Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Democrats Impeaching Trump Because Orange Man Bad
Donald Trump’s haters have been demanding his impeachment since the day of his inauguration. To that end they have cast about wildly for any reason imaginable. And in the process they have attempted to criminalize the normal actions of the president.
They just don’t like Trump. The Democrats, of course, but also the NeverTrumpers, just want him gone. There have been so many attempts that it is almost too hard to list them all. The Mueller investigation, of course. Remember how Trump was going to be impeached because of the Mueller report? Remember that the next time you hear a news report about a poll showing how the number of Americans who support impeaching the president has supposedly increased since six months ago. All that means is that some Americans, otherwise known as Democrats, wanted to impeach Trump for Russian Collusion before and now want to impeach Trump for Ukrainian…something. They want to impeach Trump no matter the reason and no matter the facts.
Congressional Democrats held a vote on impeachment earlier this year because Trump tweeted about Alexandria Occasional-Cortex, Ilhan Whosemyhusband, Rashida Tableface, and the other one that no one cares about. (Spoiler alert: tweeting is not a high Crime and Misdemeanor).
The current impeachment frenzy was set off when a so-called “whistleblower” ratted on Trump to the intelligence community inspector general over a phone call with the president of Ukraine. The weird thing is, though, that the intelligence community inspector general doesn’t outrank the president of the United States. In fact, the intelligence community whistleblower protection act does not apply to the president. Furthermore, the “whistleblower,” who ReaClearInvestigations and others have identified as an Obama holdover named Eric Ciaramella, had no first-hand knowledge of the phone call. (He’s also suspected by some of being the leaker of parts of the transcripts of Trump’s conversations with the prime minister of Australia and the president of Mexico.)
But when President Trump released the official transcript of the phone call, the claims made by Ciaramella were shown to be false. We can all read the transcript of the call and the “whistleblower” complaint ourselves. Those of us who have read the phone transcript have more first-hand knowledge than Ciaramella did.
How many transcripts of presidential phone calls have you ever read? I’ve read one. This one. When people criticize the call, I roll my eyes. What do they know? Nothing. They have nothing to compare the call to. If they say the call was bad, all that means is they don’t like Trump. And by the way, it’s fine to not like Trump. This is America! However, not liking the president is not a reason to impeach him. I didn’t like Obama. That wasn’t a reason to impeach him.
Even when Obama made foreign policy decisions that I disagreed with, that still wasn’t a reason to impeach him. And there were a lot of those: the apology tour, cancelling missile defense to Poland, Libya, Syria, sending billions of dollars to Iran. And, by the way, Obama withheld military aid to Ukraine. The very thing Trump is accused of — withholding aid to Ukraine — Obama did. And, Actually, Trump sent lethal weapons to Ukraine in 2017. (Something the “Trump’s Putin’s puppet” people never managed to process.)
There was nothing wrong with Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian President, but Democrats don’t like him so they’re trying to impeach him.
If I had a nickle for every time someone said that Trump was doomed/the walls are closing in/etc. because of this or that over the years…
2018 was nothing more than a fairly ordinary mid term election in terms of its results.
So much of what we are told by insiders and polls turns out to be false. The “chaotic” White House has been remarkably productive notwithstanding the chaos. We keep hearing from leakers who say that Trump is cracking, but at rallies he’s as good as ever.
They kept telling us that the anti-democratic deep state does not exist, now they say it exists, and its a good thing. So, there you have it. Un-elected elitists undermining the President.
If the deep state wins we can kiss the idea that we live in a democratic republic goodbye.
If I didn’t have a full time job, I would be happy to do so. But for right now, I am just registering my dissent.
Here is the post that was mentioned. http://ricochet.com/694062/we-keep-losing-with-trump/
Bullseye!
Trump ditched the normal diplomatic channels and protocols because one (or more) of the intelligence deepstaers listening in deliberately leaked details of “private” phone calls between the President and other world leaders. Now they want to impeach him because he cut them out of the loop, so we get “whistleblowers” who through hearsay (if not outright fabrication) have “evidence” of Trump doing something wrong.
Everything Trump does diminishes the accomplishments of almost all previous Presidents since Ronaldus Magnus, even giving him a run for the money . . .
If you had a nickel for every time Gary Robbins said it you could send a nice donation to Mark Sanford.
This is exactly right.
With your record of predictions I’m taking this as a great sign!
Put me in Max’s universe.
Touche!
Gary
I came across an article that I fully agree with about the first day of the Impeachment Hearings by Charlie Sykes. He has ten points, and one to five paragraphs backing up each point. His ten points are as follows:
(1) It went badly for Trump.
(2) The GOP questioning was . . . awful.
(3) The bored teenager response is a tactic, but also a tell.
(4) It was a bad day for conspiracy theories.
(5) The complaints about “hearsay” were lame.
(6) Elise Stefanik is no Margaret Chase Smith.
(7) No harm no foul?
(8) Character matters.
(9) The cringe worthiness of the House GOP was on full display.
(10) It probably won’t move the needle.
For more information, go to his article at https://thebulwark.com/10-takeaways-from-day-one-of-impeachment/
Can you give us a reliable source, please.
I am glad you liked it. I try to get my news and opinion pieces from more Objective, less biased sources. Jeffery Toobin the CNN Legal corespondent admitted on the air that the “hearsay” stuff was very problematic.
CNN is less biased against the President then your source. Think about that for a minute.
I could quote Briehtbart or Gateway Pundit stuff, but you would not think those a reliable source. The Bulwark is the same thing from the other side. Start with Trump is always wrong and then try to come up with reasons.
Regarding Elise Sefanik. Eli Lake at Bloomberg, Brett Baier the best straight news guy at Fox, John Harwood of CNBC and formerly of the New York Times and Obama’s Ambassador to Russia have all come out stating that Ms. Sefanik was the best of the GOP.
Of course she was unacceptable to the Bulwark because she did not attack Trump. If you are not attacking Trump the Bulwark considers you a half-bright sellout.
Editor Note:
Please follow the code of conduct and don’t use bad words, even if you don’t spell them out fully.No it didn’t.
The GOP questions destroyed the premise
George Kent “in 2014 the Obama admin denied aid and demanded an investigation of Burisma
Star Witness Taylor “What I heard from people”. Never met the President. Didn’t have contact with the Ukrainian president. Didn’t hear any communications by President.
This is just nonsense. Zero meaning.
No it wasn’t. The entire process is a conspiracy and coup against a duly elected president.
LOL. The Star Witness quote ” What I heard from people” The definition of hearsay.
You must be one hell of a lawyer.
She’s no Pelosi, Omar or Cortez. Your buddies.
She is an honest conservative woman who worked for Bush and Ryan.
There is a huge foul.
The Democrats and the Obama admin ran a plot against Trump using foreign intel and our own Deep State.
Biden and sonny boy are up to their eyeballs in corruption, and Trump has every right to ask the Ukrainians to help investigate it.
Then the Democrats are in deep [expletive].
They looked pretty good for once. They devastated Shiftys little Show Trial.
And again, spoken like the Democrat.
Oh but I bet it moves the needle the other way.
This disgusting Show Trial will sicken anyone who isn’t a deranged Never or Democrat creature.
Another perfectly good discussion marred by meaningless assertions ( and not even original !) by you-know-who.
I think there’s something about self promotion in the CoC or continually linking to certain sites?
Max, it’s getting old….
I’m a NeverTrumper. I want him gone, but by the ballot box. I agree this impeachment ruse is going to backfire and help Trump much more than hurt him.
I’m old enough to remember Iran-Contra, where the MSM and the left went hogwild thinking they were going to put Reagan out of office. The mystifying thing in that episode was the disconnect between the libs and the common people on what was important. The elites focused on Reagan’s dastardly assistance of the Contras fighting against their country becoming another Cuba, while average Americans thought that was a nothingburger argument – everyone knew Reagan was an anti-communist and would help prevent that outcome. What infuriated the average citizen was the Iran half of the equation: we were going around the world trying to enforce an embargo on the Mullahs and Reagan was selling them arms at the same time. The media and Congress treated that part as an afterthought.
If you watch MSNBC, even read an otherwise sensible person like David French, you would think that Trump playing hardball or being fast and loose with the facts and the law was something new to the voters. They already know that. I don’t know what they expect to gain by this exercise.
I also associate myself with David French of The Dispatch. His comments are at https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwGBmpKNlKnpppdBmXKFZWxnCxK
Here is what was said in the article about Elise Sefanik:
(6) Elise Stefanik is no Margaret Chase Smith. We’re used to disappointment, so it probably should not have come as a particular surprise when the young New York congresswoman decided that she would take Nikki Haley’s line on impeachment. “For the million of Americans viewing today, the two most important facts are the following,” she said. “Number one, Ukraine received the aid. Number two, there was in fact no investigation of the Bidens.”
They ought to have given her better talking points.
As we now know, the aid was released only after the administration had been busted by the whistleblower and President Zelensky was making plans to publicly announce the investigations when the story blew up.
I would have wished that Ms. Stefanik had followed the lead of Mike Conaway and Will Hurd of the Intelligence Committee and not that of Jim Jordan.
Sykes would be excommunicated if he said it we well. The Bulwark’s entire branding is Bill Kristol’s temper tantrum at Trump because the Standard was mismanaged
Has Chuckles stopped saying we need to be serious about the Russia one?
It’s an evidentiary standard, it doesn’t matter what Sykes opinion of the standard is
And Charlie Sykes doesn’t have the depth of Victor Davis Hanson. Seems more misogyny to me, Charlie now wants to stick it to fairminded Republicans who came to their own conclusion about this process in addition to the pro-Trump.
It’s impeachment, not a verbal warning for sassing a customer at a fast food job. It has be an egregious betrayal of the office. Does Charlie want to know about foreign interferene or only interference that might pay for another cruise?
Charlie “3rd time’s the charm and maybe I don’t cheat on this one” Sykes is here to tell us about morality.
The only people watching are Trump haters hoping this is the magic bullet.
Gary, I have no problem with you being anti-Trump but don’t bring the Bulwark crew in this as if they don’t have an agenda. Truth is Sykes would write that no matter how it went for Trump because he’s now aligned himself with a brand ideology.
To me, the worst thing that happened this week was the tarnishing of the reputations of Haley and Stefanik. ETTD.
Gary, I know you’re a busy man, but could you write a post telling how and why you think this will end badly for Trump? I see the Dems walking straight into a sucker punch, the way Newt and the Repubs did with Clinton. Talking with non-political, mildly supportive Trumpers, they see this as busting a man for speeding while he was rushing his wife to the hospital in labor. They see Hunter Biden and the swamp as the real evil, and Trump’s playing fast and loose as something not that important.
How do you see it otherwise? If I’m missing something and somehow the scales have fallen from people’s eyes about this man’s unfitness, you know I’d be the first one on your side.
Let me give you my quick and dirty way to think about impeachment.
It can’t be for maladministration. It has to be for something that corrodes the constitution. Banana republic type stuff. You have to have the whole bipartisan electorate behind it enough to get 2/3 of the Senate to vote for it.
This doesn’t even come close. Pelosi couldn’t handle The Squad. That’s why we are here.
Also, you ought to be talking about something that was really clearly wrong on the face of it, otherwise what you’re doing is really oversight, instead of just voting on impeachment.
There is no excuse to run this through the intelligence committee and with secret hearings. There is no way in hell Gary can justify that even with his training.
This is a political scam because Durham is going to uncover the greatest political scandal in U.S. history. Executed by Democrats including Obama.
Boy that is the truth. I am quite disappointed in Haley.
I remember in 1974 that most Republicans still supported Nixon when his support cratered. But I could be wrong. I think that who it will really end badly for is the Republican Party as outlined in my “Post of the Week” http://ricochet.com/694062/we-keep-losing-with-trump/
“George Will has written that the only way to teach a donkey something is with a two by four over the head. We got our first smack in November, 2017, when we went from a 2/3 margin in the Virginia House of Delegates to only a bare one vote margin. We got our second smack when a Democrat won a Senate Seat in Alabama in December 2017. We got our third smack in 2018 when Connor Lamb won in Pennsylvania. We got our fourth smack in November 2018 when the Democrats won back the House with 40 flips. (Virginia used to be 7-4 GOP in the House; it now is 7-4 Dem.) We have now gotten our fifth smack on the head with losing in Kentucky and Virginia. [Edit.: We also lost a bunch of local elections in Pennsylvania’s collar counties.)”
Public opinion against Trump is about where it was for Nixon in early 1974. It is well more against than it was for Clinton. I appears to me that Trump manipulated government funds to serve his own interests.
I just got a new tee-shirt: “Proud to be Human Scum; NeverTrump 2020.” I wore it over to the Courthouse while filing some papers this afternoon. Only $14.99. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZMNWCXN/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&customId=B07537PKB3&psc=1
To quote Dana Milbank the case against Trump can be summed up in 7 words: “He abused presidential powers for personal advantage.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/12/case-against-trump-seven-words/
It is highly common for there to be staff interviews under oath before testimony. It happened in the Watergate Hearings. It happens all the time in DC. In highly contested cases, it is common to take people’s depositions to lock in their testimony.
We do not know that. That is merely Syko speculating about cause and effect. What we know is that Ukraine received the aid and there was no announcement of an investigation into the Bidens.
If you can’t get 2/3 of the Senate it’s an abuse of the process. This is simply about affecting the next election.
Why can’t the President have council there then? Why is Schiff limiting GOP witnesses? Why is Schiff leaking?
The other thing is an intelligence guy listening to the president is not covered under the whistleblower statute. He should have just quit and looked for cover from a congressman or the New York Times.
If it makes you feel any better, I do t like her either.