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Trump2020: A Response to One Objection
One objection to re-electing President Trump in 2020 is that, because he exhibits so many of the personal traits which conservatives have traditionally condemned, his election by Republicans casts the latter as hypocrites and removes character as a dimension on which future Republicans can differentiate their candidates from those of the Democrats.
While I made this argument during the primaries leading up to the 2016 election, I think it is no longer relevant. Republicans have already elected Trump; failing to re-elect him will not in any way redeem Republicans. We live in a hostile, left-leaning media environment, and there is no voice on the left that will speak well of Republicans for rejecting President Trump in 2020. That would require a degree of charity the left is completely unwilling to extend.
Whatever damage to the moral standing of Republicans that the election of President Trump can do has been done, and nothing will reverse it or make it significantly worse. Those who think otherwise are crediting the left with more grace than there is any reason to believe it possesses.
I continue to believe that, on balance, the arguments in favor of re-electing President Trump remain compelling.
Published in Elections
Mueller apparently wants Trump to prove he did not obstruct, because his fellow prosecutors couldn’t prove he did. This is the way of lawfare in the Age of Trump. If they can’t find a criminal charge to make, than they just enumerate all the things they think are bad, just not bad enough to charge as a crime, state those things publicly, and walk away. Heck of a deal…this new fangled prosecution stuff.
Poor, poor Trump.
Actually, I think that he found something, but it did not rise to the level of a conspiracy whose elements would have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
I would prefer Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, but he hasn’t declared himself as a candidate (yet). So by default I support Bill Weld. I was astonished to read a favorable article about Bill Weld today in The Resurgent. The closing paragraph:
If Republicans want to avoid an electoral blowout of epic proportions next year, they had better uncircle the wagons from around Donald Trump and find a candidate who has not lost the trust of the public. So far, Weld is the only Republican who has had the temerity to stand up to Trump and may be the only conservative alternative. If Republicans continue to stand by Donald Trump to the bitter end, they deserve the drubbing that they are about to receive.
https://theresurgent.com/2019/04/19/why-conservatives-shouldnt-rule-out-bill-weld/
The guy probably predicted a Hillary win.
Trump predicted a Hillary win.
Trump was wrong, but he isn’t a pundit predicting a massive Democrat blowout in 2020. How many times must these guys be proven wrong before they’re ignored?
Oops. Just noticed it was Gary.
Not a question you’ve positioned yourself to ask. You’re the one disagreeing with the Attorney General’s decision. You’re the one making claims of what’s in the report. You can either back up your assertions, or content yourself with being disregarded.
On the other hand, the Capitalizations are cute. Sort of like reading Winnie the Pooh.
Actually I was quoting The Resurgent.
I agree with the writer. The hyperlink is at Comment #94.
LOL! Love that line!
Thanks for taking the time to respond, Gary. Sounds like it was definitely a case of resign or be forcefully removed from office.
Alan Dershowitz has also made this point.
To continue to talk about the accusation is to further tarnish the accused’s reputation, which is punishment and suffering heaped upon an innocent person.
The entire report should not exist. Only a slip of paper that says, “We found no evidence of lawbreaking.”
Devin Nunes is going after the perpetrators of the Mueller “investigation” and the harm they have done and the laws they have broken.
Representative Nunes needs all the support he can get. As far as I can tell, there’s no real Republican Party in existence that will function to back him up in any way. He is really on his own in this.
Now’s the time to send an e-mail to someone who is doing real work at his own personal risk.
Some specifics from a non-attorney for benefit of those who’ve mentioned lack of them in this thread….
The element Mueller’s team most wanted to hang their hat on (and most serious if I’m understanding good, neutral attorneys like Andy McCarthy correctly) to support Donald Trump’s obstructing justice was their contention he ordered White House Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller, then to issue a memo for the record in the wake of NYT/WaPo reporting Trump had attempted to fire Mueller.
From p. 118 in this electronic copy of the Mueller report (h/t @cliffordabrown):
Part of the evidence the Mueller team believes to be contrary to the non-obstruction argument (italicized emphasis mine):
(to be cont.)
(Continued from comment #104)
Amid a recounting of a handful of instances President Trump attempts to have McGahn correct the record are these two points:
The report closes up the section on obstruction of justice via McGahn with this:
Our system of justice defaults on the side of innocent then presents both sides, which I assume is why the DOJ has a policy of not commenting on cases they don’t indict and let’s the court filings speak for themselves.
What we have here is a report that tries to allege obstruction of justice by a POTUS without benefit of a defense attorney to “object” on basis of things like I’ve italicized. Donald Trump is not formally indicted/charged, yet is brought up on charges via a one-sided report that normally would not see the light of day.
We are to believe the president’s assertions run counter to evidence because they are “carefully worded” and his actions because they are not within a certain (unspecified) number of days. That his personal counsel’s request for McGahn to remain cannot be to simply avoid inaccurate inferences which may harm POTUS.
We are not expected to notice that were a man innocent of the allegations and aware of how a special counsel could consume his presidency yet had cooperated extensively, he would be anxious not to be quoted otherwise and wish to correct the record. And we definitely are not supposed to realize a POTUS who suspects his WH Counsel of leaking might want to fire said counsel, or to note that WH Counsel could have at least issued a memo for the record stating his boss’ differing account.
And that right there is the underlying problem, isn’t it: Trump is POTUS and some people want him gone so badly they’re willing to do much more than vote to remove him.
Sidebar: One-sided presentation problem is probably a reason why AG Barr commented specifically on the no obstruction charges angle. I get why he issued this report given the subject and its having been 2 years in the forefront of public consciousness thanks to a press anxious to eject this POTUS.
@mim526 well done. I would just like to mention one small thing…
If not for the fact that Trump waived both attorney/client and executive privilege, Mueller would not have any of this information from McGhan. The SC was allowed unprecedented access into the inner workings and thoughts of PDJT and his associates. Yet, after being freely given all this information, some on his team and everyone of the Dems and their media and the ankle biting NT’s still have the gall to accuse Trump of obstruction. Obstruction, no less, of a manufactured non crime. Yes, @pettyboozswha…Poor Donald Trump. But never fear, he’s got the stones to flick these little people out of his way.
Hillary Clinton intentionally, repeatedly, systematically, exposed classified information to foreign powers, and told multiple lies to cover it up. All of which is documented. Yet you object to calls for her imprisonment.
The President allegedly obstructed an investigation into a fabricated “crime,” and you want him punished in some way?
The best summation I have seen (from a typical ordinary person at the end of a news report):
Thank you all for the 100+ comments.
I posted this short post and then, as I saw the comment count increase rapidly, decided to ignore it. The point of the post was pretty simple: there is little to no “upside,” in terms of Republican moral standing, to refusing to re-elect the President, given that the left received all the ammunition it could use from the 2016 election.
That’s it. All this stuff about “obstruction” or “feeling good” about the President is beside the point of the post. It comes up every time a post contains the word “Trump,” in its title and, because of that, I’ve decided to keep Trump-related posts short and focused on a single topic, to avoid getting bogged down.
No one has contradicted the thesis of this post, that we regain no respectability from jettisoning Trump now. That’s all I’m interested in asserting here.
Since we’re already filthy we might as well remain filthy.
I would argue that we aren’t filthy. We elected a man to do a job. It isn’t a pretty job; we aren’t living in a pretty age.
When it comes to politics, I think we never have.
You’re a lawyer?
The what?
I am established on the premise that the so-called predicate for the initiation of the counter-intelligence inquiry into Trump Campaign personnel and activities was part of the ‘insurance policy’ and was considered necessary in order to insulate existing Obama Administration intelligence officials from being revealed as partisan through subsequent investigation. That inquiry was thus illegal on its face.
Since President Trump has complete awareness of this, but also has to face what can happen regarding impeachment if he acted too precipitously, actions taken by his administrations against the SC inquiry rest on mitigating factors (the inquiry itself is based on criminal acts) and are excusable under those circumstances. I see nothing that should be considered obstruction by the POTUS. The next eighteen months of DoJ under AJ Barr will tell me if I have it right.
I’m not wasting my time reading the Weissmann Report.
The Mueller report determined that no crime was committed. if no crime was committed, there was nothing to obstruct. It is unreasonable to expect any one to help their attackers.
There is a reason that Wrath, Pride, and Envy are deadly sins. Your hatred of President Trump is making you look unhinged; I find it appalling that a a member of a state bar does not accept the concept that a person is innocent until proven guilty.
More than ever. We suspected that there was a corrupt swamp of “deep state” elitists and that has been confirmed. We need at least 4 more years of de-swamping.
No point. Mueller is a hack and his report is crap. He has been a mixture of corruption and incompetent since his Whitey Bulger days.
Exactly! If you don’t believe our country’s founding principle was the rejection of Tyranny, then read the Declaration of Independence. It is right there. It always has been.
Have you read the Declaration of Independence? Google can find it for you. If it is too long, jump ahead to the Usurpations ;)
Undervalued point here. The FBI trusted the “Russians did it” conclusion of Team Hillary. Without the original hardware there is no way to recover the information that would provide evidence. Analysis by the Forensicator proves that the DNC emails were stolen on a thumb drive. Maybe after all this time you think Brennan and Comey are above lying and you still believe the “17 agencies” BS. If so, your TDS is beyond recovery.