The Impeachment Process Has Officially Begun (3 Viewers)

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    By Laura Bassett

    After months of internal arguing among Democrats over whether to impeach President Donald Trump, the dam is finally breaking in favor of trying to remove him from office. The Washington Post reported that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would announce a formal impeachment inquiry on Tuesday, following a bombshell report that Trump illegally asked Ukraine’s government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, one of his political opponents. (He essentially admitted to having done so over the weekend.)

    “Now that we have the facts, we’re ready,” Pelosi said Tuesday morning at a forum hosted by The Atlantic. At 5 p.m. the same day, she was back with more. "The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the constitution, especially when the president says Article Two says I can do whatever I want," referring to the segment of the Constitution that defines the power of the executive branch of the government. Pelosi's message was that checks and balances of those branches are just as central to the Constitution. And one more thing: "Today, I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry," she said at a conference broadcast on Twitter by the Huffington Post. ...

    Read the Full Story - InStyle
     
    The tendency of this impeachment thread to continue to be steered into a debate about whether Democrats are corrupt, whether Biden needs to be investigated, whether CNN is fake news, etc, indicates to me that there’s not really a factual rebuttal to the long list of facts laid out that are inculpatory for Trump.

    Is any Trump defender on here willing to to admit to the basic facts established in the inquiry (see prior posts, or I can list them), and/or that it was really bad for Trump to unilaterally undermine Congress’ bipartisan decision to provide assistance to Ukraine in furtherance of our policy of strengthening their defense to help protect them against Russian aggression? If not, what facts are in dispute and why? Or why was it not bad for Trump to do that?
     
    TaylorB said:
    The tendency of this impeachment thread to continue to be steered into a debate about whether Democrats are corrupt, whether Biden needs to be investigated, whether CNN is fake news, etc, indicates to me that there’s not really a factual rebuttal to the long list of facts laid out that are inculpatory for Trump.

    Is any Trump defender on here willing to to admit to the basic facts established in the inquiry (see prior posts, or I can list them), and/or that it was really bad for Trump to unilaterally undermine Congress’ bipartisan decision to provide assistance to Ukraine in furtherance of our policy of strengthening their defense to help protect them against Russian aggression? If not, what facts are in dispute and why? Or why was it not bad for Trump to do that?
    Click to expand...
    Points as to why people oppose removal have been made repeatedly. You can read them in this thread. It has become pointless to continue making them. Some of them touch on the questions you are asking.
     
    My questions were specifically not about why people oppose removal, but about the list of inculpatory facts and whether Trump’s defenders consider the behavior really bad.
     
    TaylorB said:
    My questions were specifically not about why people oppose removal, but about the list of inculpatory facts and whether Trump’s defenders consider the behavior really bad.
    Click to expand...
    Yes, I know. They have been answered repeatedly in the thread.
    Probably why all the talk about other issues.
     
    MT15 said:
    chuck gave you the answer, but I’m really bemused by this. Do you think being elected president gives you the right to decide on US policy according to your own personal, political or financial interests?

    Why do you accept this behavior from Trump, the man who would be king? The US fought to free themselves from a system that was slave to the whims of a king. I don’t want our president to be so emboldened that he thinks he can do whatever he wants, without regard to what is in the interest of the country, rather than what is in his own interest.
    Click to expand...
    It's your opinion that Trump is making US policy based strictly on his own personal, political, or financial interests.

    I don't think the bureaucracy gets to decide US policy or what's in the best interests of the US. We elect a president to make those decisions and if someone doesn't like the decisions he makes then they can vote for the other candidate in the next election.

    Your king reference is so silly that I'm not even going to respond to it.
     
    MT15 said:
    So, you’re partly right. In response to the ratings success of Fox, CNN has also gone political. What Fox does that CNN doesn’t do is demonize the opposition and push crazy conspiracy theories. They know they’re false, but they get great ratings and they push a narrative that ownership set up years ago. It’s like they are telling a certain part of the population a story and they believe it is true. Lol.
    Click to expand...
    CNN, MSNBC, NYT, Washington Post, and the Democrats pushed the biggest conspiracy theory of all time for 3 years about Trump being a Russian agent and you are complaing about the conspiracy theories that Fox pushes? 🤔
     
    JimEverett said:
    Yes, I know. They have been answered repeatedly in the thread.
    Probably why all the talk about other issues.
    Click to expand...

    I’ve now read through a large sample of your prior posts in this thread, and it seems to me your opinion more or less lines up with Turley’s. You think the behavior is bad generally but struggle with impeachment under the circumstances because you don’t see a clear violation of a criminal statute. Early on, you expressed concern about Giuliani’s role in the episode because it tended to make the request sound less like an official act and more like something for Trump‘s campaign. You wanted to know more about Giuliani’s involvement. It’s unclear to me whether/how any additional evidence developed on Giuliani changed your opinion, except that your opinion appears not to have changed about whether removal is appropriate. Is that characterization fair?

    That said, it’s still hard for me to tell from your prior posts - is the list of facts I laid out in my post two days ago accurate?
     
    SaintForLife said:
    CNN, MSNBC, NYT, Washington Post, and the Democrats pushed the biggest conspiracy theory of all time for 3 years about Trump being a Russian agent and you are complaing about the conspiracy theories that Fox pushes? 🤔
    Click to expand...

    Those news entities reported on the Mueller investigation which established that at the same time Russia was engaged in cyber warfare against the US to assist Trump, Trump’s campaign manager was secretly sharing internal campaign polling data on key battleground states with Russian oligarchs at a time when Trump was secretly negotiating a huge business deal in Russia while lying to the US
    public about it, none of which Trump or his people mentioned to the FBI when they were briefed that Russia was attacking us. Among those that were imprisoned for dealings with Russians or lying about those dealings include Trump’s lawyer, multiple national security advisors, campaign manager, campaign manager’s deputy, and close friend. It’s shocking people continue to act like it was/is a baseless conspiracy.
     
    SaintForLife said:
    CNN, MSNBC, NYT, Washington Post, and the Democrats pushed the biggest conspiracy theory of all time for 3 years about Trump being a Russian agent and you are complaing about the conspiracy theories that Fox pushes? 🤔
    Click to expand...

    Yep, and I stand by my point.

    there was very, very little talk about Trump being a Russian agent, at least that I saw. It was brought up, and then discounted by anyone who deserved to be taken seriously. The reporting was fact based. There was speculation, but it wasn’t operating on made up non-facts.

    However, we do know for a fact that the Trump campaign knew Russia wanted them to win, they welcomed the help, and danced up to the line of illegal behavior. Senior campaign and administration officials then participated in a cover up which involved lying to the FBI. More than a couple are doing time, have served time or shortly will be. The coverup materially obstructed Mueller’s investigation, per Mueller. This was unprecedented behavior for a presidential campaign.

    Now, let’s contrast this with Pizzagate, Birtherism, Seth Rich, etc, etc, etc. All completely devoid of any basis in fact. It’s not even close to the same, whether you want to admit it or not.
     
    When Trump defenders claim that those outlets were reporting that Trump was a Russian agent for 3 years, it’s a straw-man argument designed to overstate what was being reported to make it easier to treat as untrue. As it turned out, there were many reasons it would have made sense to consider whether Trump was working to benefit Russia, including—in addition to the things listed in my last post—the fact that he halted military aid designed to counter Russian aggression. But to say that those outlets claimed for 3 years that Trump was a Russian agent is more untrue than the reporting that statement seeks to discredit.
     
    TaylorB said:
    When Trump defenders claim that those outlets were reporting that Trump was a Russian agent for 3 years, it’s a straw-man argument designed to overstate what was being reported to make it easier to treat as untrue. As it turned out, there were many reasons it would have made sense to consider whether Trump was working to benefit Russia, including—in addition to the things listed in my last post—the fact that he halted military aid designed to counter Russian aggression. But to say that those outlets claimed for 3 years that Trump was a Russian agent is more untrue than the reporting that statement seeks to discredit.
    Click to expand...
    Or, you know, testimony from his lawyer stating how they were reaching out to Russia to leverage from his new found position of influence from being the Republican nominee to get the much desired trump tower in Moscow.

    Then essentially got Cohen to lie about it in initial testimony.

    To go with a top down push to reach out to Russians and see if they could help them, including a campaign manager funneling polling data to a known intelligence proxy.

    nah, no reason to worry Trump may be prone to direct or indirect influence by Russia.

    Republicans know this though, it’s the central intellectual dishonesty permeating their landscape, like we forgot how frothy they got over the Clinton foundation. How with even less evidence almost universally righties were ready to declare Hillary as in an intractable conflict of interest, an influence peddler and selling America to the highest bidders based entirely on foreign officials that donated to the foundation. Meanwhile you have Saudi Arabia buying entire unused floors in Trump buildings and providing him millions a year through it, Don Jr selling influence to garner pre-sales for projects in India and his daughter having patent exceptions carved out for her products produced in China. Suddenly now what was once evidence of intractable corruption is simply opposition derangement.
     
    Farb said:
    CNN has been telling me for over 2 years that the elected president of the US is a Russian asset. You don't consider that a 'conspiracy theory' or is that a proven fact now? I guess you are either trolling or there is not piece of crappy conspiracy theory that you won't believe from CNN.

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/20/politics/james-clyburn-trump-hitler-comparison/index.html

    But yeah, not to demonize the Opposition like the EVIL other news station. Stay classy CNN.
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    Russian Asset, bought and Paid for by the Russians through Deutsche Bank.

    forensicnews.net

    Trump Deutsche Bank Loans Underwritten By Russian State-Owned Bank, Whistleblower Told FBI - Forensic News

    A Deutsche Bank whistleblower has told the FBI that the loans to Trump from the bank were underwritten by the Russian state bank VTB.
    forensicnews.net forensicnews.net
     
    N.O.Bronco said:
    it’s hard to simultaneously call a group of people that have conditioned themselves to embrace intellectual dishonesty and rationalize away critical thinking to rest on such a dismissive both sides false equivocation as also being “reasonable.”

    Since by definition that is exactly the challenge being confronted: persuading currently unreasonable people to start using reason.

    But this is just a nitpicking side rant, I think you pretty much nailed the psychology underlying this rationalization process for a lot of casual Trump supporters. “He’s our corrupt guy” though is a pervasive one I also hear.
    Click to expand...

    I've been meaning to respond to this.

    There are people within the 40-45% that I would describe as reasonable, but who still would respond favorably to surveys about Trump's job performance and in Trump's favor on impeachment. I don't think it's accurate to imply that all people in that group have embraced intellectual dishonesty and/or rationalized away critical thinking; many in my view have just not paid close attention and have not worked hard enough challenge their own political viewpoints. They believed the anti-Trump sentiment was a political hit job from day 1 and tuned out the rest. If you live in Louisiana and your friend TaylorB is the only person in your world who challenges your belief structure, you just don't bring up politics with TaylorB because life's easier that way.

    I'm not both-sidesing this, but I think the distinction between the good faith and bad faith actors on that side is important. I don't know how many there are left, but I still think there are those in the 40-45% who could eventually come around to understand that Trump and his enablers are doing serious damage and that what's happening is far worse than generic swampy behavior. It's true that lots of people already exist in an alternative factual universe -- thankfully those people are easy to spot, so you're not wasting energy on them. But a shift of even 1 or 2 out of every 100 people could change the makeup of both the executive and legislative branches in 2020, and with margins like that, we can't afford to write off the people that just haven't been watching closely enough.
     
    JimEverett said:
    Why should it? The House did not even subpoena Bolton. It is not the Senate's responsibility to ake the prosecution's case.
    Click to expand...

    Because (1) the trial addresses articles of impeachment about a fact pattern Bolton was central to, (2) the Senate will look silly publicly exonerating the President without calling a witness who has offered to provide first-hand testimony and who reportedly has information which is damaging to the President, (3) the public is aware the only reason the House didn't subpoena Bolton after he failed to show for his deposition is the same reason it didn't subpoena the other witnesses Trump instructed not to testify -- that it would drag out the impeachment for months, (4) there's no rule he must first be subpoenaed by the House before testifying at trial, (5) that position is inconsistent with the GOP's prior threats to subpoena witnesses to trial who weren't subpoenaed by the House, including the Bidens.
     

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