IdleRich

IdleRich
It certainly will be interesting. I have to admit that I am enjoying the theatre of it all, and if it removes or otherwise weakens Trump then even better.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
And you'd think it would destroy his credibility to anyone paying attention. Basically after Sondland (a Trump appointee who gave a million to get him elected) realised he can go to jail if he lies and switched his testimony to say that Trump and his associates are absolutely guilty of everything that they have been accused of you would have to be crazy to think he's innocent. You can't smear that guy as a never-Trumper... though obviously they are trying to do just that.
 
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Leo

Well-known member
I guess the GOP argument has settled in on "it was wrong but doesn't rise to the level of impeachment. since it's an election year, let the people decide"...and then hope like hell the russians help again!
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Is that what you're getting? I hear more just "It's a sham" and "Hoax from shifty Schiff" - not really reading any significant engagement from the Republican side (although I could be missing it, I'm just reading random bits and bobs). They are surely gonna need a more mature response than that at some point right though, if only to speak to the adults and floating voters etc.
 
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Leo

Well-known member
Is that what you're getting? I hear more just "It's a sham" and "Hoax from shifty Schiff" - not really reading any significant engagement from the Republican side (although I could be missing it, I'm just reading random bits and bobs). They are surely gonna need a more mature response than that at some point right though, if only to speak to the adults and floating voters etc.00

I think the sham/hoax bit is sincerely believed by just a small minority of the GOP, most republicans might say that publicly but behind closed doors admit it was wrong and sends a horrible message to the world. and they won't be concerned with a mature response until the polls push them in that direction. if trump's approval dropped to 20%, they'd chuck him overboard in a minute.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah but I'm not sure it will. Especially cos I see loads of polls saying support for impeachment is rising and loads saying it's falling and everyone is claiming that they are biased or simply lying or based on too small a sample or whatever suits their narrative. Fox etc keep saying support is tanking, presumably to make it so. Fake news has gone batshit, truth has long gone... it's a fucking depressing mess.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
OK they are appealing against a stay ie if they are successful then McGahn will need to appear before the committee NOW rather than waiting until the Repub appeal reaches the higher courts (which would effectively prevent him being involved in this impeachment I guess).
Also, isn't it completely insane that the Department of Justice is trying to argue AGAINST people having to give evidence, in other words to limit powers of investigation?
 

Leo

Well-known member
I sometimes wonder if politics -- in the US and elsewhere -- is more fucked up now than ever before, or if it's always been this bad but today just we have politicians who are so shameless that they don't even bother trying to hide their bias. instead of trying to spin their side, they just flat out lie and pretend the truth doesn't exist. perhaps I was just naive in the past and it was always like this, dunno.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Well, he's become the third president to be impeached: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/18/trump-impeachment-house-vote-nancy-pelosi-latest

Seems kind of symbolic though, as a supermajority vote is needed in the Senate for a conviction, and regardless of how many Republicans privately think Trump is a cunt, clearly they're all either too scared of his increasingly deranged base or too loyal to the noble principles of tax cuts and deregulation to dare assist the Democrats.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Lovely bit of logic here:

"Zero Republican representatives voted in favor of either article of impeachment, fueling the party’s charges that the proceedings were driven by partisanship."

Not a single Republican has the guts to take a stand against the mobster-in-chief, ergo the only ones doing so are Democrats, ergo it's a politically motivated vendetta by bitter, butthurt Democrats. SAD!
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
If I've understood this correctly it doesn't seem as though impeachment will make much difference (the world really is fucking mad), except that if Trump wins in 2020 he will definitely be putting full dictatorship in place, maybe banning the Democratic Party from existing.

Still, it was a lovely moment this morning to wake up and see this headline - a sign that a better world is still possible...
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Watching this and the UK post election fallout, I'm struck by how brutal politics is. Not a particularly deep insight but its like watching rhinos charging at each other. Who shouts loudest wins. Careers buried without an afterthought. The raw exercise of power.

I sound like I smoked a bowl before my cornflakes so I'll shut up now.
 

sufi

lala
Watching this and the UK post election fallout, I'm struck by how brutal politics is. Not a particularly deep insight but its like watching rhinos charging at each other. Who shouts loudest wins. Careers buried without an afterthought. The raw exercise of power.

I sound like I smoked a bowl before my cornflakes so I'll shut up now.
... 6 boxsets of game of thrones later ...
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I just have trouble understanding what, if any, justification there is for the law that protects an incumbent president from being prosecuted. Because clearly there is enough to charge Trump with to put him away until the next ice age - that's clear from the Mueller report, before you even consider the Ukraine/Biden conspiracy - but if nothing can directly be done about it while he's in office, and he can't be got out of office without the cooperation of his own party, then it starts to sound like he really could shoot someone dead on Fifth Avenue and get away with it. At least, while he's still president, but who knows what kind of tricks he (or the actually clever people advising him) could be planning to extend that beyond two terms?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
It seems to be up for debate whether or not there is such a law. As I'm understanding it it's never really been properly tested. Certainly Trump's claims to "presidential immunity" for his former aides in the impeachment trial and his attempts to prevent his tax and financial records from being viewed are being repeatedly defeated in higher and higher courts (although of course that may change when they finally wend their way to the stacked Supreme Court) so the consensus of legal opinion at the moment seems to be that presidential immunity doesn't mean what Trump thinks it means or stretch as far as he wants it to.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
It seems to be up for debate whether or not there is such a law. As I'm understanding it it's never really been properly tested. Certainly Trump's claims to "presidential immunity" for his former aides in the impeachment trial and his attempts to prevent his tax and financial records from being viewed are being repeatedly defeated in higher and higher courts (although of course that may change when they finally wend their way to the stacked Supreme Court) so the consensus of legal opinion at the moment seems to be that presidential immunity doesn't mean what Trump thinks it means or stretch as far as he wants it to.

It just sounds like a law (or rule or convention or whatever) that's been custom made to enable an elected president or prime minister to set about installing himself as a dictator. Which, in my obviously non-expert and perhaps naive view, flies in the face of the great Constitution that Americans of all stripes fetishize so much, which is supposed to guarantee that the USA can never become a dictatorship.
 
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