Look, if Jesus Christ Himself vouched for the evidence, they’d say he was a fake because he wasn’t the True Republican Jesus. You can’t win at that game.
The only way forward is to compile the evidence with a summary of how it all fits together, and then let it speak for itself from there.
The thing about the Buzzfeed story is that, if true, it dramatically simplifies the narrative: Trump sold out to the Russians when they dangled $300M in front of him. How do we know this? All these texts and emails, plus Michael Cohen’s testimony. If anyone can connect the dots, nobody’s imprimatur will be needed.
He speaks English, too, complete with *thee *and verily.
I’d rather not give up on them, even though some obviously are unreachable. They’re still us, still human, even if that includes an extreme unwillingness to admit having been fooled or ripped off.
My feeling is that you wait until the Mueller report comes out. Since you aren’t going to be able to get the senate to remove him from office there is no particular time pressure, and since you only reasonably get one shot to make your impeachment case you may as well wait until you have as much evidence as you can against him, and can make your best case.
But if you can get a strong majority (not just plurality) of the total electorate in favor of it, I think you go for it. The problem with the Clinton Impeachment was that while there was strong support among Republicans in favor of it, the nation as a whole was against it.
Televised hearings will have an impact. Cohen offering testimony live on television, being questioned by Republicans as well as Democrats, will make this much more concrete and real for a lot of people.
You are not anywhere near cynical enough IMHO. I’m not saying his popularity will be improved by an impeachment trial, but if you’re not open to the possibility that it might you’re setting yourself up for some pretty profound disillusionment.
It’s often said that to take down a popular politician, he has to be caught in bed with a young boy or a dead girl. Trump could be caught with a dead boy and video of the murder and he’d still have the Deplorable 35% on his side. And almost all the Republicans in Congress. The Deplorables skew old, so slowly demographics will improve.
Up-to-date quotes from prediction markets still show Trump as 65% to win the GOP nomination and 29% to win the grand prize in November 2020. (Harris and O’Rourke are tied for 2nd to be next Potus with 13% chance each. Biden is in 4th place.)
If two years of Trump don’t make you vomit, contemplate ten years of Pence.
My own hope is that the dismal Trump show will inform Americans in their 20’s and teens, and the Republican Party will become a spent force on the national scene, that the GOP will disintegrate as the Whigs did in the 1850’s. To this worthy end, I celebrate every Trumpian crime, misstep and fart, as moving the country, eventually, to a better place.
Yes, the Trump is doing irreparable damage to American prestige, but, like an alcoholic, we may need to “hit bottom” before we can seek a cure.
As far as fear of nuclear war goes, Pence, the religious nut, might be more dangerous than Trump. Recall that it was the born-again Dubya who explained his Iraq misadventure to French President Jacques Chirac with “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. . . . The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled. . . . This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”
Pence’s approval ratings were in the toilet in deep red Indiana before he left the governorship, and needless to say, his brand of fundagelicalism will go over a lot less well with America as a whole than it did in Indiana.
The timing is so delicious, with Individual #1’s approval ratings already sinking and the shutdown growing ranker by the day.
I’m not saying impeachment is around the corner, but the worse things look for Individual #1, the more likely he is to commit the catastrophic blunder that sinks this administration and the GOP for good.
FWIW and IIRC Woodward and Bernstein also did not see direct evidence either when they reported first on what Deepthroat and others told them about Watergate.
Point being that the same point would had been made then to W and B and we know how that ended.
BuzzFeed should never be considered a reliable source IMO. They might get a scoop but they are all about clickbait and have little regard for journalistic standards. Anything they post should be considered dubious till proven by other sources.
