Yes,Dems winning statewide races in Pennsylvania,Wisconsin,Michigan,Nevada,Virginia ,Minnesota ,Arizona ,Ohio, Arizona,West Virginia,Alabama, Montana,Louisiana and Kentucky after seeing Trump on the job is meaningless
In Private, Republicans Admit They Acquitted Trump Out of Fear
- Thread starter Frederick Foresight
- Start date
Yes,Dems winning statewide races in Pennsylvania,Wisconsin,Michigan,Nevada,Virginia ,Minnesota ,Arizona ,Ohio, Arizona,West Virginia,Alabama, Montana,Louisiana and Kentucky after seeing Trump on the job is meaningless
Yes---now we are getting somewhere.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/opinion/trump-senate-acquittal-impeachment.html
One journalist remarked to me, “How in the world can these senators walk around here upright when they have no backbone?”
Fear of President Trump guides many Republicans in Congress. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Not guilty. Not guilty.
In the United States Senate, like in many spheres of life, fear does the business.
Think back to the fall of 2002, just a few weeks before that year’s crucial midterm elections, when the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq was up for a vote. A year after the 9/11 attacks, hundreds of members of the House and the Senate were about to face the voters of a country still traumatized by terrorism.
Senator Patty Murray, a thoughtful Democrat from Washington State, still remembers “the fear that dominated the Senate leading up to the Iraq war.”
“You could feel it then,” she told me, “and you can feel that fear now” — chiefly among Senate Republicans.
For those of us who, from the start, questioned the wisdom of the Iraq war, our sense of isolation surely wasn’t much different from the loneliness felt in the 1950s by Senator Herbert Lehman of New York, who confronted Joe McCarthy’s demagogy only to be abandoned by so many of his colleagues. Nor was it so different from what Senator George McGovern must have felt when he announced his early opposition to the Vietnam War and was then labeled a traitor by many inside and outside of Congress.
History has indeed taught us that when it comes to the instincts that drive us, fear has no rival. As the lead House impeachment manager, Representative Adam Schiff, has noted, Robert Kennedy spoke of how “moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle.”
Playing on that fear, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, sought a quick impeachment trial for President Trump with as little attention to it as possible. Reporters, who usually roam the Capitol freely, have been cordoned off like cattle in select areas. Mr. McConnell ordered limited camera views in the Senate chamber so only presenters — not absent senators — could be spotted.
And barely a peep from Republican lawmakers.
One journalist remarked to me, “How in the world can these senators walk around here upright when they have no backbone?”
Fear has a way of bending us.
Late in the evening on day four of the trial I saw it, just 10 feet across the aisle from my seat at Desk 88, when Mr. Schiff told the Senate: “CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidant said that Republican senators were warned, ‘Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike.’” The response from Republicans was immediate and furious. Several groaned and protested and muttered, “Not true.” But pike or no pike, Mr. Schiff had clearly struck a nerve. (In the words of Lizzo: truth hurts.)
Of course, the Republican senators who have covered for Mr. Trump love what he delivers for them. But Vice President Mike Pence would give them the same judges, the same tax cuts, the same attacks on workers’ rights and the environment. So that’s not really the reason for their united chorus of “not guilty.”
For the stay-in-office-at-all-cost representatives and senators, fear is the motivator. They are afraid that Mr. Trump might give them a nickname like “Low Energy Jeb” and “Lyin’ Ted,” or that he might tweet about their disloyalty. Or — worst of all — that he might come to their state to campaign against them in the Republican primary. They worry:
“Will the hosts on Fox attack me?”
“Will the mouthpieces on talk radio go after me?”
“Will the Twitter trolls turn their followers against me?”
My colleagues know they all just might. There’s an old Russian proverb: The tallest blade of grass is the first cut by the scythe. In private, many of my colleagues agree that the president is reckless and unfit. They admit his lies. And they acknowledge what he did was wrong. They know this president has done things Richard Nixon never did. And they know that more damning evidence is likely to come out.
So watching the mental contortions they perform to justify their votes is painful to behold: They claim that calling witnesses would have meant a never-ending trial. They tell us they’ve made up their minds, so why would we need new evidence? They say to convict this president now would lead to the impeachment of every future president — as if every president will try to sell our national security to the highest bidder.
I have asked some of them, “If the Senate votes to acquit, what will you do to keep this president from getting worse?” Their responses have been shrugs and sheepish looks.
They stop short of explicitly saying that they are afraid. We all want to think that we always stand up for right and fight against wrong. But history does not look kindly on politicians who cannot fathom a fate worse than losing an upcoming election. They might claim fealty to their cause — those tax cuts — but often it’s a simple attachment to power that keeps them captured.
As Senator Murray said on the Senate floor in 2002, “We can act out of fear” or “we can stick to our principles.” Unfortunately, in this Senate, fear has had its way. In November, the American people will have theirs.
We definitely know the democrats impeached him out of fear.
...of the country imploding with him at the helm.
History vs the golden man-baby Trump's legacy. It will be enjoyable doing the same thing he did to Obama just for laughs.
The President Trump Liebrary will be the only fitting memorial.
The President Trump Liebrary will be the only fitting memorial.
All I know is, if we get a dem in the White House in November, we'll be continuing the bear market that started in 2017, right B1S2? Hehee!
Bullshit! Once again, no actual evidence of statements made, just perception and conjecture. Based on what? How some lefty thinks people feel, or should feel according to SJW standards? He was acquitted because the case brought by the democrats had zero merit and was contrived from the jump. Any DA would have been fired or at least called out for abusing their authority for bringing such a flimsy case to trial, even admitting they knew there was zero chance of a conviction, but they're bringing it anyway just to harass and do damage the character. The whole thing was bullshit from day one and they knew it, were all in on it, conspired and colluded to keep it going. It is, has been, and continues to be nothing more than a campaign strategy for the 2020 election cycle. That's why he was acquitted.
Sorry there corporal, I know the talking points you are parroting have been repeated to you so many times you actually believe that shit but..
Judge Andrew Napolitano: Despite his impeachment trial acquittal, Trump clearly guilty of a high crime
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jud...cquittal-trump-clearly-guilty-of-a-high-crime
"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." – George Orwell, "1984"
The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump ended not with a bang but a whimper. What different outcome could one expect from a trial without so much as a single witness, a single document, any cross-examination or a defendant respectful enough to show up?
Law students are taught early on that a trial is not a grudge match or an ordeal; it is a search for the truth. Trial lawyers know that cross-examination is the most effective truth-testing tool available to them.
But the search for the truth requires witnesses, and when the command from Senate Republican leaders came down that there shall be no witnesses, the truth-telling mission of Trump's trial was radically transformed into a steamroller of political power.
And in its wake is a Congress ceding power to the presidency, almost as if the states had ratified a constitutional amendment redefining the impeachment language to permit a president to engage in high crimes and misdemeanors so long as he believes that they are in the national interest and so long as his party has an iron-clad grip on the Senate.
How could presidential crimes be in the national interest? Here is the backstory.
When the House of Representatives voted in favor of two articles of impeachment against Trump, it characterized his lawlessness as contempt of Congress and an abuse of power.
The contempt of Congress consisted of Trump's orders to subordinates to disregard congressional subpoenas. Both Republican- and Democratic-controlled Houses of Representatives have deemed such presidential instructions in an impeachment inquiry as impeachable per se.
The abuse allegations address Trump's solicitation of assistance for his reelection campaign from a foreign government by holding up the release of $391 million in military aid to the same foreign government. These funds were congressionally appropriated and ordered to be paid by legislation that Trump had signed into law.
Federal law prohibits such solicitation as criminal and prohibits government officials from seeking personal favors in return for performing their governmental duties. The latter is bribery.
Because the solicitation that Trump committed was a crime against the government, it is among those referred to when the Constitution was written as a "high" crime. High crimes are a constitutional basis for impeachment, along with bribery and treason.
The evidence that Trump did this is overwhelming and beyond a reasonable doubt, and no one with firsthand knowledge denied it. Numerous government officials recounted that the presidential leverage of $391 million in U.S. assistance for a personal political favor did occur and the government's own watchdog concluded that it was indisputably unlawful.
The favor Trump sought was an announcement by the Ukrainian government of the commencement of an investigation of Trump's potential presidential foe, former Vice President Joe Biden.
While the Senate was hearing House prosecution managers argue their case, and Trump's lawyers challenged those arguments, The New York Times revealed that John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, had authored an as yet unpublished book demonstrating that the House case against Trump was true.
True because, unlike the senators who shut their eyes and ears at Trump's trial, Bolton saw for himself the presidential tit-for-tat machinations that the House had alleged and, if proven, were criminal and impeachable.
The Times also revealed the existence of 24 emails sent by Trump aides manifesting indisputably his lawless behavior. But the emails are secret.
At the same time, two signal events occurred in the impeachment trial. The first was an argument by Trump's lawyers that every president seeking reelection believes his victory will be in the national interest and thus all presidential efforts toward that victory are constitutional and lawful.
This morally bankrupt, intellectually dishonest argument – which effectively resuscitates from history's graveyard President Richard Nixon’s logic that "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal" because the president is above the law – must have resonated with Senate Republican leaders.
The leaders coerced their Senate Republican colleagues into embracing the view that – since the president did not want Bolton to testify or White House emails to be revealed – they must bar all witnesses and documents.
The second signal event was shameful. It was the 51 to 49 Senate vote to bar witnesses and documents from the trial.
Isn't it odd that a president who clamors for exoneration, who claimed loud and long that he committed no crime and did no wrong, who insisted that his request to the Ukrainian president to seek dirt on Biden in return for American financial assistance was "perfect," would command the members of his own party to block testimony adverse to him – rather than hear it, cross-examine it, challenge it and thereby obtain the exoneration on the merits that he seeks?
Do innocent people behave this way?
If Trump really believes he did not commit any crimes and any impeachable offenses, why would he orchestrate blocking evidence? And who – having taken an oath to do "impartial justice" – would close their eyes to the truth? How could such a marathon of speeches possibly be considered a trial?
Trump will luxuriate in his victory. But the personal victory for him is a legal assault on the Constitution. The president has taken an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Instead, he has trashed it.
How? By manipulating Senate Republicans to bar firsthand evidence and keep it from senatorial and public scrutiny, Trump and his Senate collaborators have insulated him and future presidents from the moral and constitutional truism that no president is above the law.
Somewhere, Richard Nixon is smiling.