The Trump Presidency Nein: Leistung, Korruption und Lugen

Wa Po with even more details. The WH General counsel involved as well in blocking the whistleblower.

We confirm WSJ report that Trump pressed Ukrainian leader to investigate Biden’s son, and reveal WH Counsel Pat Cipollone's role in preventing whistleblower complaint from being sent to Congress. @gregpmiller @mattzap @carolleonnig and me https://t.co/2P4fnQQFXM

— Ellen Nakashima (@nakashimae) September 20, 2019

 

McConnell won't even bring it to the floor. Then what? Republicans in the Senate already don't face their constituents, so they're not overly concerned about optics. If they were, this charade wouldn't have been going on the last 30+ months.

 

More details.... According to congressman Mike Quigley, on MSNBC, who sits on the Intelligence Committee, it is not just a phone call, it is a series of events. That was confirmed by the IG to the Committee when he had the closed door session.
One MSNBC contributor confirmed the same as well.

 

I agree with Warren here....

After the Mueller report, Congress had a duty to begin impeachment. By failing to act, Congress is complicit in Trump’s latest attempt to solicit foreign interference to aid him in US elections. Do your constitutional duty and impeach the president.

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) September 20, 2019

A president is sitting in the Oval Office, right now, who continues to commit crimes. He continues because he knows his Justice Department won't act and believes Congress won’t either. Today’s news confirmed he thinks he’s above the law. If we do nothing, he’ll be right.

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) September 20, 2019

Mitch McConnell is also complicit. The Senate must vote on the bill, already passed by the House, to help states and localities protect themselves from the foreign attacks on our elections that the President has previously welcomed.

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) September 20, 2019

In 1974, Democrats and Republicans united in support of impeachment not out of mutual contempt for Nixon but mutual respect for the rule of law. Congress refused to be complicit in future law-breaking by Nixon or other presidents. It’s time for this Congress to step up and act.

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) September 20, 2019

 

Censure only takes a simple majority and accomplishes the exact same thing.

 

Good editorial in the NYT by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/...l?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Why is the Republican Party playing dirty? Republican leaders are not driven by an intrinsic or ideological contempt for democracy. They are driven by fear.

Democracy requires that parties know how to lose. Politicians who fail to win elections must be willing to accept defeat, go home, and get ready to play again the next day. This norm of gracious losing is essential to a healthy democracy.

But for parties to accept losing, two conditions must hold. First, they must feel secure that losing today will not bring ruinous consequences; and second, they must believe they have a reasonable chance of winning again in the future. When party leaders fear that they cannot win future elections, or that defeat poses an existential threat to themselves or their constituents, the stakes rise. Their time horizons shorten. They throw tomorrow to the wind and seek to win at any cost today. In short, desperation leads politicians to play dirty.

. . . .

The problem runs deeper than electoral math, however. Much of the Republican base views defeat as catastrophic. White Christians are losing more than an electoral majority; their once-dominant status in American society is eroding. Half a century ago, white Protestant men occupied nearly all our country’s high-status positions: They made up nearly all the elected officials, business leaders and media figures. Those days are over, but the loss of a group’s social status can feel deeply threatening. Many rank-and-file Republicans believe that the country they grew up in is being taken away from them. Slogans like “take our country back” and “make America great again” reflect this sense of peril.

So like the old Southern Democrats, modern-day Republicans have responded to darkening electoral horizons and rank-and-file perceptions of existential threat with a win-at-any-cost mentality. Most reminiscent of the Jim Crow South are Republican efforts to tilt the electoral playing field. Since 2010, a dozen Republican-led states have adopted new laws making it more difficult to register or vote. Republican state and local governments have closed polling places in predominantly African-American neighborhoods, purged voter rolls and created new obstacles to registration and voting.
​

 

It's a good editorial, but it's something more than a few of us here have said and most people here tacitly understand. When you have a reasonable chance of sharing power in the long run, it's more easy to play graciously. When your number is up and you realize you have no chance of doing so, you do whatever it takes. Because as an institution, there are no real consequences. Don't play dirty and lose. Play dirty, get caught and lose. Or play dirty don't get caught and don't lose.

 

As if that will matter. His base and the Republican leadership don’t have any issue with it. He could shoot an unarmed journalist walking away from him on 5th Avenue and they would declare it was self-defence.

 

Or play dirty, get caught and still not lose.

Their number's not up, anyway. Sure, they'll drop off some from this high point of conservatism, but in the unlikely event that they lose in 2020, they'll just run someone a bit less blatantly conservative and take back the White vote.

IMO, White folks' main beef with Trump isn't that he's inspiring uberconservative acts all over the country. It's that he's a traitor and an idiot. Reagan was neither a traitor nor an idiot (well, not until early in his second term, anyway), so he'd win this demo today. So would Pence or Miller.

 

I bet you're as right as you were about 2018.

 

What did I say about 2018? That was a long time and a lot of shootings, profilings, and detainments ago.

 

No the precedent is if a GOP president commits crimes, there will be no punishment. The SC will be heavily slanted toward the GOP for decades.

As soon as a Democratic president steps out of line, they'll howl about impeachment, removal, arrest, etc

 

If. And even under that scenario, you can bet the MSM and GOP will be on all the TV shows talking it up and complaining about obstructionist Dems, etc etc.

As will the big newspapers.

Which is more than what the Dems are doing right now.

EDIT: I would also like to think that if a Dem president did something worth impeaching, we'd have the moral fortitude to impeach them.

Rule of law, not party.

 

Worth reading. It has become part of our new normal.....


Despite being subjected to a daily diet of Trump headlines, I was unprepared for the president’s alarming incoherence
Lenore Taylor: “I’ve read so many stories about his bluster and boasting and ill-founded attacks, I’ve listened to speeches and hours of analysis, and yet I was still taken back by just how disjointed and meandering the unedited president could sound. Here he was trying to land the message that he had delivered at least something towards one of his biggest campaign promises and sounding like a construction manager with some long-winded and badly improvised sales lines.”
“I’d understood the dilemma of normalizing Trump’s ideas and policies – the racism, misogyny and demonisation of the free press. But watching just one press conference from Otay Mesa helped me understand how the process of reporting about this president can mask and normalize his full and alarming incoherence.”

 

Because upsetting Republicans is more of a worry than upsetting their base?

It's hard to understand why Pelosi, Schumer, et al, do what they do.