Impeachment Round Two (6 Viewers)

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    Yggdrasill

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    I am in the camp that Trump must -not should- be impeached. If not this President, for this behavior, then what bar would have to be cleared to merit impeachment?

    Impeachment not only sends a signal to the country and the world that fomenting a coup is unacceptable and will be punished, but it also removes much of the threat Trump could pose going forward as, I understand it, he would lose his pension, his access to daily security briefings, free medical care and other amenities and benefits afforded to former Presidents. If impeached, he would not meet the definition of a Former President under the Former Presidents Act. I don't think it is clear whether he would continue to receive Secret Service protection.
     
    Roofgardener said:
    Look at the CONTEXT of the times he used the word 'Fight'. It's obvious to me that he used the term in the sense of a struggle; a POLITICAL struggle, not a physical one. And he didn't just use the word 'peaceful'.. he explicitly stated that they should assemble peacefully outside the capital to protest.
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    If you want to talk about context, what was this political struggle you're referring to? What were a few thousand Trump supporters going to go do outside of the Capitol after the votes of 160 million Americans were counted and certified? After Trump, the Trump Campaign, and associated efforts lost more than 80 lawsuits to challenge the election?

    It was over and January 6 is supposed to be simply ceremonial. Sure they have a First Amendment right to display their opinion but Trump was urging them to show strength and fight for him. The crowd was yelling "Fight for Trump!" during the speech. This was not a broader political expression about election integrity or whatever, Trump urged them to fight to preserve his presidency . . . after all legal avenues failed and the election results certified and electoral votes cast. There was no legitimate basis to fight anymore.

    I'm not ready to say that Trump intended for them to violently beach the Capitol in hopes of interrupting the count and possibly executing their deemed enemies - he may have but there isn't really enough evidence of that so I'm not going to say it. But it's clear that he did tell them for weeks their beloved president was being cheated out of a second term - and this constituted a crime against them individually. He repeated those lies on January 6 and urged them to go down to the Capitol and fight to keep it from happening. And if it wasn't intentional it was grossly reckless.

    What's most damning to notion that he only intended a peaceful protest and shouldn't be held partially responsible for what the horde did is his response when things turned violent. He didn't call them off. He didn't tell them it was a mistake, or a misinterpretation of his words. He didn't even authorize the National Guard to move in. Instead, he praised them as patriots and told them he loved them . . . and that they should cherish the memory of what they did.

    In the totality of the CONTEXT, I still believe that it is absolutely unacceptable conduct from a present, and impeachable. And it's either disingenuous or just plain dense to argue that he wanted nothing more than those people to go stand outside of Capitol Hill, behind the security barrier and make a pointless peaceful protest. That's just not how Trump's mind works.
     
    MT15 said:
    The idea of making a motion to exclude every juror who was absent during the trial today is being floated.

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    Wow, that would be awesome! I almost wonder if the senators that left knew anything about this possibility?
     
    MT15 said:
    ...Your position on this is just wrong. Nobody in that crowd had any doubt what Trump wanted them to do. Every single one of them knew their assignment was to get inside the Capitol and stop what was happening. Every person.
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    I doubt that very much. For one thing, why would their ringleaders have brought plastic ties and components for pipe bombs to the protest BEFORE hearing Trumps speech ? I think many of them had the idea of storming the Capital DAYS before Trumps speech.

    They where loonies. It is still my contention that Trumps statements about "fight like hell" where political metaphors, and NOT coded instructions to encourage the mob to attack. As for "every single one of them..." ... I find that VERY hard to believe. Obviously YOU believe it, but you have zero evidence for it. (apart from anything else, only a tiny fraction of the people at Trumps speech - or even who subsequently assembled outside the Capitol - actually entered the building).
     
    superchuck500 said:
    If you want to talk about context, what was this political struggle you're referring to? What were a few thousand Trump supporters going to go do outside of the Capitol after the votes of 160 million Americans were counted and certified? After Trump, the Trump Campaign, and associated efforts lost more than 80 lawsuits to challenge the election?

    It was over and January 6 is supposed to be simply ceremonial. Sure they have a First Amendment right to display their opinion but Trump was urging them to show strength and fight for him. The crowd was yelling "Fight for Trump!" during the speech. This was not a broader political expression about election integrity or whatever, Trump urged them to fight to preserve his presidency . . . after all legal avenues failed and the election results certified and electoral votes cast. There was no legitimate basis to fight anymore.

    I'm not ready to say that Trump intended for them to violently beach the Capitol in hopes of interrupting the count and possibly executing their deemed enemies - he may have but there isn't really enough evidence of that so I'm not going to say it. But it's clear that he did tell them for weeks their beloved president was being cheated out of a second term - and this constituted a crime against them individually. He repeated those lies on January 6 and urged them to go down to the Capitol and fight to keep it from happening. And if it wasn't intentional it was grossly reckless.

    What's most damning to notion that he only intended a peaceful protest and shouldn't be held partially responsible for what the horde did is his response when things turned violent. He didn't call them off. He didn't tell them it was a mistake, or a misinterpretation of his words. He didn't even authorize the National Guard to move in. Instead, he praised them as patriots and told them he loved them . . . and that they should cherish the memory of what they did.

    In the totality of the CONTEXT, I still believe that it is absolutely unacceptable conduct from a present, and impeachable. And it's either disingenuous or just plain dense to argue that he wanted nothing more than those people to go stand outside of Capitol Hill, behind the security barrier and make a pointless peaceful protest. That's just not how Trump's mind works.
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    Well, I'll bow to your superior skill in Telepathy ! Has there ever been an example of Trump inciting a crowd to violence ?

    As for the "Trump did nothing" theme; it is not down to the President to activate the National Guard in DC. That is down to either the head of the Capital Police, or the Secretary of Defence. (the President is the nominal Commander in Chief, but in practice the chain of command goes through the Pentagon, via the Secretary of Defence or the Secratary of the Army, though the President would probably have been involved, but he wouldn't have had DIRECT control). Trump HAD 'green-lighted' deployment of the Guard DAYS before, and the Guard had indeed deployed. But only for traffic duties. By the time they had been recalled to the armoury and re-deployed, it was pretty much all over.

    To summarise: Trump HAD pre-emptively mobilised the DC National Guard, but it took them time to react to events. And as for messages; it takes time for a president to be briefed on what is actually going on, and for the information to be verified, before he can make any announcements.

    The breach occured at around 14:00. The national guard where deployed at around !5:00, when Trump made his appeal for lawful behavior. It was all over before 18:00

    Timeline of the January 6 United States Capitol attack - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
     
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    Roof, it’s hard to take you seriously when you ask things like “has Trump ever incited violence before”. Either you haven’t really been paying attention, which is entirely possible living in the UK, or you are being disingenuous. Trump has a long history of using violent imagery in his speeches and rallies.

    He has encouraged his supporters to beat up protestors at his rallies, at least one time promising them he would pay their legal fees if they did so. He has said protestors should be carried out on stretchers. He said police should rough up people they are arresting. He suggested that if Clinton won the election there should be a “2nd amendment solution” to the idea of her appointing liberal judges.

    Trump has been suggesting violence as a political solution for years.
     
    Roofgardener said:
    I doubt that very much. For one thing, why would their ringleaders have brought plastic ties and components for pipe bombs to the protest BEFORE hearing Trumps speech ? I think many of them had the idea of storming the Capital DAYS before Trumps speech.

    They where loonies. It is still my contention that Trumps statements about "fight like hell" where political metaphors, and NOT coded instructions to encourage the mob to attack. As for "every single one of them..." ... I find that VERY hard to believe. Obviously YOU believe it, but you have zero evidence for it. (apart from anything else, only a tiny fraction of the people at Trumps speech - or even who subsequently assembled outside the Capitol - actually entered the building).
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    The idea of stopping the EC certification was planted by Trump before Jan. 6. This has been a central point of the House Managers. They laid out how this event was most definitely pre-planned by Trump and hyped by him as “going to be wild”. This was planned by advance and Trump was part of that planning. He changed the time of his speech to coincide with the Joint Session, for one thing.

    Any reasonable person knew, and certainly as CIC Trump should have known, that violence was being openly discussed about the Jan 6 rally. And yet, Trump still used political metaphors of fighting repeatedly in his speech both that day and leading up to that day. All his pre-planning (and his phone call to a senator during the siege to urge him to delay the certification) all point to the fact that he was serious about stopping or at least delaying the EC certification.

    There is no logical way that anyone could have stopped the certification by standing peacefully outside the Capitol and everyone knew this. Sure, there were some people who didn’t go down there, for whatever reason they didn’t make the one mile hike, or they knew what was going to happen was wrong. But Trump knew that there was a certain percentage that would eagerly go down to the Capitol and literally do what he wanted them to do. It was reported that the WH counsel advised Trump after the insurrectionists broke into the Capitol that he had possible legal exposure, and he still had to be persuaded to tell them to stop. He didn’t want them to stop. They were doing what he wanted them to do (per sources).

    Btw, the insurrectionists claim they picked up the zip handcuffs at the Capitol, when they found them in a police bag. The pipe bombs are evidence of the pre planning for what they knew wouldn’t be a peaceful symbolic protest, but rather a serious attempt to stop what was happening inside the Capitol.
     
    MT15 said:
    ..... It was reported that the WH counsel advised Trump after the insurrectionists broke into the Capitol that he had possible legal exposure, and he still had to be persuaded to tell them to stop. He didn’t want them to stop. They were doing what he wanted them to do (per sources).

    Btw, the insurrectionists claim they picked up the zip handcuffs at the Capitol, when they found them in a police bag. The pipe bombs are evidence of the pre planning for what they knew wouldn’t be a peaceful symbolic protest, but rather a serious attempt to stop what was happening inside the Capitol.
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    Per sources ? Well, if that is true, it does reflect badly on him. But I'd love to know what the sources where ?

    Recall.. his speech ended at about 13:15 (if I've got the timeline correct), and the breach occured at 14:00. His call for the protesters to to leave peacefully was at 15:00, approximately an hour after the breach occured.

    So factor in the time he would have taken to return to the White House, and the time for the information to be confirmed at the WH (which would have - at the least - taken phone calls to the head of the Capitol Police or the FBI). I dunno.. it doesn't seem to ME that he was dragging his feet, but we'd only be able to determine that if we had details of when he had credible evidence that the breach was actually occuring ?

    Will you accept that the stories about him attempting to block action by the NG are false ?
     
    Optimus Prime said:
    He meant "knock the crap out of" in the metaphorical sense
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    Oh for sure. He offered to metaphorically pay for their legal fees for the metaphorical assault charges they would metaphorically be charged with for metaphorically knocking the crap out of metaphorical hecklers.

    Like, stop taking him so literally!
     
    DJ1BigTymer said:
    I think that is the Sedition Caucus' plan, they will not show up for the vote if there are some R's that will vote to convict. They'll sit it out and then birch about how unfair and unconstitutional the conviction this conviction will be.
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    Cruz undermined that argument. He said it is constitutional, just that the Senate should exercise judicial restraint.

    I'm sure he'll keep twisting it, or state that what the House did was unconstitutional, so he can have it both ways.
     

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