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Sunday, March 01, 2020

Links - 1st March 2020 (2 - Donald Trump Impeachment)

Mueller’s testimony equals end of any Trump impeachment talk - "Mueller was that bad, seemingly hard of hearing, often confused, and contradicted himself several times.The Dems’ fantasy of having him breathe life into his report backfired.His dismal performance killed any possibility that his 450-page tome could serve as a road map for overturning the 2016 election and driving Trump from office.Although Mueller’s general demeanor was disturbing, it was also instructive. He did not project the mental and physical vigor of someone capable of leading the complex two-year probe into Russian meddling, possible Trump collusion and obstruction of justice.More likely, the 74-year old former FBI director was something of a figurehead for an investigation that was carried out by the team of zealots he assembled.That is not an incidental issue. As Andy McCarthy at National Review has written, and as Trump has repeatedly charged, the prosecutors were primarily people who had donated to Hillary Clinton and other Democrats or who otherwise made known their support for her. Perhaps Mueller’s detachment explains his failure to remedy these obvious conflicts of interest that undercut his credibility from the moment they became known... Mueller’s detachment may also explain the bizarre standard his team created, where Trump’s presumption of innocence was shredded because they could not find sufficient evidence to “exonerate” him. Several Republicans pointed out that prosecutors either file charges or don’t, but have never imposed the impossible standard of exoneration.Those flaws are among many that undercut the report, including the fact that much of it reads as if it were written by Trump-hating reporters from the New York Times.As one GOP member noted, the report cites nearly 200 articles and broadcasts, giving the impression that the media set the probers’ agenda. At the very least, Mueller’s team and the media were joined at the hip from the get-go... The ultimate probe, though, is the one Attorney General Bill Barr launched. He said he was appalled at FBI bias against Trump and that he wants to get his hands around the origins and scope of the initial scrutiny.“The use of foreign-intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign to me is unprecedented and it’s a serious red line that’s been crossed,” Barr told CBS in May.He also warned of the dangers of weaponizing law enforcement against political opponents, saying “the idea of resisting a democratically elected president and basically throwing everything at him” is a real threat to our nation"

What Mueller Was Trying to Hide - WSJ - "The most notable aspect of the Mueller report was always what it omitted: the origins of this mess. Christopher Steele ’s dossier was central to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe, the basis of many of the claims of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Yet the Mueller authors studiously wrote around the dossier, mentioning it only in perfunctory terms. The report ignored Mr. Steele’s paymaster, Fusion GPS, and its own ties to Russians. It also ignored Fusion’s paymaster, the Clinton campaign, and the ugly politics behind the dossier hit job. Mr. Mueller’s testimony this week put to rest any doubt that this sheltering was deliberate. In his opening statement he declared that he would not “address questions about the opening of the FBI’s Russia investigation, which occurred months before my appointment, or matters related to the so-called Steele Dossier.” The purpose of those omissions was obvious, as those two areas go to the heart of why the nation has been forced to endure years of collusion fantasy.Mr. Mueller claimed he couldn’t answer questions about the dossier because it “predated” his tenure and is the subject of a Justice Department investigation. These excuses are disingenuous. Nearly everything Mr. Mueller investigated predated his tenure, and there’s no reason the Justice Department probe bars Mr. Mueller from providing a straightforward, factual account of his team’s handling of the dossier. If anything, Mr. Mueller had an obligation to answer those questions, since they go to the central failing of his own probe. As Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz asked Mr. Mueller, how could a special-counsel investigation into “Russia’s interference” have any credibility if it failed to look into whether the Steele dossier was itself disinformation from Moscow? Mr. Steele acknowledges that senior Russian officials were the source of his dossier’s claims of an “extensive conspiracy.” Given that no such conspiracy actually existed, Mr. Gaetz asked: “Did Russians really tell that to Christopher Steele, or did he just make it up and was he lying to the FBI?”"

Robert Mueller 'frailty' known to Republicans ahead of testimony - "Many Democrats had hoped Mr. Mueller would seal the case for impeachment against President Trump with commercial-ready sound bites about corruption and obstruction of justice.Instead, the former FBI director and prosecutor stumbled over his lines, seemed unfamiliar with his own 448-page report and repeatedly had to be guided by his questioners... He was surprised that Mr. Mueller struggled to answer a question about Fusion GPS, a company paid by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign to conduct opposition research on Mr. Trump.Fusion GPS paid Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the salacious and largely unproven dossier that fueled much of the Trump-Russia speculation around the 2016 election and its immediate aftermath.Mr. Mueller said he was “not familiar with Fusion GPS,” even though it was mentioned in his report."

How Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann's offer to an oligarch could boomerang on DOJ - "The ink was still drying on special counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment papers when his chief deputy, the famously aggressive and occasionally controversial prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, made a bold but secret overture in early June 2017.Weissmann quietly reached out to the American lawyers for Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash with a tempting offer: Give us some dirt on Donald Trump in the Russia case, and Team Mueller might make his 2014 U.S. criminal charges go away"

Impeachment Based on Improper Motives - "My focus, as always, concerns the precedent this proceeding will establish. Yes, I am far less concerned about what happens to President Trump then I am concerned about what happens to the next President, whoever he or she will be.Impeachment premised on some express violation of law will always be controversial. But at least proponents can point to some clear standard that justifies removal. Bribery has elements. Treason has elements. Violation of a statute (like obstruction of justice) has elements. Even impeachment based on the refusal to comply with congressional subpoena is premised on a discrete act. Every White House can know ex ante that failing to respond to a subpoena could give rise to impeachment. Presidents have some notice of what is expected of them, and can accordingly mount a defense during the trial.However, impeachment for an "abuse of power" based solely on "corrupt" intent gives Presidents no notice, whatsoever, of what is expected of them. There is a nearly infinite range of conduct that can fall within this category. The House report explains, "[t]here are at least as many ways to abuse power as there are powers vested in the President." Virtually anything the President does can give rise to impeachment if a majority of Congress thinks he had an improper intent.The decision not to include an article based on bribery because it has "technical statutory requirements" evidences how malleable these proceedings are. The House didn't want to risk making the charges too precise to satisfy an enumerated standard, so they reverted to an unenumerated standard. This choice echoes an important debate from the Constitutional Convention. On September 8, 1787–nine days before the conclusion of the convention–George Mason offered a proposal to expand the list of impeachable offenses. He would have added "maladministration"... James Madison disagreed. He said, "So vague a term will be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the Senate." Masons's proposal was rejected.I see little difference between "maladministration" and the allegations here: President Trump engaged in an "abuse of power" based on a "corrupt" intent, where there is no clearly identified offense. Such a capacious standard fails to accord with any notions of fairness for the accused, and risks transforming impeachment into an inescapable feature of our political order. Jonathan Turley's much-derided, and quite misunderstood testimony, ably captured this concern"

Donald Trump was elected to break the elite. Of course they want to impeach him. (opinion) - "Trump's supporters have known since election night that this day would eventually come. After all, his sworn enemies have been openly promising it since before he was sworn into office! They've used words like "resistance," "coup," "insurance policy," and "impeachment" so often that, now that they are actually doing it, the American people — and Republicans especially — are offering a collective yawn.Rueful analysts stare into television cameras, lamenting and wondering why Republicans aren't fleeing from the President over the impeachment hearings (he stands at 90% approval among his party in the latest Gallup poll). But there won't be massive convulsions in public opinion because everyone has known for three years what was going to happen... This is a one-sided, partisan impeachment. It's the exact kind of thing Congressman Jerry Nadler, now chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, warned Republicans about in 1998, during Bill Clinton's impeachment. But political party leaders almost always do what the bulk of their party's supporters want them to...  I wonder: have these Trump opponents even considered what this impeachment signals to the American people?  That partisanship is more important than policymaking? That House Democrats have no confidence in their party's ability to beat Donald Trump in an election? And, perhaps most alarmingly, that impeachment — once reserved for the gravest of situations — is now just another tool to inflict damage on their political opponents."

Epic fail: Most now oppose impeachment as Trump approval turns positive, 48% to 47% - "House impeachment proceedings have helped — not hurt — President Trump’s approval in the eyes of voters, and in the latest survey, his rating has turned positive thanks to a massive revolt against impeachment by independents.The just-released Emerson Poll found that 48% approve of Trump, and 47% do not.What’s more, support for impeachment is now negative, a finding that backs up other recent polling... Trump is also beating or tied with every Democratic presidential candidate except Sen. Bernie Sanders in the new poll. Against Sanders, Trump is losing 49% to 50%, well within the margin of error."

In Genius Move, Trump Supports Impeachment, Forcing Democrats To Oppose | The Babylon Bee

Dems make new charge as first focus of impeach hearings falls flat - "to establish a bribe, corrupt intent must be proved. While it would obviously have been preferable if Trump hadn’t singled out the Bidens, it is nevertheless permissible for presidents to encourage countries receiving American aid to investigate and root out corruption. Indeed, the legislation authorizing aid for Ukraine actually directs the executive branch to certify that Ukraine is making such efforts.Republicans spent much of Wednesday trying to put the president’s requests in context — pressing Taylor and State Department official George Kent on Ukrainian corruption and on the suspicious circumstances of Hunter Biden’s association with a corrupt company. They emphasized that defense aid to Ukraine has been significantly increased by President Trump, compared to what it was under his predecessor, President Barack Obama."

Gad Saad - Posts - "‪If @realDonaldTrump does not publicly weigh in on the impeachment=> his silence proves his guilt.‬
‪If he tweets his frustration => he is engaging in an impeachable offence (witness intimidation).‬
‪All states of the world prove that Trump is a bad bad bad man. ‬"

We Shouldn't Impeach Trump on the Basis of Flawed Theory - "What constitutes a “high” crime? Alexander Hamilton provided the answer in the Federalist papers: only those offenses within Congress’s appropriate jurisdiction that constitute “the abuse or violation of some public trust.”So while it is fashionable at the moment for some to argue that President Trump is removable from office simply if it is proved that he abused the power of his office during his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, the Constitution requires more. To ignore the requirement of proving that a crime was committed is to sidestep the constitutional design as well as the lessons of history... whatever your view of whether the President’s call was, in his words, “perfect” or not, the race to impeachment is moving forward on an arguably flawed legal theory of an implied quid pro quo of temporarily withholding foreign aid. It doesn’t help those arguing that the implied and temporary attempt at a quid quo pro necessitates impeachment that the aid was eventually released and disbursed on Sept. 11. Nor does it help them that Ukraine never publicly announced an investigation of the Bidens."

Bilahari Kausikan - "The issue is on balance who has the political advantage. This is not self-evident.Impeachment needs to pass the Republican-majority Senate which it probably won’t. And even if it does, Trump need not step down as President.Using foreign policy for partisan advantage is hardly novel in US politics. Certainly not statesman-like. But is it criminal? Doubtful.We don’t know what dirt on Biden will come out, but there will surely be dirt. Biden will be damaged — the only question is how much.This gives Warren an advantage in the Democratic primaries.If it is Trump vs Warren in 2020, the advantage is for Trump since Warren is probably too progressive for most American voters.Don’t forget that Trump only needs to win the Electoral College not the popular vote.There is a reason Pelosi was so reluctant to move on impeachment until freshmen members of the House forced her hand"

Educating Liberals on Twitter - "The Dems want to impeach a President for trying to expose a crime & then elect the person who committed the crime. You can’t make this shit up."

Trump Campaign Raised $1 Million in 3 Hours After Impeachment - "Over 24 hours, the campaign raised $5 million... The transcript of the phone call revealed there was no quid pro quo, no threat of withholding aid, and the DOJ, which investigated the call in August, determined there was nothing illegal in the call. Yahoo Finance reports that "Trump has had incredible fundraising success, currently holding $56.7 million cash on hand, according to the latest FEC filings. So far, the president has raised more than $120 million for the 2020 election, crushing Democratic candidates in fundraising totals. Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders, who has achieved the most fundraising success, has pulled in roughly $46.5 million so far.""

Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts - "Before discussing the Ukraine issue with anyone, read the transcript yourself. The press coverage has been terrible so it’s best to cut out the middle man. The exchange between the two presidents is unremarkable... Trump says Biden was bragging about having stopped the prosecutor who was looking into Hunter’s company and he asked to find out what had been determined by Ukraine’s AG. This is in context of talking about Ukrainian investigations... The Democrats can’t afford to back down now so expect maximum hyperbole from both sides. At this stage it appears that the Democrats over reached but the story is still young."

Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts - "The argument for impeaching Trump over Ukraine is looking remarkably weak. The call transcript showed no quid pro quo; the Ukrainian President wasn’t told why funds were held up. Giuliani didn’t talk to the Ukrainian President. Barr was not asked, nor did he talk to the Ukrainian President. The Ukrainian President says he wasn’t pressured by Trump. Despite no movement on reinvestigating Burisma, the funds were released to Ukraine. Meanwhile, there is pressure to reopen a corruption investigation within the Ukraine."

Thread by @FredFleitz - "As a former CIA analyst and former NSC official who edited transcripts of POTUS phone calls with foreign leaders, here are my thoughts on the whistleblower complaint which was just released. This is not an intelligence matter. It is a policy matter and a complaint about differences over policy. Presidential phone calls are not an intelligence concern. The fact that IC officers transcribe these calls does not give the IC IG jusrisdiction over these calls. It appears that rules restricting access and knowledge of these sensitive calls was breached. This official was not on this call, not on the approved dissem list and should not have been briefed on the call. The way this complaint was written suggested the author had a lot of help... My view is that this whistleblower complaint is too convenient and too perfect to come from a typical whistleblower. Were other IC officers involved? Where outside groups opposed to the president involved? This complaint will further damage IC relations with the White House for many years to come because IC officers appear to be politicizing presidential phone calls with foreign officials and their access to the president and his activities in the White House. Worst of all, this IC officer -- and probably others -- have blatantly crossed the line into policy. This violates a core responsibility of IC officers is to inform, but not make policy. This is such a grevious violation of trust between the IC and the White House that it would not surprise me if IC officers are barred from all access to POTUS phone calls with foreign officials."
If IC officers were barred, Trump haters would take this as another outrageous move, naturally

Mike Cernovich on Twitter - "Trump colluded with Russia and is owned by Russia which is why Trump colluded with Ukraine, Russia’s great rival."

Joe Biden Forced Ukraine to Fire Prosecutor for Aid Money

Source says whistleblower didn't have ‘firsthand knowledge’ of Trump call with Ukraine president

Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 on Twitter - "Biden: I bribed Ukraine lol
Trump: We should investigate this
Ukraine prez: Yes I agree
Dems: Impeach Trump, elect Biden
Media: Honk Honk"

Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts - "Both Trump and Biden expressed concerns about corruption in Ukraine (and its widely accepted that there is). Both held up aid over corruption concerns. Both had potential personal motives for their actions because of Hunter Biden’s involvement in a company that was being investigated. Biden got the prosecutor replaced and the investigation ended. Trump got, well, not much other than follow up meetings with Giuliani.With similar fact circumstances, Biden received little attention for his actions while Trump is being threatened with Impeachment. The biggest difference between the two politicians is that Biden is largely liked and Trump is largely unliked. But impeachment proceedings should not be based on likeability. The founding fathers mentioned ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ for a reason.The constitution gives the president almost unlimited power to engage in foreign policy. Other than the power of the purse and the approving treaties, Congress and the Judiciary have little say."

Poll: Majority of Americans against Trump Impeachment - "37 percent of respondents to the poll said Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 57 percent were against impeachment."

Hunter Biden is a reminder: Democrats are morally corrupt, too | Hamilton Nolan - "The son of a longtime US senator gets his start as a lawyer with one of the biggest corporate donors to his dad’s campaigns; a friend of his dad’s gets him a job in the Clinton administration, and then as a lobbyist; later, while his father is vice president, he is given a $50,000 per month seat on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm, despite lacking any clear energy expertise. How does this all happen? It happened the same way that Chelsea Clinton became a “special correspondent” for NBC News, and Jenna Bush got a job as a Today show host, and the Trump children got jobs overseeing a real estate empire... I don’t want to hear Democrats – members of the party that ostensibly stands for more equality and purer democracy – pretending that the fact that the VP’s son got a do-nothing $600k per year corporate handout is unremarkable. I want Democrats to demonstrate that we live our values. I want Democrats to send their kids to public school, unionize their workplaces and give money to the poor."

BREAKING: Nancy Pelosi's Son Was Exec At Gas Company That Did Business In Ukraine - "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s son Paul Pelosi Jr. visited Ukraine in 2017 to meet with government officials in connection to a business initiative. Now, unearthed records reveal that Paul Pelosi Jr. was an executive of a gas industry company that did business in Ukraine – and his mother Nancy Pelosi was featured in one of the company’s promotional videos."

Dave Smith on Twitter - "The last three presidents slaughtered hundreds of thousands if not millions of innocent people. They illegally spied on all US citizens. They bankrupted the greatest nation in the history of the world. None of this led to impeachment. But this phone call is the real scandal."

Paul Krugman Makes A Prediction: Journalists Will Be Imprisoned Or Trump Ends Up In Jail - "Krugman did not follow up his tweet with reasons as to how “thousands of journalists” would become imprisoned if Trump doesn’t spend time behind bars. Turkey, China and Egypt are responsible for more than half of all jailed journalists, a 2018 Forbes article reported. The report is based on data collected from the Committee to Protect Journalists, which noted that zero journalists were jailed in the U.S."

Tyler Zed on Twitter - "A billionaire investor had an island where other billionaires & politicians went to diddle kids. Then that billionaire died under suicide watch before 1,000 names of his politician friends were released. Yet here we are talking about some Greta Brat & more impeachment insanity."

The Ukrainegate ‘Whisteblower’ Isn’t a Real Whistleblower - "Americans who’ve blown the whistle over serious offenses by the federal government either spend the rest of their lives overseas, like Edward Snowden, end up in jail, like Chelsea Manning, get arrested and ruined financially, like former NSA official Thomas Drake, have their homes raided by FBI like disabled NSA vet William Binney, or get charged with espionage like ex-CIA exposer-of-torture John Kiriakou. It’s an insult to all of these people, and the suffering they’ve weathered, to frame the ballcarrier in the Beltway’s latest partisan power contest as a whistleblower... When Kiriakou first saw the “whistleblower complaint,” his immediate reaction was to wonder what kind of “CIA officer” the person in question was. “If you spend a career in the CIA, you see all kinds of subterfuge and lies and crime,” he says. “This person went through a whole career and this is the thing he objects to?”It’s fair to wonder if this is a one-person effort. Even former CIA official Robert Baer, no friend of Trump, said as much... Actual whistleblowers are alone. The Ukraine complaint seems to be the work of a group of people, supported by significant institutional power, not only in the intelligence community, but in the Democratic Party and the commercial press.In this century we’ve lived through a president lying to get us into a war (that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and the loss of trillions in public treasure), the deployment of a vast illegal surveillance program, a drone assassination campaign, rendition, torture, extralegal detention, and other offenses, many of them mass human rights violations.We had whistleblowers telling us about nearly all of these things. When they came forward, they desperately needed society’s help. They didn’t get it. Our government didn’t just tweet threats at them, but proceeded straight to punishment... In 2016 we saw a pair of electoral revolts, one on the right and one on the left, against the cratering popularity of our political elite. The rightist populist revolt succeeded, the Sanders movement did not. Ukrainegate to me looks like a continuation of Russiagate, which was a reaction of that defeated political elite to the rightists. I don’t feel solidarity with either group... Trump has a long way to go before he approaches the brutal record of the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, as well as the cheerleading Washington political establishment. Forgetting this is likely just the first in what will prove to be many deceptions about a hardcore insider political battle whose subtext is a lot more shadowy and ambiguous than news audiences are being led to believe."

Tim Pool on Twitter - "The media is calling a sworn statement from a Ukrainian prosecutor a conspiracy theory But they call second hand information from a "whistleblower" a credible claim Go fuck yourselves I'm sick of this insane game"

Why Partisans Look At The Same Evidence On Ukraine And See Wildly Different Things - "There’s evidence political partisanship can make you more biased against others than racism does... “warm contact” between political leaders did more to reduce affective polarization and negative opinions about the other party than issue compromise"

Morgan Griffith on Twitter - "I am in the Rules Committee room where Democrats are marking up their impeachment resolution. @RepDLesko offered an amendment requiring any evidence which is exculpatory regarding the President to be given to the Judiciary Committee. Democrats rejected it."

At least 5 House Democrats compared Bill Clinton’s impeachment to a ‘lynching’ in 1998 - The Washington Post - "Criticism came fast from Democrats, Trump critics and some Republicans on Tuesday after President Trump compared the current impeachment inquiry to a “lynching.” But by the afternoon, Trump allies were pointing out that variations of that word were invoked several times by House Democrats to describe the impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton in 1998... Then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) called the impeachment proceedings against Clinton a “partisan lynching” during an October 1998 appearance on CNN. On Tuesday, Biden called Trump’s tweet “abhorrent.” “Our country has a dark, shameful history with lynching, and to even think about making this comparison is abhorrent. It’s despicable,” Biden tweeted."
Basically it's good when Democrats do it

What, exactly, is President Trump's 'high crime' here? - "The Constitution is quite clear: The president “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”Democrats are speeding toward the impeachment of President Trump with this standard barely a pebble in their path.The Constitution does not permit impeachment because the House finds the president loud, dislikes his policies or simply regards him with uncontrollable, pathological, stammer-inducing hatred. Nonetheless, Democrats despise Trump and are determined to impeach him, no matter what... Treason? No one has claimed that Trump provided aid and comfort to the enemy during wartime. At worst, he delayed aid to a friendly nation with which America is at peace.That’s not treason.Bribery? At worst, Trump postponed some $391 million in assistance to Kiev, presumably in exchange for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden. The aid was delivered, and no such dirt was received. None of this money ever got near Trump’s pocket or that of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. So, where is the bribery?“High crimes and misdemeanors?” While this criterion is more nebulous, it also seems far out of reach. Democrats accuse Trump of extorting Zelensky to investigate for corruption any of the eyebrow-raising connections between Kiev and Joe and Hunter Biden, the former veep’s son. Democrats claim such a probe was what Zelensky had to launch before receiving the aforementioned military aid. This is the notorious quid pro quo.But Zelensky has said repeatedly that he never felt extorted in his July 25 phone call with Trump. Zelensky told journalists on Sept. 25, “nobody pushed me.” During extensive discussions with some 300 journalists in Kiev, Zelensky said on Oct. 10: “There was no pressure or blackmail from the US.” The available evidence, from the supposed victim of Trump’s vise, is: What vise? Similarly, for Trump’s alleged quid pro quo to work, Team Zelensky needed to know their aid was being blocked until they put the Bidens under magnifying glasses. Absent such awareness, Trump’s “threat” would’ve been as pointless as trying to rob a bank with a concealed handgun... Democrats and their bodyguards in the media also seem deeply hurt that Trump fired former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. How dare he? What a bully!Yovanovitch, like every US ambassador, serves at the president’s pleasure. As the chief architect of foreign policy during his administration, Trump had every right to sack her, for slow-walking his initiatives, because he wanted a new American face in Kiev, or perhaps he didn’t like her shoes. There’s no high crime or misdemeanor here. Democrats are irked that Trump has deployed his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, as his emissary, thus circumventing career diplomats.As Eric Felten of RealClearInvestigations recalled, this is nothing new. Democratic presidents have dispatched the Rev. Jesse Jackson and ex.-Rep. Bill Richardson on informal missions. Jimmy Carter used Coca-Cola chief J. Paul Austin as a back-channel envoy to Cuba. Even George Washington relied on Gouverneur Morris as his “private agent” in Europe."

Evan 'You are being detained' Freshwater on Twitter - "The deep state is alive and well, composed of patriotic public servants. Their aim is not to bring down President Trump out of personal or political animus but to rescue the Republic from his excesses, says @mcottle" - New York Times
"2015:There is no deep state
2016:There is no deep state
2017:There is no deep state
2018:There is no deep state
2019:Ok, there's a deep state... but they're the good guys!"

Two Former CIA Directors Admit: 'Thank God for Deep State' Involvement Pushing Impeachment - "Former CIA Directors John Brennan and former acting CIA Director John McLaughlin were being questioned on a panel by Face the Nation’s Margaret Brennan. The panel was at George Mason University and also had former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe in attendance... “Thank God for the ‘Deep State,'” he said to cheers in the liberal friendly audience.What he said was truly stunning. Because they didn’t like what Trump was doing, they were going to try to take him out"

The Deep State Comes Out Of The Shadows - "what we have here are career bureaucrats who don’t like the way Trump is conducting foreign policy. Why? Because they know better than some outsider who doesn’t play according to the rules. There is no question that many of them would be delighted to see Trump removed from office, not because he did anything impeachable, but because they can’t abide by the 2016 election results... Add this to what we’ve learned about how the intelligence community and the FBI have tried to undermine the Trump administration – events chillingly recounted in Andrew McCarthy’s must-read book “Ball of Collusion.” In it, he shows how the liberal Washington establishment “exploited its control of law-enforcement and intelligence to help Clinton and undermine Trump. This is a scandalous abuse of power.”Trump’s critics say that his claims about a deep state are the result of his paranoid delusions. But after what the country has witnessed over the past three years, and now the bragging by State Department officials bent on getting Trump out of Washington, it’s the denial of the deep state that is delusional."

The Democrats' High-Risk Gamble on Impeachment - "To remove a president, the Democrats need strong bipartisan support, both among voters and in Congress. They don’t have it. One big problem is that so many Democrats and their media allies have cried “wolf” before. Indeed, they have cried it continually since Trump was elected. The second problem is House Democrats have conducted the inquiry behind closed doors and withheld the transcripts for weeks (only now, under pressure, are they beginning to release them). They’ve made up the rules as they go, refusing to let Republicans call witnesses, refusing to let the president’s lawyers ask questions or even observe the process. Why? No good answers have been provided, nor for why the investigation is being held in a secure room by the Intelligence Committee. Hiding it in the basement is a sad metaphor for what should be a public process. After all, the materials are not classified, and the Judiciary Committee has handled every previous impeachment. The more partisan the process, the less bipartisan and legitimate the outcome... It’s not hard for Republicans to attack this whole process as fundamentally unfair. They say, rightly, that it violates the most basic tenets of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence"

Cash-Strapped CNN Now Just Recycling Old Articles But Replacing 'Russian Collusion' With 'Ukrainian Scandal' | The Babylon Bee - "Strapped for cash and failing in ratings, CNN has discovered an innovative new way to cut costs: simply rerunning articles from a year or two ago and replacing the phrase "Russian collusion" with an updated term, "Ukrainian scandal."... Leftists have praised CNN's move, saying it is the most environmentally conscious way to report news stories... CNN spokespeople say they look forward to recycling the stories with whatever new reason for impeachment they drum up well into Trump's second term."

The impeachment articles are a vindication for Trump - The Washington Post - "That’s it?After three years in which Democrats accused President Trump of a host of criminal acts — from bribery and extortion to campaign finance violations, obstruction of justice, conspiracy and even treason — they have finally introduced articles of impeachment that allege none of those things. Not only have they dropped the charge of bribery, the words that gripped Washington — “quid pro quo” — don’t even appear in the document. This is a major retreat by Democrats, who have effectively admitted the president did not commit any statutory crimes. Indeed, if these articles are approved, this will be the first presidential impeachment in history in which no statutory crimes are even alleged. In that alone, Trump can claim vindication.Instead, Democrats settled on two noncriminal allegations: obstruction of Congress and abuse of power. Both charges are farcical... Democrats seem not to understand that the legislative and the executive are equal branches of government. They do not get the last word when a president invokes executive privilege. When a dispute arises between the two branches, the president has a right to appeal to the third equal branch of government — the judiciary. Trump did that, as is his constitutional right. If he appealed to the courts and lost but still refused to cooperate, then Congress would have every right to charge him with obstruction of Congress.But Democrats refused to wait for judicial review. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) actually said, “We cannot be at the mercy of the courts.” Excuse me? And Democrats are accusing Trump of being “a threat to the Constitution”? Democrats are doing exactly what they accuse Trump of doing. As Professor Jonathan Turley told Democrats on the Judiciary Committee “We have three branches, not two. … If you impeach a president, if you make a high crime and misdemeanor out of going to the courts, it is an abuse of power. It’s your abuse of power.” Democrats are also completely wrong when they declare Trump’s invocation of executive privilege “unprecedented.” In 2011, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform subpoenaed then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to provide documents and witnesses related to the botched gun-running operation “Fast and Furious.” Holder refused to fully comply. When the committee threatened to hold him in contempt, President Barack Obama stepped in and invoked executive privilege. The administration argued that “compelled disclosure would be inconsistent with the separation of powers established in the Constitution.”Guess what? The same Democrats now seeking to impeach Trump for obstruction of Congress backed Obama’s obstruction of Congress... Pelosi called it — wait for it — worse than a “witch hunt.”... In October, before the hearings began, the Quinnipiac poll showed that a 48 to 46 percent plurality of Americans supported impeachment and removal; today, after the hearings, voters are opposed by a margin of 51 to 45 percent. In key swing states, a Firehouse/Optimus poll found that impeachment and removal is now opposed by 51 percent of voters in Michigan, 52 percent in Pennsylvania and 58 percent in Wisconsin.This is the definition of failure. Earlier this year, Pelosi said she was “not for impeachment” because “unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path.” She was right then. Democrats should have listened."

Jeff Van Drew's party switch is a godsend for Donald Trump - "President Donald Trump couldn't have dreamed of a better scenario surrounding this week's impeachment vote than the one that will play out sometime over the next 48 hours (or so): New Jersey Democratic Rep. Jeff Van Drew will switch parties due to his opposition to impeachment.

Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts - "When it comes to Trump I’ve long since learned to ignore what he says and watch his actions. Trump is always going to make outrageous statements. That’s how he gets attention and the voters knew this. So I’m not predisposed to impeach Trump for his statements... I believe it’s dangerous ground to impeach a president over his style of communicating, however... We are still left with the facts that Trump did not have the authority to block funds, that Ukraine never initiated an investigation or announced that they would, and that Trump added additional discretionary funds. Couple that with the Ukrainian President not even knowing that money was on hold until a Politico article was published in September and that he never felt pressured. If this was a stick up where was the gun, mask, and note?"

Dems make new charge as first focus of impeach hearings falls flat - "all negotiations between sovereign nations involve mutual exchange — that is not corruption or bribery; it is foreign relations. And this negotiation, like most, was more complex than Democrats portray it to be. In the conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart, Trump made two different requests. They were not demands in the context of the Trump-Zelensky conversation. They were framed as requests. As Republicans repeatedly stressed, Zelensky never felt threatened, although it is fair to say there is evidence that the president’s subordinates signaled to Ukrainians that the official acts they sought were conditioned on their reciprocity.The first request involved Ukrainian assistance in the investigation into the origins of the 2016 election, the subject of a formal Justice Department investigation. It is entirely legitimate for a president to ask another head of state for assistance in a US investigation. There is even a treaty that requires such assistance... to establish a bribe, corrupt intent must be proved. While it would obviously have been preferable if Trump hadn’t singled out the Bidens, it is nevertheless permissible for presidents to encourage countries receiving American aid to investigate and root out corruption. Indeed, the legislation authorizing aid for Ukraine actually directs the executive branch to certify that Ukraine is making such efforts."

Finley: Let's just impeach everyone - "What we saw during last week's hearings confirms there are no white hats in this impeachment fight. No one purely motivated. And the only righteousness on display is self-righteousness... I find myself trapped into defending Trump against the push by ruthless Democrats and their allies to take down an elected president by any means necessary. Trump has not been treated fairly. Nor was he ever given a chance to succeed. Democrats began their resistance movement on Inauguration Day, and talk of impeachment started before he switched on the lights in the Oval Office. Worse, there's ample evidence that anti-Trump forces in the Justice Department worked to orchestrate a coup against the president.Critics of Trump contend his actions present a constitutional crisis. But Trump has not defied checks on his overreaches by the courts. It is a constitutional crisis, however, when forces inside the government actively attempt to influence the outcome of a presidential election, and then work to undermine the president elected by the people.And so unnecessary. No one undermines Trump more than Trump himself... we are nearing the point at which dysfunctional government becomes intractable, offering no hope of ever coming together to advance the nation past its many challenges."

Warning lights are flashing for Democrats as they impeach Trump - "there's growing evidence that the public impeachment proceedings may actually be helping Trump politically.
Take a new Gallup poll released Wednesday morning, before the House vote, which shows two things happening since House Democrats, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, opened up a formal impeachment inquiry in October regarding Trump's conduct with Zelensky:
1) Trump's job approval rating has gone from 39% to 45%
2) Support for Trump's impeachment and removal has dipped from 52% to 46%...
Remember this: Pelosi did not want to go down the impeachment path. She stood athwart her party over the summer as more and more of her Democratic members announced their support for an impeachment inquiry over Trump's conduct in connection to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Her concern, which she voiced publicly and privately, was that a partisan impeachment -- one without significant bipartisan support -- would too bitterly divide the country to make it worth doing... That all changed in the fall, when a whistleblower complaint regarding Trump's actions on that July 25 call surfaced. It rapidly became clear that Trump's behavior on the call was a dam-breaker -- Pelosi could no longer stand in the way of the momentum within her caucus to move toward impeaching the President. But simply because Pelosi acquiesced to that inexorable momentum does not mean that her concerns about the politics of impeachment had changed. What Pelosi knew then -- and knows now -- is that impeachment is a chaos-creator in the American electorate. There is simply no certainty about how the voters -- particularly the small number of independent and/or undecided voters -- will react to all of this."

According To Current Democrat Standards, Obama Should Have Been Impeached TWICE - "In March 2012, Obama asked then-outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to tell incoming President Vladimir Putin that he would have more flexibility after the U.S. election that fall to negotiate about the placement of anti-missile defenses in Poland and Romania. According to Reuters, Obama said, “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” The infamous moment was caught on tape... “He engaged in a quid pro quo: If Putin does not push me on deployment of anti-missile defenses now, I promise I can give him a better outcome for Russia after I’m re-elected”... Even a Snopes fact-check asserted the truth of this moment... In a second abuse of power, President Obama himself acknowledged that he had no constitutional authority to act unilaterally regarding the status of those who are in the country illegally... Obama instituted his Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program in June of that year by executive order.  “Republicans and even “Saturday Night Live” later pointed out that Obama acted in a lawless fashion, but there were no widespread calls on Capitol Hill to impeach the president, and certainly no impeachment inquiries opened”"

This is an abuse of the power of impeachment - "In 2016 there were two huge disruptions to the political systems of the UK and the US: the vote for Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. The political elites in both countries responded in remarkably similar ways to these parallel populist shocks – they claimed they were illegitimate, denounced their supporters as thick and deplorable, and did everything in their power to overturn the results.Amazingly, for three long years since 2016, the establishments of both countries have refused to accept the reality of these democratic votes and have fought to reverse them. Now, with the recent UK General Election, the Remain opposition to Brexit has lost badly, perhaps for good. But the US political establishment, mainly in the form of the Democratic Party, continues its mission to bring down Trump... In December 2016 – a month after Trump’s election, and before his inauguration – Vanity Fair noted that ‘Democrats are paving the way to impeach Donald Trump’. On Trump’s inauguration day in January 2017, liberal activists posted an online petition calling for his impeachment. By April, congresswoman Maxine Waters was exhorting protesters in Washington to ‘Impeach 45’. In June 2017, two Democrat representatives, Al Green and Brad Sherman, initiated formal impeachment efforts... Of course, the main endeavours to bring down the president centered on allegations that he colluded with Russia to fix the 2016 election. Liberals’ hopes were pinned on the Mueller investigation, to the point of weird adoration of Mueller, including votive candles. Cable TV hosts like Rachel Maddow imagined vast ‘connect the dots’ conspiracies on a nightly basis. But these hopes crashed on the rocks of Mueller’s report, which found no evidence of collusion. Attempts to pin an obstruction charge on Trump fell flat when Mueller failed to back that up as well... The cursory and rushed way in which Democrats conducted the impeachment investigation into Trump and Ukraine – not setting up a special prosecutor; not seeking the testimony of key witnesses, including national security adviser John Bolton; insisting on a vote before Christmas – provides proof that Democrats already knew the outcome they wanted, and were not engaged in a serious search for the truth. As Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson, one of only two House Democrats to vote against Trump’s impeachment, put it, the ‘biggest problem’ with the impeachment process was that Democrats decided in advance that they were going to impeach Trump ‘and now they’ve spent a year trying to figure out how they can make a case for it. That is just backwards.’... After months of alleging serious crimes of ‘bribery’, ‘extortion’ and ‘treason’, the best the Democrats could come up with were ‘abuse of power’ and ‘obstruction of congress’ – making for the weakest case for impeachment in history. Unlike in the three prior impeachment cases (Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton), there were no charges that Trump committed a crime... What they are doing is more anti-democratic than anything Trump has tried. Which brings us back to the parallels with Brexit. Many have claimed that Brexit and Britain’s recent election result show the risks of the Democrats nominating a candidate that is ‘too left-wing’, like Corbyn. In fact, if there is a lesson from Brexit for the US, it has more to do with the dangers of the establishment using extraordinary means and entrenched levers of power to thwart the will of the voters, who they believe got it wrong. This invites a backlash from voters when they get the next opportunity to do so... the Democrats’ manic and obsessive pursuit of impeachment can now be used by Trump as proof that he continues to be the nemesis of the unpopular political elite (and so must be doing something right).  And if Trump manages to win re-election next year, how will the Democrats respond? Well, as Democratic congressman Al Green says, a ‘president can be impeached more than once’. God, what a prospect. They might as well say they have to destroy democracy in order to save it."

Trump: Amid impeachment inquiry, he leads all 2020 Democratic rivals - "President Donald Trump, the first modern president to face impeachment during his first term in the White House, now leads his top Democratic rivals in his bid for a second, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll finds. The national survey, taken as the House of Representatives planned an impeachment vote and the Senate a trial, showed Trump defeating former Vice President Joe Biden by 3 percentage points, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders by 5 points, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren by 8 points. In hypothetical head-to-head contests, Trump also led South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg by 10 points and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg by 9."

An0maly on Twitter - "Imagine a court case where the main witness wouldn’t testify. Imagine that same witness was anonymous. Imagine that same witness didn’t even have first-hand knowledge to make them a witness in the first place. That’s what the Democrats did with impeachment. Beyond tyrannical."

Blaire White on Twitter - "The United States now has two Presidents impeached for embarrassing Hillary Clinton."

Jeff Van Drew: 'Final sign' for him to switch parties was being told he had to vote for impeachment - "New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew said the "final sign" for him to switch parties was being told that he had to vote in support of impeachment of President Donald Trump... he was told by a New Jersey Democratic county party chair that he would not be successful in winning reelection if he votes "no" on impeachment... "For all the years that I have worked so hard and tried to give so much, not only to the party, but to everybody.... it all boils down to one vote, that I may have my own individual opinion on one vote and that is not going to be allowed? I'm going to be punished for that? And that's when I knew," Van Drew said, also citing the Democratic Party's move to the left as part of his decision to join the Republican Party... Van Drew said that he felt he did the "honorable thing" in voting against impeaching Trump last week. "I feel that I did what was right for me and right for the country," Van Drew told Fox News. "This impeachment is a weak, thin impeachment that just doesn't really mean anything much to most of the American people. And it has been a long, dark shadow on our country. And folks are tired. I really believe folks are tired of it."

Impeachment Is Warranted, but It's Also a Bad Idea - The Atlantic - "Even if impeachment proceedings fail to change any minds, they will still have consequences on the overall dynamics of the 2020 election. For one, they threaten to consume public debate and pull the various Democratic candidates in the direction of endlessly commenting on or responding to Donald Trump. Whether this would be to Democrats’ benefit is debatable; focusing on what’s wrong with Trump at the expense of building an inspiring, affirmative case for the presidency didn’t quite work well last time around... the removal of Trump, however legally and constitutionally legitimate, would confirm the worst suspicions of his supporters: that their voices, in the end, wouldn’t be allowed to count. Their democratic and electoral agency would be denied. In Britain, there was a palpable anger among Brexiteers that what they’d won at the polls in the 2016 referendum would be taken away from them with calls for a do-over vote. Similarly, a sense of disenfranchisement would sour tens of millions of Americans on the democratic process—and on the idea of democracy. The perception that a legitimate electoral outcome was undone by those other than the voters themselves—in this case partisan actors and political elites—could inflict the very damage on the system’s democratic legitimacy that Democrats themselves have been warning against... If Trump wins, he will be the first president to serve a new term after having been impeached the previous term. This would, in the minds of Democratic voters, make him seem even more illegitimate than he already was and further undermine their perceptions of the democratic process. Democrats will rightly ask how it is that their fellow Americans could reelect—after everything they know—a president both disgraced and impeached. In impeaching Trump, House Democrats are posing a question whose answer they do not want to hear."

So far, all impeachment has done is make Donald Trump more popular | Thomas Meaney - "In March last year, Nancy Pelosi, the veteran Democratic leader of the House, advised her fellow Democrats against impeachment: “I don’t think we should go down that path.” After three years of declaring Trump an existential threat to the nation, Pelosi knew that the Democrats would only help the president if they took action that was not only guaranteed to fail to remove him, but which would allow Trump to reprise his favourite role: Phoenix Rising from the Headlines.But Pelosi was in a bind. Like Theresa May, she has become the manager of a process she never wanted to happen. Faced with a revolt among Democratic lawmakers who need strong anti-Trump credentials to win their congressional primaries, she eventually yielded to their determination to remove Trump via legal means... Many presidents have committed impeachable offences in office – whether Franklin Roosevelt’s IRS auditing of political opponents, Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush’s Iran-Contra scandal, or George W Bush’s lying to ignite the Iraq war (a 2008 CNN interview has been making the rounds, in which the civilian Trump expresses disappointment that Pelosi did not try harder to impeach Bush for the Iraq war). These comparisons make Democratic claims that to not impeach Trump would effectively mean shredding the constitution seem more than a little over-heated... The irony is that Trump is now impatient for his own Senate trial to start, which he reasonably expects will bring the public more to his side. During the House’s impeachment proceedings, Trump’s approval ratings rose six points... Like Clinton’s bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Trump may have diverted some attention away from his impeachment with the assassination of Qassem Suleimani. Yet this impeachable offence – engaging in an act of war without Congress’s approval – is unlikely to be added to Trump’s bill of offences. The presidency has accrued war powers at a rate since 9/11 that only accelerated under Obama. It would now take sweeping congressional legislation to reverse the tide"

Trump Job Approval at Personal Best 49% - "The new poll finds 50% of Americans disapproving of Trump, leaving just 1% expressing no opinion... Trump's approval rating has risen because of higher ratings among both Republicans and independents... The 87-point gap between Republican and Democratic approval in the current poll is the largest Gallup has measured in any Gallup poll to date, surpassing the prior record, held by Trump and Barack Obama, by one point. The Jan. 16-29 poll was conducted in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial that will likely result in the president's acquittal. The poll finds 52% of Americans in favor of acquitting Trump and 46% in favor of convicting and removing him from office... Sixty-three percent of Americans now approve of the way Trump is handling the economy, up six points from the prior reading in November. It is the highest economic approval rating not only for Trump, but for any president since George W. Bush enjoyed stratospheric job approval ratings in the first few months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks... As Trump's job approval rating has improved, so has the image of the Republican Party. Now, 51% of Americans view the Republican Party favorably, up from 43% in September. It is the first time GOP favorability has exceeded 50% since 2005. Meanwhile, 45% of Americans have a positive opinion of the Democratic Party, a slight dip from 48% in September. Additionally, the poll finds 48% of Americans identifying as Republicans or leaning toward that party, compared with 44% Democratic identification or leaning. Recent Gallup polls had shown a fairly even partisan distribution, after the Democratic Party held advantages for much of 2019. Gallup observed similar public opinion shifts when Bill Clinton was impeached... With the Democratic nomination campaign fully underway, 39% of registered voters say they will vote for Trump regardless of whom the Democratic Party nominates for president, while nearly the same percentage (36%) say they will vote against Trump regardless of whom the Democrats choose... Democrats identify Joe Biden (44%) as the candidate they think has the best chance of beating Trump, followed by Bernie Sanders at 19% and Michael Bloomberg at 10%. Meanwhile, Democrats are most likely to name Sanders (28%) as the candidate who is closest to them on the issues, followed by Biden (20%) and Elizabeth Warren (16%)."

Josh Jordan on Twitter - "NBC/WSJ Poll: Trump job approval climbs five net points since December, hitting his best numbers since May at 46-51. His "strongly approve" rating at 36% is the highest of his presidency on a NBC/WSJ poll."
I saw quite a few people dismissing the improved ratings as "just one poll".
Amusingly one of the top replies to this tweet is someone blaming the Kremlin for his improved ratings


Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts - "The NPR viewer below is buried deep within her tribe where the primary existential threat is Donald J. Trump. In her insular world the evidence of Trump’s evilness is plastered across the sky in neon lettering. An acquittal is obvious evidence of a corrupt system. Her conclusion is that the United States is no longer a democracy and that the country is now under a dictatorship...  The idea of impeaching Nixon, who won in a landslide, was opposed by most of the country at the onset. Only after 14 months of public debate and new evidence being uncovered did the President lose the support of his party and the voters at large. The impeachment of Bill Clinton started with four years of investigations by a special prosecutor. With clear evidence of perjury, the president was still acquitted. Even some political opponents voted for his acquittal.The House process to impeach Trump, including the investigation, took only 77 days with a fraction of that time devoted to public hearings. The opposing party saw a process where the president’s attorneys could not participate and, until very late in the process, the Republicans could not call their witnesses. Secrecy rules were enforced for intelligence testimony, preventing the Republicans from publicly critiquing the testimony but the opening statements, favorable to the Democrats, were released. This tight control of the narrative strengthened the tribal opposition by the Republicans. It was not a surprise that the Democrats failed to attract even one Republican vote... To remove a president from office, the opposing party needs to do the hard work in the House to collect the evidence, including going to the courts to enforce subpoenas, and to hold extensive public hearings with evidence that is convincing to the president’s own tribe. The tribal members will always view the evidence in a light most favorable to the tribe’s leader. That is why our judicial system requires a defendant to be tried by a “jury of their peers” — it’s easy to convict members of the out group. The country’s founding fathers required a super majority to remove a president from office for this very reason. The hard work wasn’t done to convince Republicans"

Forty-three percent of Americans back Trump acquittal, 41 percent opposed: Reuters/Ipsos poll - "43% of U.S. adults supported the Republican-led Senate's decision on Wednesday to keep Trump in office in a case stemming from his dealings with Ukraine. Forty-one percent opposed the acquittal and 17% said they were undecided.When asked about Trump’s acquittal, 48% of respondents said Trump “is probably guilty of the charges against him, and the Senate is protecting him,” while 39% said the president “is probably innocent of the charges against him, and the Senate made the right decision to acquit.” The results suggest that some respondents feel that even if Trump did something wrong, it was not enough to warrant his removal from office."

BBC World Service - The World This Week, Trump triumphant - "‘If you remember back in 2016, he ran as the outsider. That was one of his big appeals - the person who was going to drain the swamp. Now, after four years in the White House, it's harder to present yourself as that. But if you've been impeached and an attempt to remove you, and to prevent you running in the election, then that's a really powerful way you can reinvent yourself as a kind of outsider, outlaw, political outlaw, fighting against the forces of the deep state, as he would call it’"

Historians Should Stay Out of Impeachment - The Atlantic - "“President Trump’s numerous and flagrant abuses of power are precisely what the Framers had in mind as grounds for impeaching and removing a president.”When I first read the statement, I took that superfluous adverb, precisely, as a bad sign. No one knows precisely what the Framers had in mind when it comes to impeachable offenses, and if we did, we could be sure it didn’t involve transcontinental telephone calls, gaga theories about computer servers, Javelin anti-tank missiles, or the sovereign nation of Ukraine, none of which existed when the Framers were framing away. Trump’s abuses and the kinds of violations the Framers thought were impeachable may bear a general similarity, or fall into the same general category, but that’s a different matter. Precision, we see early on, is precisely what the historians are not after.The sloppiness is important because the whole statement is supposed to be self-validating. It is a reflexive form of what logic-choppers call an argumentum ab auctoritate, or argument from authority... The instigator of the petition is a Princeton historian named Sean Wilentz, who speaks with a self-asserted authority that’s best described as papal. Impeachments move him to declaim ex cathedra, like Pius IX pondering the Immaculate Conception. In 1998, he got up another petition of historians—roughly 400 of them; this was before Ph.D. inflation really took off—who told members of the House not to impeach President Bill Clinton. Wilentz even appeared before a House committee and announced that if a majority voted for impeachment, “history will track you down and condemn you for your cravenness.” (Bet he’s a tough grader.)... Surveys show that the percentage of academic historians who say they’re Republicans ranges between 4 and 8 percent. If we set aside Hillsdale College, Bob Jones University, Thomas Aquinas College, and a couple of others, the more accurate percentage is probably half that. We can’t know how many within the other 98 percent consider themselves Democrats first and historians second... Historians claim expertise about the past; Trump’s impeachment is of the present. The study of history is crucial to a well-rounded intellect, it’s true, but neither a cultivated intellect nor a knowledge of history is a replacement for good judgment, which is what politics calls for. The whole democratic enchilada rests on the assumption that when it comes to prudential matters of public importance, the view of the stevedore is as valuable as that of the Princeton professor.It’s not the first time we’ve seen this category mistake used to advance a partisan purpose. In the 1980s, leftish nuclear physicists enjoyed great praise and attention for their petitions in favor of unilateral disarmament—as if knowing how to build a bomb was the same as knowing whether it should be used. A decade ago, many medical doctors signed petitions telling the rest of us that harvesting human stem cells for research was just fine—trying to shut down an argument over morality and metaphysics far beyond the scope of their medical training."

Mitt Romney drinks chocolate milk during the impeachment trial - "Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, was caught drinking chocolate milk out of a bottle on the Senate floor on Tuesday afternoon — a breach of the Senate impeachment trial rules.Under those rules, senators are only allowed to drink milk and water, and the beverages must be consumed out of a glass.A Senate aide informed Romney that he was in violation of the rules and the senator left the chamber with the bottle, returning with the chocolate milk in a glass... Romney has been known to enjoy chocolate milk. His wife, Ann Romney, revealed that the drink is his "guilty pleasure" in a 2012 interview, and the then-presidential candidate was photographed sipping chocolate milk on his campaign bus. Normal Senate rules prohibit food and drink on the floor, but the body has imposed additional rules for President Donald Trump's impeachment trial, including barring iPhones and prohibiting talking or standing. Water is served to lawmakers by pages, who give them the option of still or sparkling. Milk is allowed via a precedent that dates back to 1966. Riddick's Senate Procedure states: "Senate rules do not prohibit a Senator from sipping milk during his speech." Though food is not allowed on the Senate floor, an exception has long been granted to the so-called "candy desk."At least four other senators — Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin, Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton, North Carolina Republican Richard Burr, and Texas Republican Ted Cruz — have been spotted drinking milk in the Senate chamber during the impeachment trial"

BBC World Service - The World This Week, Donald Trump is impeached - "If you look at Republican fundraising numbers they have cited, they've gone up considerably, which is an indication that enthusiasm in Donald Trump's base is getting ramped up as they feel that their, their president, their leader is embattled and being assaulted by all of these forces out to get him. So you know, the Democratic enthusiasm is already high. We saw that in 2018 in the midterm elections, they're going to turn out to vote. The question was whether Republicans would come out in the same numbers that they did to help give Donald Trump the presidency in 2016. And the Democratic concern is that this is giving them that issue, to really motivate the base."
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