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This Is… Disturbing
How do we know American democracy works? Because it survived this:
.@ScottPelley on what McCabe told @60Minutes: "There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment." pic.twitter.com/iVAyrEV4MF
— Norah O'Donnell🇺🇸 (@NorahODonnell) February 14, 2019
Jesse Kelly breaks it down:
https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1096053542664765441
Published in General
We use democratic processes in our politics. You know, people voting an all. An absolute monarchy is antidemocratic too, in fact even more so.
No, you wanted to change the rules as understood, as they have been applied, because you did not like the outcome. Because Fred Cole did not like the outcome. A “Because I know what is best for America” way of thinking. I can think of no sentiment that better encapsulates a technocratic mindset. You have no concern about the disruption it would have been. While you claim to not want democracy, you are fast to use parlimentarian actions to tell 40% of the nation “We in power don’t care what you want”.
Yes, you are antidemocratic, indeed.
And, more specifically, suddenly supports the law enforcement community.
It is the “How can Fred Cole be OK with X?” problem.
As in “How can Fred Cole be OK with the FBI using a Dossier created by the DNC to get a warrent with the FISA court?”
Come to think of it, “How can Fred Cole be OK with the FISA Court in the first place?”
Stunning is the right word. His hatred of Trump is so blinding that he’s thrown away everything he has stood for probably a long time. Certainly since I’ve read his comments on Ricochet.
Not at all. I was pointing out a condescendingly dismissive and how easily it could have the tables turned on it.
An argument no one has made here. But a nice straw man, and insulting to Christians to boot.
Yet again, you prove you are what you say you are, not a nice man.
With a response like that it is pretty obvious you saw nothing when you looked in the mirror. Possibly that you realize what a ridiculous position you are defending, but I doubt you have the self-awareness for that.
You have not triggered me in anything other than laughter. You seem to be projecting your fears and prejudices on those who take a contrary position to yours, attempting to trivialize them by accusing them of needing shelter from reality. Trust me, I am not the one denying reality in this situation. To quote C. S. Lewis, “Safe? Who said anything about safe?”
There is an old saying: When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. When you have the law on your side, argue the law. When neither the facts or the law are on your side, pound on the table.
You are pounding on the table. You can do better than that – but you won’t.
Take Trump out of the equation. Would you be okay with a group of unelected bureaucrats using their position to subvert the elected officials of the government to get their own preferred policy outcomes. If so I give you high marks for consistency; however, I do question your libertarianism at that point. I am also pretty sure you would have been appalled if the national security establishment worked against the elected officials trying to reign in foreign adventurism for example.
Oh, yes you were. Don’t play it down, standup, shake yourself off and be as callous and deliberately offending as you want but don’t say you weren’t.
Lois Lerner.
Look up “true the vote”.
It all goes one way, all the time.
Thank you. I was about to unfollow this thread. But I’ll stick around to answer this.
Okay, so, no, I would not be okay with that.
But that’s not what happened here.
Here’s two questions:
1. If you were an FBI official and you were so “blinded by hatred of Trump” that you wanted him removed, why would you use the 25th Amendment?
The bar is so much higher than impeachment. You need the VP, plus a majority of the cabinet, then you need 2/3 of each house of Congress to confirm it. It’s far less likely to succeed.
2. Why would you admit it publicly? Conspiracies don’t work like that. You don’t announce them to the whole world before, during, or after the fact. It’s not the deep state if you tell everybody about it.
Truth be told, it’s hard to judge the situation without more details. But in light of those two questions and the answers I gave to them, I need to invoke Occam’s Razor here. The most likely explanation is the one that requires the fewest new assumptions.
Here’s what I think happened:
McCabe and others, having witnessed the President fire the FBI director out of the blue, then publicly threatening him two days later with non-existent Oval Office tapes, then telling Lester Holt that it was “about the Russia thing,” and having seen and heard of Donald Trump’s instability in public and private, met and discussed trying to use the legal means available to remove a man who appeared to them to be unfit for the presidency.
That is quite different from “a group of unelected bureaucrats using their position to subvert the elected officials of the government to get their own preferred policy outcomes.”
Hey, don’t let what I actually said get in the way of you claiming to be a victim.
You can sincerely believe Trump won the 2016 election by colluding with the Russians if you so choose, and that does not at all alter the fact that the Obama DOJ/FBI/IC committed scandalous acts of malfeasance in the HRC investigation/exoneration and in the Trump Russia investigations including the creation of the Mueller special counsel. (not to mention unmasking, leaking, and various other DOJ/FBI/IC satellite scandals.)
The fact that the entire upper management of the professional ranks of the DOJ and FBI has been fired, demoted, or “retired” is unprecedented and strangely unremarked upon in the MSM. The fact that most of these people left their career DOJ/FBI jobs quietly on their own well before the Mueller report tells you the DOJ/FBI knows exactly what happened and have gotten these people out so the DOJ/FBI would not have to answer the “why the hell are these rogue actors still here question” when the full story of their malfeasance is laid for all to see after the Mueller investigation stalling curtain is lifted.
Please don’t put words in my mouth.
It goes a little further than that. The FBI used a Dossier that was DNC op research and was sourced by a former foreign intelligence officer getting information form Russian intelligence. They did not tell the secret court the the context of this information. They got a Secret Court to issue warrants that ultimately led to dawn swat raids against non-violent offenders. In the latest case the government employees tipped off CNN so that they could live cover the raid.
Thank you that clarifies nicely. The problem I have with that reading of events, although I will admitted it is plausible, is that they didn’t just try to bring this to the attention of their superior and or a select group of cabinet members. They appear to have engineered some additional investigations and done so in such a fashion that affords the justice department a lot of leeway. While I don’t agree with many of Trump’s foreign policy views, it is not the justice department’s purview to criminalize policy disputes, or personnel disputes. That feels like what has been happening here and I find it tremendously disturbing. If the bureaucracy isn’t accountable to the elected branches, and it seems as if it is less accountable than ever before we are in a vary different and very scary place.
You are absolutely correct that the bar is really high to use the 25th Amendment. Pence did not seam likely to support this and 2/3 of each house would be very hard to get. Frankly it would have been unlikely to get the majority of the cabinet. This amendment has never been used to remove a President. This was a non-starter from the beginning.
So, blind hatred of Trump is the only reason that this was discussed at all. It is not really a sign of rational, neutral thinking that they even discussed this.
Yeah, but that’s not what’s happening here. We have norms against that. These are longtime career people. They observe the norms.
If this were a regular thing, we’d see it all the time.
I’ve said this before, but nobody listens:
This isn’t the normal stuff that’s going on here. These are extraordinary circumstances we’re in.
It argument to assume people make their decisions because they’re delusional.
Perhaps so. We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one. I was profoundly dismayed by the IRS scandal under Obama and by Fast and Furious also under Obama, both incidents point to a bureaucracy that is not well controlled by the political system or at least that was willing to use its institutional power in a way to promote its own ends. This appears to me to be more of the same. Admittedly that might be bias.
Maybe. I am unsure what this hidden “something amiss” would be. What is it that they were using as the basis for removing the President that only this group of FBI/Justice people knew about. The contemporaneous issues seemed to deal a lot with the firing of Comey. The Comey stuff was in public and in the news. They were not seeing any thing that was not visible to everyone. I find it hard to believe that this group of individuals somehow had interactions and insights into the President greater than the members of the Cabinet.
My argument is that the public and/or the Cabinet already knew the stuff that these people thought was amiss. They were not bringing anything to anyone’s attention. They were advocating and lobbying for the removal of the President and firming up their vote count. This is not pointing out an issue.
Yeah. It’s the government. Inside a bureaucracy, you’re going to always have rogue operators. Some local yokel who things something’s a really good idea when it’s actually a terrible idea.
I have a feeling that the scandals we’ve already had in the Trump cabinet are just the tip of the iceberg. Not only is no one in charge at the top, but the word has gone out that ethics aren’t a thing anymore, and there are also a whole bunch of people in high places with terrible idea.
Part of the problem is that Trump attracts bottom feeders, opportunists, and bottom feeding opportunists. And most of the decent people have stayed the hell away or left already.
Yes we have norms. And we have people who violate the norms. Look at the Cliven Bundy case. A Federal Judge through out all the charges saying that the Prosecutors lied to the Court and the FBI withheld evidence. These were long time career people. The norms and laws say they should not have behaved in the manner that they did. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-investigations/2018/01/08/cliven-bundy-ranch-standoff-case-retried-federal-court-ruling/1008051001/
Louis Lerner used the IRS for partisan purposes. We had norms against that as well.
J. Edgar Hoover is accused of using the power of his office as Director or the FBI in ways we would not like.
Not everyone observes the norms in the same way
There was no way that this could actually happen and they pursued it anyway. I don’t know that it is delusional but it is not a rational position. They were simply biased to a point they were not behaving very logically.
Apparently Rod Rosenstein thinks it was inappropriate to even discuss the 25th with fellow DOJ/FBI officials (contra Fred), because he denies McCabe’s account:
And when did it become okay again to use the derogatory “Trumpkin” slam? I must have missed the memo.
While after this fine piece of pure jag offery: “I just don’t accept all the Trumpkin nonsense priors about deep state conspiracies and witch hunts and the how Donald Trump (and by extension everyone who supports him) is actually a victim.” …..
I can understand you might anticipate my: “You can sincerely believe Trump won the 2016 election by colluding with the Russians if you so choose” was directed specifically at you .
However, if you actually read the comment instead of just the first sentence, you would have realized the “You” as I used it above was intended as the royal “You” as in: “everyone can”, “some people can”, “the Left can” , or “the NeverTrump can”..
No need to apologize, I have a 15 year old daughter so I’m used to the diversion tactic of avoiding the point being made by feigning hurt feelings at a peripheral point made in a debate.
Person 1: Trump is unfit for office!
Person 2: You may not like Trump, heck, I don’t like everything he does, but he is clearly able to do the job.
Person 1: You are just a Trump lover, and don’t allow anyone to say anything bad about him at all.
I think that is stealing a base or two in an argument.