Trump is attempting to shrink govt.? Have you seen his deficit spending and his increasing debt? You realize that a portion of that spending is Trump's socialist payout to farmers from the taxes that I help to pay. It adds to growth in govt. spending, not shrinking. Have you seen how much the govt. is spending at Trump resorts? Have you noticed how Trump decreased the amount of money the govt. has to pay for things? Your post has a real disconnect from actual figures of government spending and how it's increased since Trump came to power and was in charge of the government. What areas of government has Trump been trying to shrink? How much money does the savings in those areas contribute to the government spending less?
Particularly if completely unrefuted in the inquiry. Quid pro quo requires 2 things: 1. an action to be performed, and 2. Some personal benefit to be provided. The inquiry focused solely on the first part, and not at all on the second....without which, quid pro quo fails on the surface. You can think what you want about why Trump might have done this....that doesn't matter. What matters is what evidence they brought forward to prove it. Which was...none. Ergo, quid pro quo wasn't demonstrated, regardless of whether one believes the offer was made or not. Ergo...no case. (my daughter likes using 'ergo' lately. ) It is worth nothing that proving motive is quite difficult. But its a lot harder if you don't even try.
Have to agree with FranchiseBlade on this. Trump is doing lots of things...shrinking gov't ain't one of them.
a) Lets throw out other testimonies such as from Taylor or Hill...Trump stooge Ambassador Sondland's testimony explicitly said that there was an expectation of quid pro quo up above and said himself that the Zelensky admin knew in no uncertain terms what they needed to do for Presidential access and state aid. I'm not sure how there can still be a denial, other than who ordered the hold and sustained the pressure campaign against the President of Ukraine. Trump doesn't explicitly order things. His stooges do though. b) Investigating a political opponent is already a strong motive. Remember when Trump accused (and still does) Obama of using the FBI to hack and wiretap his campaign? How did Conservatives feel then? Should the Senate acquit without refuting those testimonies, ask yourself if this opens precedent for future political investigations by the POTUS and whether that doesn't serve as "motive". If "your side" doesn't follow the rule of law, don't expect anyone to care when the pendulum swings.
This poll was taken during 2 days, November 17-18, which was before what was arguably the most sensational testimony of the public hearings on November 19th, the 20th, and the 21st, after the poll was taken, which gave us Gordon Sondland’s damning testimony pointing the finger at trump, Pompeo, and others, also Volker and Morrison, called by the Republicans, who didn’t help trump a bit. Then the public testimony ended with Fiona Hill and David Holmes giving the strongest testimony to date, exposing trump’s extortion of the Ukrainian government. If you bothered to actually look at the poll, a big majority of Democrats remained interested in the impeachment inquiry early on, and remain very interested today in seeing what is ultimately produced by impeachment inquiry. In other words, your take on the poll was highly misleading. Just thought I’d point that out, but thanks for providing it. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I’m having a wonderful holiday. It’s just the 4 of us in Austin, 2 vegetarians (my significant other and our daughter), and 2 turkey eaters, my son and I. The kids are grown, both out of college and very successful, and both liberals who vote Democratic. So we’ll have no political conflicts at all, because we all agree that trump is a disaster. The beauty of that is not needing to discuss politics, period. Why talk about it when we agree about the important political stuff? Instead, we’ll be talking about everything else. What we’re reading (my daughter turned me on to a great SF novel, The Quantum Garden), what films we’ve seen, the latest streaming stuff, and science, like the newly discovered 5th Force. I’m hoping our kids can explain it to us. ;-) May the 5th Force be with you!
I didn't write the tweet, the Hill did. Just thought I'd point that out but thanks for giving me credit for what it says.
Don't you think Trump denying congressional subpoenas on an impeachment inquiry is in itself an impeachable offense? Obstruction is illegal, and the constitution is clear about Congress's oversight role. Also, how do you feel about Nunes refusing to deny he met with Ukranian officials to get dirt on Biden?
Sorry dude, pretty much all of that is wrong. Quid Pro Quo is not a crime, bribery is, and you don't need either one or two to be guilty of conspiracy to commit bribery.
Former Nixon turncoat Senator opines in the NYT... It's funny that he doesn't call for conviction. Just a plea not to subvert the process. Generally one subverts the process when they're crooked, shifty, or some other mean grade school name. Opinion | My Fellow Republicans, Please Follow the Facts In March of 1974, as a young state attorney general, I reluctantly called for President Richard Nixon’s resignation amid revelations of abuses of power related to Watergate. It wasn’t an easy thing to do. As a Republican, I didn’t enjoy breaking with my party or my president. As an elected official and practical politician, I didn’t particularly enjoy the implications of turning against someone who had comfortably carried Washington State just two years earlier. None of it was pleasant, but I believed it was the right thing to do on the facts and on the merits. John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things.” Forty-five years after Mr. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached by the House, the facts should be the focus of every elected official, Republican or Democrat, as they decide what to do about another president facing impeachment and a possible Senate trial. To my fellow Republicans, I give this grave and genuine warning: It’s not enough merely to dismiss the Ukraine investigation as a partisan witch hunt or to hide behind attacks against the “deep state,” or to try to find some reason to denounce every witness who steps forward, from decorated veterans to Trump megadonors. History demands that we all wrestle with the facts at hand. They are unavoidable. Fifty years from now, history will not accept the position that impeachment was a referendum on the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. It must be a verdict reached on the facts. My judgment so far as an objective observer is that there are multiple actions on this president’s part that warrant a vote of impeachment in the House, based on corroborated testimony that Mr. Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pressured leaders of Ukraine to investigate the Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Biden and his family. From what I have read, it seems clear that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was subjected to a shakedown — pressured to become a foreign participant in President Trump’s re-election campaign, a violation of the law. Several credible witnesses have testified to the existence of a quid pro quo, including William B. Taylor Jr., the acting ambassador to Ukraine; Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the White House’s top Ukraine expert; and Gordon Sondland, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to the European Union. They and others have testified that there was a push for politically motivated investigations, and three of them were so alarmed that they attempted to report their concerns up the chain of command at the National Security Council. Are they to be believed? Here’s my bottom line: That’s what an impeachment inquiry and a Senate trial are designed to find out. That’s why there’s a process under the Constitution. But make no mistake: This is precisely the kind of crisis Alexander Hamilton feared. In Federalist No. 75, he warned that a president might be tempted to betray the interests of the country for his own benefit, “to sacrifice his duty to his interest, which it would require superlative virtue to withstand”; that “an avaricious man might be tempted to betray the interests of the state to the acquisition of wealth”; that a president might “make his own aggrandizement, by the aid of a foreign power, the price of his treachery to his constituents.” Given the temptations a president might have in dealing with foreign powers, Hamilton’s solution was equally clear: Congress should be involved. “The participation of the whole or a portion of the legislative body in the office of making them,” he wrote of treaties. And in the same vein, the founders gave Congress the power to check a president accused of abusing the power of his office. They expected Congress to render its judgment on the facts. So, to my fellow Republicans who have been willing only to attack the process, I say: engage in the process. If the president is innocent, use the process to surface those exculpatory facts so that Congress and the country can agree whether or not Mr. Trump should be removed from office. The facts — not rhetoric — should answer this question: Is there an offense serious enough to undo the results of the 2016 election? A heavy burden to meet, but not an impossible one. Here’s what I know: Neither the country nor the Constitution is served by a partisan shouting match divorced from the facts, a process boycotted by one side refusing to engage on the merits. John Adams is still right 250 years later: Facts are stubborn things. Facts are what should determine whether a stubborn president stays in office. Republicans, don’t fight the process, follow the facts wherever they lead, and put country above party. Slade Gorton was a Republican senator from Washington from 1981 to 1987, and again from 1989 to 2001.
re: latest CNN poll: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/26/politics/cnn-poll-impeachment-views/index.html re: latest Politico/Morning Consult poll: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/26/poll-impeachment-public-hearings-073745 re: Latest HuffPost/YouGov poll (40% of non-voters, Third party votes support impeachment):
all you cowards who are afraid to take on your parents and in-laws this Thanksgiving, the Federalist implores you to please talk politics at the Thanksgiving table this year. the fate of the nation depends on it. https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/26/please-talk-politics-around-the-thanksgiving-table-this-year/
