so on and so forth? If a sitting POTUS really could be indicted then we would spend a *lot* of time watching party A indict the POTUS from party B and the government would grind almost to a complete halt--do we really want that?
Like I said, we all knew Trump had dirt on his hands long ago. Still, this won't result in anything--if anyone were going to make a move based on anything in the Report they would have done so by now.
This was just part of what was ordered to be released by a judge and was part of what was redacted in the Mueller Report in regards to Mike Flynn.
*yawn* I thought maybe it was something important.
This is... pretty bad. Looks like a prima facie case of witness tampering/obstruction of justice, depending on the jurisdiction and statutory definitions. (If the phone call went out of DC it could be a state offense in the other state...)
From a perspective of professional ethics, this looks really bad for Dowd. I don't know if it's disbarment-worthy, but it's real bad, and the Bar tends to make examples of people who make the profession look bad.
From a professional competence perspective, it's even worse. Soneone is not oarty to a joint defense agreement, abd you have every reason to think they are cooperating, and you give them this? Dowd should have known - had to know - that the prosecutirs had instructed Flynn and Flynn's lawyer to memorialize and report any contact from Trump and others. This was really stupid.
On the other hand, we know what kind of client pushes his lawyer to do such stupid things...
I was waiting for your perspective on this. Is the lack of Flynn being in the joint defense the crux of the issue here??
And, as predicted, they are now just flat-out ignoring court orders. There are no more walls for them to tear down. It's complete and total lawlessness at the highest levels. They won't recognize the authority of Congress, they now won't recognize the authority of courts. Someone explain to me what other avenues they haven't explored in the total destruction of our governmental system. What do we call a country where the Executive Branch has declared itself absolutely and totally unaccountable to any checks or balances whatsoever??:
Like I said, we all knew Trump had dirt on his hands long ago. Still, this won't result in anything--if anyone were going to make a move based on anything in the Report they would have done so by now.
There is zero evidence to believe this is true. Impeachment isnt a snap decision. It's political, and like all things political, it takes time.
As more details like this are spotlighted, if the polls begin to shift and favor impeachment... then there will be impeachment.
Every time I see someone say, 'This isn't news, its not a problem, everyone's overrecting, etc." I keep thinking of that meme of the person sitting at their table and reading a paper while the whole house around them is on fire.
We are the midst of a serious problem, whether people want to believe it yet or not. I just saw a quote from a Washington Post Justice Department reporter that she has NEVER seen the government tell a judge his orders for materials are not relevant before. Never. Congress was one thing, people can play the "partisan bickering" card til the cows come home on that one, even if it doesn't hold any water in my opinion. But if they are now just going to tell both Congress AND the Courts to go fuck themselves, I again pose the question: where does that leave us?? And if they aren't going to made to acquiesce to either of them, what in god's name makes anyone think that they would accept something as quaint as an election result if it doesn't go their way.
We are the midst of a serious problem, whether people want to believe it yet or not. I just saw a quote from a Washington Post Justice Department reporter that she has NEVER seen the government tell a judge his orders for materials are not relevant before. Never. Congress was one thing, people can play the "partisan bickering" card til the cows come home on that one, even if it doesn't hold any water in my opinion. But if they are now just going to tell both Congress AND the Courts to go fuck themselves, I again pose the question: where does that leave us?? And if they aren't going to made to acquiesce to either of them, what in god's name makes anyone think that they would accept something as quaint as an election result if it doesn't go their way.
The whiny Republican lawbreakers will be like 'omg the judge is biased, he's not a conservative mouthbreather like Barr that believes in the rule of law!' *wink*. "Like my man Barr! He totally gets the rule of law!" (that it doesn't apply to Republicans)
It's totally disgusting. The Republican party and Conservative media are evil propaganda outfits at the point determined to continue criminal acts and destroy America.
Like I said, we all knew Trump had dirt on his hands long ago. Still, this won't result in anything--if anyone were going to make a move based on anything in the Report they would have done so by now.
Remember that Congress has not yet seen an unredacted copy of the report or any of the evidence that lies behind it. Just like Barr's 'summaries' of the report, the process of redaction was almost certainly politically motivated to at least some extent, so it's not particularly unlikely that there are things not yet publicly known that would look worse for Trump than what has been published.
Congressional investigations are also still ongoing and those would be an obvious avenue to launch impeachment proceedings if that were to happen at some point.
Like I said, we all knew Trump had dirt on his hands long ago. Still, this won't result in anything--if anyone were going to make a move based on anything in the Report they would have done so by now.
Remember that Congress has not yet seen an unredacted copy of the report or any of the evidence that lies behind it. Just like Barr's 'summaries' of the report, the process of redaction was almost certainly politically motivated to at least some extent, so it's not particularly unlikely that there are things not yet publicly known that would look worse for Trump than what has been published.
Congressional investigations are also still ongoing and those would be an obvious avenue to launch impeachment proceedings if that were to happen at some point.
There is so much redacted in Part 1 when you are reading through it front to back that eventually your eyes just sort of glaze over it. Alot of it is "harm to ongoing matter", but alot of it isn't. Frankly, there is so much damning and revealing information even with the blacked-out portions that you kind of just forget about it after awhile. But now today we have two serious problems with what a judge ordered revealed in regards to Michael Flynn. One of them is that Trump's lawyer was engaging in conduct that cannot be called anything but MORE obstruction. And they would rather flat-out defy a court order than release what was said between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador. Who the hell knows WHAT else is in this thing behind those redactions. It's bad enough on it's own (even the less discussed Part 1, which I am nearly finished with, and plan to discuss just how ridiculous it is we aren't focusing more on that, though it is understandable when Part 2 is the one that clearly gets to the criminal conduct of the President). What I know with 100% certainty is that Barr is a totally malevolent figure, and is not to be trusted on a single thing he says.
I have no idea why Democrats are so afraid of impeachment. First off, I'd like to identify who these voters are that are currently not going to vote for Trump but become so digusted if hearings are held they are going to be pushed to support him. And it's supposedly about his base, how can they be MORE fired up than they already are??
Moreover, they seem to be operating under this generally accepted narrative that impeaching Clinton hurt Republicans. It didn't. They lost a couple meaningless House seats in '98, but in 2000 the entire incident forced Gore to run away from Clinton.
Which brings us to another point. There is NO comparison between Bill Clinton's popularity in the late '90s and Trump's. There is at least a 15 point difference at any given time. He's never once been over 45%. He is underwater even in states he won. A President in his position in regards to the economy should be polling closer to 60% than 40%. He isn't popular. Why is anyone afraid of this guy and his base which is already with him and isn't going to abandon him regardless.
Moreover, people in general just DON'T KNOW what's in the report. You might have seen the video of Justin Amash's town hall where a woman who is a die-hard Trump supporter stands up to defend him, Amash tells her some of what's in it, and flat-out admits she had no idea about it. Which is because the FOX/AM radio bubble is SO insulated that much of this information hasn't even reached them. Nevermind the more apolitical general public. They aren't going to sit down and read a 400-page report. We all know this. Witnesses need to be brought before the House and questioned to SHOW thr public. Relying on the public at large to educate themselves on this is the real foolishness. Because right now Democrats seem to be operating under an assumption about your average voter than in no way coincides with what I see everyday.
The same can be said of Watergate. It never becomes a thing without Woodward and Bernstein's reporting, but the public did not turn on Nixon because they were reading the Washington Post. They turned on him because of televised hearings.
Comments
In what alternate universe does Trump show up for his impeachment hearing?
The one in which he shows up because he thinks he is going to upstage and embarrass the House. We will never know if the House does not act, though.
So much for USMCA...
Hey, Donnie, if you really don't want illegal immigrants, then maybe ... I don't know... perhaps...
Stop hiring them!
Well, not to mention: The absolute WORST way stop illegal immigration is to harm the economy of a people who you think might immigrate illegally under an adverse economic situation.
His solution to literally EVERY dispute internationally is "throw a tariff on them". Great, then what?? We clearly can't meet our needs domestically for the above mentioned products, so the Mexican companies we get them from will just raise the prices by 5%. We aren't going to magically change our climate and land mass and start producing more tomatoes.
For business there's also the difficulty of planning. Much of the rationale for trade agreements is not directly to do with reducing tariffs, but promoting a stable environment in which to plan. The lack of stability has been a major criticism by business in the UK of the Brexit process, but Trump's love of chaos takes the problem of planning to a whole new level.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/mexican-immigrants-united-states
"For a long time, migration from Mexico to the United States has been largely driven by low-skilled, unauthorized workers seeking economic opportunity. However, in recent years, migration patterns have changed due to factors including the improving Mexican economy, stepped-up U.S. immigration enforcement, and the long-term drop in Mexico’s birth rates.
More Mexican immigrants have returned to Mexico than have migrated to the United States, and apprehensions of Mexicans at the U.S.-Mexico border are at a 40-year low."
So why's he lying here?
The only way, he thinks, to get people to keep blindly believing everything he lies about is to tell his gullible followers 'zomg we're being invaded and attacked by brown people'. He reinforces their fears, because they already don't like foreigners it's not a stretch to believe foreigners with their foreign languages are subhuman invaders. They want to be safe and as long as daddy Trump promises to save them, they will gladly give him everything.
Pathetic. "Scary immigrants" are his go to distraction. And it works, the media will be led by the nose by the conman again. It will get people to stop talking about his terrible policies and his crimes.
Don't justify his lies lol.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/north-korea-executes-5-officials-over-failed-kim-trump-summit-south-korean-media
Excellent comment, and touches on something I didn't even think of, which is that a failed summit on THEIR end means people get murdered.
*yawn* I thought maybe it was something important.
What further corruption would it take for you to not excuse the lawless and obstructive conduct of this guy?
I know that "the Dept. of Justice has a standing policy not to indict a sitting President" annoys many of you, but I implore you to stop and think about that policy for a second. Let us presume that Congress could appoint an investigator who could then charge the POTUS with a crime of some sort, resulting in a trial which would presumably occur in the House, much like an impeachment. Suppose also that Hillary had won in 2016 but the Republicans controlled the House--how long would it have taken them to indict her on something? 2 months? 6 months? 1 year? Go back in time now--how long would it have taken Republicans to indict Obama, or Democrats to indict Bush, and so on and so forth? If a sitting POTUS really could be indicted then we would spend a *lot* of time watching party A indict the POTUS from party B and the government would grind almost to a complete halt--do we really want that?
I was waiting for your perspective on this. Is the lack of Flynn being in the joint defense the crux of the issue here??
And, as predicted, they are now just flat-out ignoring court orders. There are no more walls for them to tear down. It's complete and total lawlessness at the highest levels. They won't recognize the authority of Congress, they now won't recognize the authority of courts. Someone explain to me what other avenues they haven't explored in the total destruction of our governmental system. What do we call a country where the Executive Branch has declared itself absolutely and totally unaccountable to any checks or balances whatsoever??:
There is zero evidence to believe this is true. Impeachment isnt a snap decision. It's political, and like all things political, it takes time.
As more details like this are spotlighted, if the polls begin to shift and favor impeachment... then there will be impeachment.
The whiny Republican lawbreakers will be like 'omg the judge is biased, he's not a conservative mouthbreather like Barr that believes in the rule of law!' *wink*. "Like my man Barr! He totally gets the rule of law!" (that it doesn't apply to Republicans)
It's totally disgusting. The Republican party and Conservative media are evil propaganda outfits at the point determined to continue criminal acts and destroy America.
Remember that Congress has not yet seen an unredacted copy of the report or any of the evidence that lies behind it. Just like Barr's 'summaries' of the report, the process of redaction was almost certainly politically motivated to at least some extent, so it's not particularly unlikely that there are things not yet publicly known that would look worse for Trump than what has been published.
Congressional investigations are also still ongoing and those would be an obvious avenue to launch impeachment proceedings if that were to happen at some point.
There is so much redacted in Part 1 when you are reading through it front to back that eventually your eyes just sort of glaze over it. Alot of it is "harm to ongoing matter", but alot of it isn't. Frankly, there is so much damning and revealing information even with the blacked-out portions that you kind of just forget about it after awhile. But now today we have two serious problems with what a judge ordered revealed in regards to Michael Flynn. One of them is that Trump's lawyer was engaging in conduct that cannot be called anything but MORE obstruction. And they would rather flat-out defy a court order than release what was said between Flynn and the Russian Ambassador. Who the hell knows WHAT else is in this thing behind those redactions. It's bad enough on it's own (even the less discussed Part 1, which I am nearly finished with, and plan to discuss just how ridiculous it is we aren't focusing more on that, though it is understandable when Part 2 is the one that clearly gets to the criminal conduct of the President). What I know with 100% certainty is that Barr is a totally malevolent figure, and is not to be trusted on a single thing he says.
Moreover, they seem to be operating under this generally accepted narrative that impeaching Clinton hurt Republicans. It didn't. They lost a couple meaningless House seats in '98, but in 2000 the entire incident forced Gore to run away from Clinton.
Which brings us to another point. There is NO comparison between Bill Clinton's popularity in the late '90s and Trump's. There is at least a 15 point difference at any given time. He's never once been over 45%. He is underwater even in states he won. A President in his position in regards to the economy should be polling closer to 60% than 40%. He isn't popular. Why is anyone afraid of this guy and his base which is already with him and isn't going to abandon him regardless.
Moreover, people in general just DON'T KNOW what's in the report. You might have seen the video of Justin Amash's town hall where a woman who is a die-hard Trump supporter stands up to defend him, Amash tells her some of what's in it, and flat-out admits she had no idea about it. Which is because the FOX/AM radio bubble is SO insulated that much of this information hasn't even reached them. Nevermind the more apolitical general public. They aren't going to sit down and read a 400-page report. We all know this. Witnesses need to be brought before the House and questioned to SHOW thr public. Relying on the public at large to educate themselves on this is the real foolishness. Because right now Democrats seem to be operating under an assumption about your average voter than in no way coincides with what I see everyday.
The same can be said of Watergate. It never becomes a thing without Woodward and Bernstein's reporting, but the public did not turn on Nixon because they were reading the Washington Post. They turned on him because of televised hearings.