There endgame is to do their jobs. They cant control what the Senate does, but if they feel impeachment is what needs to happen they should still do their jobs. Again we will wait and see, but I almost guarantee you are going to be wrong.
White House announces it will not comply with illegitimate and unconstitutional impeachment inquiry
- Thread starter Ucfmikes
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There endgame is to do their jobs. They cant control what the Senate does, but if they feel impeachment is what needs to happen they should still do their jobs. Again we will wait and see, but I almost guarantee you are going to be wrong.
Of course they feel impeachment is needed, they have been trying since his inauguration which is why this is such a joke.
Adam Schiff is not just doing his job. He’s a degenerate who is now on record several times abusing his Chair power to outright lie about the President to take him down or lying about coercing witnesses
Honestly if the democrats wanted this to have a shred of credibility they would have removed this idiot but he ran the entire show. This is just another charade orchestrated by this clown
Or you could have Rep Nadler who was overheard on a train by a reporter in 2018 saying the following
"
Regarding Trump, Democrats will go “all-in,” Nadler said, and that their course of action depended on Special Counsel Robert J. Mueller’s report about his Russia-related investigation.
Nadler said the House Intelligence Committee, which is expected to be led by California Rep. Adam Schiff, would likely take the lead since it has “a way ahead start on that.” He predicted that Democrats would frame their investigations as part of an effort to hold Trump “accountable” rather than as a prelude to impeachment, because the public would find the investigations more palatable that way."
At this point if you believe what is coming out of the democrats you're either stupid or just hate Trump to the point that it is making you stupid.
Only two Presidents have EVER have been impeached - plus Nixon resigning prior. Even without conviction, impeachment can be the end game itself.
So the whisteblower spoke to Schiff's staff (not Schiff), and they advised him to seek counsel and file a whistleblower report. Schiff's committee has responsibility for oversight of the intelligence community. Schiff either lies or mis-characterizes the prior contact and is aware of the meat of the complaint ahead of time. This is all in the public record already. So you must believe something bigger is under wraps? Like what exactly?
If at the Senate Trial, the best Graham can come up with is process and bias arguments against the whisteblower and Schiff then Trump's problems will only be worse. You're severely underestimating what's happening here. Even if Trump doesn't get removed via the Senate, his fitness for office is going to be litigated in the most public way possible during his re-election year.
You couldn't find a more clear-cut case of tribalism than continued board support for Trump. When the 'alleged' Presidential transgressions are so blatant and obvious, process and bias arguments are all they've got left. Patriots first and party second people look at this WH nonsense and say, "we can do better than this."
So give me your opinion on this:
If Barr starts arresting people for election interference and Ukraine or the UK come out with information that proves there was corruption involving Biden does that change this whole thing?
You finally found the truth for once.Yep, this whole impeachment thing is about those wild and crazy, Democrats.
Yes because it is pretty well proven that this is a coup attempt from a delusional democrat party. Here is how this will go:
1) it will consume millions of dollars to lead the witch hunt
2) the witch hunt will fail again
3) in the background the dems are already plotting the next “scandal/trap” for when this fails (just like the phony mueller thing that was funded by the dnc/hillary)
4) an election will happen in which trump probably nets at least another 5 states and takes house back.
please bump this next November
Deep hypothetical rabbit hole. So much unpredictability here.
Generally speaking, I view this stuff like playing poker. You make decisions based on the information available to you at the time. What cards actually flip over is completely out your control. Whether you got the card you needed is irrelevant to whether or not you made the right decision based on the information available.
If we found out that Trump was aware of an active FBI investigation into Biden and the FBI/DOJ are asking Trump for help to leverage information out of Ukraine, there were a bunch legal memos contemporaneously documenting the legality of an obviously politically explosive situation, that's probably exculpatory for Trump on the impeachment side, but still a massive scandal that's going to lead to look-backs and investigations.
Contrast this with the situation the Obama Administration faced. Our intelligence agencies knew the Russians were interfering. They get a dossier dumped in their lap from a previously credible source saying a major party candidate / campaign could be compromised. They'd be derelict in their duty not to follow up on that. At the same time, Obama knew if it went public, they'd rightfully be accused of putting their thumb on the scale.
Yet that's precisely what Trump wanted to do - get Ukraine to go public.
I'm speaking more about the validity of the impeachment process. Trump asked for 2 things: look into the Burisma/Biden connection and look into election interference that may tie the DNC and state dept workers to ukranian oligarchs. If it turns out that both of those things end up involving illegal activity, does trumps request still present an impeachable offense?
These are obviously opposite ends of the spectrum. 1 being that trump asked for this for purely political reasons and the other being a legitimate investigation into international corruption. One end is a clearly impeachable offense, the other isn't. The truth will be somewhere in the middle and it will have to be determined whether Trump crossed the line.
Politically it's a massive win for Trump obviously. And since impeachment is political, yea I think it would make a difference in how it all plays out. Personally, I stick with the poker analogy. Either the ask is corrupt based on current knowledge or it's not. How the cards fall in the end is irrelevant.
It's like a police search. If they used proper procedure to get a warrant and conduct the search, then the search was legitimate whether they find evidence or not. On the flip side, you can't justify an illegitimate search after the fact based on what you find. This is political so none of those rules actually apply. But I think the analogy kind of works as a parallel. Of course, this completely ignores the quid-pro-quo aspects of it as well. If Trump had no leverage on them at all it's a different scenario.
Good grief. Trump watches one of FOX News' hairbrained conspiracy theories and decided he's going to get to the bottom of it.
Since we're dealing in hypotheticals, if it's proven Obama was born in Kenya, does that invalidate the eight years of his Presidency?
So let's go one step deeper. Giuliani was working on this Ukraine deal since December of last year. Theoretically let's say that he actually did uncover corruption between Ukraine and domestic parties. If his motivation was purely political vs being looking into corruption from a law enforcement approach, is there a difference in how trump acted in the "quid-pro-quo"? In other words, does the purpose of the investigation make a difference?
You are leaving out the quid pro quo aspect of this, which Mulvaney flat out admitted, and is the impeachable part of all of this. The truth doesnt always lie in the middle. And with regards to election interference that has already been investigated and there is basically nothing pointing to it.
Guiliani doesnt work for the US government in any capacity, so his approach was certainly purely political and not from any sort of official law enforcement work.
If this was pure oppo research decoupled from the power of the presidency than everyone is fine. Trump can waive Rudy's documents all over Twitter and try to take down Biden. That's our normal world of politics.
It's when the power of the office is coupled that think get murky fast. Anyone could have tried to ask Zalensky to open these investigations. No other human on the planet had the leverage that Trump did.
Which is another reason this is so stupid. All Trump had to do to potentially tank Biden down was point out Hunters sweet gig and accuse Biden of being corrupt. He didn't need to do anything else.
The even dumber part is he shouldnt have assumed Biden was going to be the nominee since he is running a pretty poor campaign as it is.
Nope, and it was a stupid proposition to begin with that just riled up mouth breathers who were mad that a black liberal was elected president. We discussed this many times in the SoapBox and I made my position on it pretty clear.Good grief. Trump watches one of FOX News' hairbrained conspiracy theories and decided he's going to get to the bottom of it.
Since we're dealing in hypotheticals, if it's proven Obama was born in Kenya, does that invalidate the eight years of his Presidency?
Which also makes you question whether this was solely for political purposes or actually legit.
Again, this is hypothetical (I think hypotheticals are kind of fun and lead to better discussion) but let's say that Trump knows that there is a leaker in the White House and something doesn't seem quite right with the CIA, but he knows that something is afoot in Ukraine. Giuliani was a highly respected prosecutor who knows how to investigate and Trump trusts him. If those things are all true, would it be out of bounds for him to ask Giuliani to look into it like a private investigator would? Let's say somebody from the Senate, treasury dept, commerce dept, etc came to him with information and he already doesn't feel like he can trust the state dept who would he turn to?
If he cant trust the state dept that is his own fault because those are his hand picked people. I just dont see why Rudy needs to be involved in this at all.
The most damning testimony given in the preliminary impeachment hearings came from State Dept. professionals who were hand-picked by the Trump Administration.
Lol, no testimony has been any more damning than another. They all contain the same narrative. If there is an example of someone who testified that gave an alternate version of events or perception let me know. I won't hold my breath.
This is why the investigation cannot possibly be unbiased. Not a single person who has been interviewed has a story to tell that diverges from the rest? What is the likelihood of that when the majority of the testimony is about perception?
Okay then...to be honest, this may be smart. I bet you a lot of people won’t care as long as he was doing it to “drain the swamp”. Dems will say it’s impeachable, Republicans won’t...par for the course.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...084a3e-fcc4-11e9-9534-e0dbcc9f5683_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...084a3e-fcc4-11e9-9534-e0dbcc9f5683_story.html
I'M GONNA MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN BY 'DRAINING THE SWAMP' … NO MATTER HOW CORRUPT, UNETHICAL OR UNCONSTITUTIONAL I HAVE TO BE TO DO IT!!!
This just doesn't pass a sniff test. It's Trump's executive branch nearly 3 years in. If he doesn't trust how own CIA director or whatever, then that's on him. Occam's razor. If you have to develop a 4D Trump vs the Deep State chess match to explain Trump's actions then you're really reaching.
That's an interesting angle. I disagree but I see where you're headed. At what point do we make an example of out someone? In a sense, we did that once with Clinton. There's precedent now that if a POTUS lies under oath he may be impeached if not removed. Do we need to set a similar example here? If nothing else, Trump is FAR sloppier with his abuses of power than previous Presidents. Do we at least need to say "don't be so obvious about this and at least pretend?"
Think of it like this: you're getting divorced and your wife's best friend is a legal assistant for a divorce lawyer. Would you hire that lawyer to represent you? Trump may trust his CIA director but there are people under him that have a political agenda and would use anything possible against him. We already know this to be true based on all of the leaks.
Let me give you another analogy. Hypothetical president below.
Imagine we're not talking about the State Department, CIA, and FBI. Instead, let's make it the US military. Would you ever even ponder an explanation that hinged on questioning the sense of duty and loyalty of the US military? Let's assume a hypothetical President is despised by the military. Both enlisted and officer ranks. Pay cuts, benefit reductions, cuts to the VA, etc. As a result, leaks abound about the deteriorating conditions for troops overseas, mis-management at DOD, cases of fraud and abuse, etc.
Does the above scenario make it rational to question the motivations of the US military? Is it now OK to suggest they are not just unhappy with the President, but also incapable of doing their jobs in a professional manner? Would you question the ability of the military to execute a legally authorized operation in that scenario because of their "bias" against the President? Would you argue that a private defense contractor (mercenaries) run by Rudy G. should run an operation instead of JSOC, for no reason other than the fact that the military doesn't like the President?
If POTUS doesn't trust the agencies under him, that's a failure of his leadership. The oath is sworn to the Constitution not to POTUS.
The scenario you proposed is exactly what happened in Iraq. ISIS came about from Iraqi military factions. Without the assistance of mercenaries (foreign militaries), ISIS would have control of the entire country.
You lost me. I'm not arguing that mercenaries are bad. I'm asking if it would be rational for a US President to believe the US Military is incapable of executing their job because they don't like him. Because your hypothetical requires precisely that belief about State and the CIA. It assumes that career professional put politics above their job and the Constitution.
In the event we reach a point where that belief is indeed rational, then it's a massive failure of leadership.
Just take "US" out of your statement and there are many examples of that exact thing happening. Was Maliki to be blamed for zealotry in the military due to lack of leadership? Nope, there were people who disagreed with his politics and couldn't be trusted because of that.
Yea but we're talking about the United States in 2019 here. Using internal struggles in post-Saddam Iraq to justify presidential paranoia of the CIA seems like a stretch. Nixon was famously paranoid too.
There's two ways to look at this. Trump is a Stable Genius that knows more than career experts. He's a better General than Mattis and his gut instincts are so good that it's rational to believe Putin over his own intelligence agencies. Thus, it makes sense to rely on your gut and Rudy instead of career experts and your own appointees.
Or, Trump is living in a paranoid world driven by conspiracy theories in which Barack Obama has a forged birth certificate, that Cruz and Rubio both weren't eligible to be president, Ted Cruz's father was tied to the Kennedy assassination, vaccines cause autism, that Joe Scarborough murdered a staffer, the Clinton's killed Epstein, that Scalia was murdered, that the Hurricane Maria death toll was created by democrats, that 3-5 million illegal votes were cast (and all against him), that the Chinese are perpetuating the climate change "hoax", that it wasn't his voice on the access hollywood tape, that Gen. Pershing killed muslim terrorists with pig-blood dipped bullets, that wind farms cause cancer, that asbestos dangers are a "con" pushed by the mob...
It's not that none of the above stories could be true. It's that Trump peddles any conspiracy that suits his interests regardless of fact. It's hard to give someone like that the benefit of the doubt when the best defense against abuse of power is yet another conspiracy theory.
When the distrust of our intelligence agencies leads a Commander-in-Chief to accept the word of a murderous dictator like Putin, me thinks the line between the two has been crossed.
