Here’s the thing about your, “Suppose, just suppose,” post…
The facts that we have show that Trump tried to bribe Zelensky to smear Biden with taxpayer money. If we go down the road of supposing everything that you’d like us to suppose we still have that Trump tried to bribe Zelensky to smear Biden with taxpayer money after he thought about doing some other stuff.
The problem here is that Trump tried to bribe Zelensky to smear Biden with taxpayer money. It doesn’t matter if he came up with the idea on his own or if Giuliani put that idea in his head. It certainly doesn’t matter when Giuliani gave him the idea, if that’s what happened. The thing that matters is that Trump tried to bribe Zelensky to smear Biden with taxpayer money.
Your, “Suppose, just suppose,” scenario in no way exculpates Trump. I’m not even sure why you think it does.
If I ask 30 people, “What animal passed in front of you at the beach?” And all 30 of them say, “It was a duck.” I don’t feel like I really need to go talk to the 10 people who were in the front row.
Nor do I. Trump should be impeached and thrown out of office. This has been the case for me for quite a while now.
I am not repeating it because I think it’s an oversight, which implies the House just forgot about the need to interview others. They didn’t do that. They chose not to fight the refusal to honor subpoenas. And most definitely, I did not bring this up because I want to help Trump’s case. I just want to talk about shit.
I wouldn’t say failure to appear is *necessarily *evidence of guilt. It is highly suggestive that they have something to hide. Hearing from them would better allow us to judge their guilt/innocence/involvement. Can anyone disagree with this?? As for contortions, again, I am making no claims. I am asking questions and putting forth ideas.
The comic makes an important point. But it doesn’t apply here as I stated earlier, and no one has bothered to refute what I said about why it doesn’t.
I am satisfied with the facts we know at present that Trump should be gone. I am not satisfied with them to show that Trump, from the beginning, way before the phone call, was sending out his goons to drum up dirt. That was my original idea, and as I’ve said, only Sherrerd addressed it directly.
As for who should still be questioned, I’ve already named Pence, Pompeo, and Perry. I would add Bolton and Mulvaney. My apologies that I don’t have time to name specific reasons right now. But in general, because they all are very close to the president. Would you agree at least they might have some pertinent details? The idea is to impeach and oust the president. More details, assuming they are damning, are better than fewer details.
I agree 100% with the first three. I have never said I think it exculpates him. I do NOT think that. This is the kind of thing that often gets lost if I say something either supporting Republican ideas, or not just sticking to arguing the Democrats’ ideas. People assume I’m trying to absolve Trump of something, when in fact I’m just stating ideas that have occurred to me that I’d like to discuss.
But why? Why would anyone want to discuss these ridiculously implausible scenarios? To what end? It’s just as worthy of discussion as supposing that aliens hypnotized Trump and manipulated him into doing all this shit. It’s not instructive or even interesting.
Which conveniently ignores that they ARE fighting the refusals, where they should - in court.
The only other option would be for the House to send the sergeant-at-arms to physically arrest and detain members of the Executive Branch, some of which might have Secret Service protection. If you don’t see the problems and PR nightmare that would arise from that, there’s little I can do to educate you.
The standard in a court of law is “reasonable doubt”.
If you have a video of a man robbing a bank, to be sure it is theoretically possible that he was extorted into doing it by very clever thieves, who kidnapped a woman the he fancied. But it’s silly to keep hunting for evidence that might prove this case when the suspect hasn’t made it as a defense, no one has put it forward as a defense, you’ve been hunting for three months for anything like evidence of the theory, and you never had any reason to back the theory other than that it was “cool”.
If there were exonerating evidence for Trump it would be have been presented by someone. The people that you think should be asked questions would be cooperating in the investigation and answering questions, again, if they had some form of defense or if there were some argument to be made in Trump’s favor. No one has ever done anything other than ask those people to please come down and answer questions.
Saying, “Well, we should ask Little Timmy if he broke the vase.” Like that’s a real thing that should be done, when you’ve just spent the last 30 minutes trying to convince Timmy to come out of his room because he’s locked himself in and is screaming that he didn’t do it, he’ll be better in the future, and please don’t take away his TV rights, and there’s a trail of blood footprints going straight from the vase shards to under Timmy’s door… Like, no, there a reason that Timmy has holed up in his little fort and is saying those things. Let’s not insult our intelligence.
Oh, maybe because it would mean admitting that perhaps Trump did not cook up the idea himself to go after the Bidens, and that Giuliani or others instigated it. That would require Trump to be just a little bit less of a reprehensible president in their minds. Of course I have no idea if this is the reason, just something that occurred to me.
No, not just that. I also said “putting forth ideas”.
Now you’re doing it. Implying I meant something, when I said nothing of the kind. :rolleyes:
Please explain. You know, if you have any actual examples.
Not that I need to be “educated” by you, since right now I have no idea who you are. But okay, it’s a PR nightmare. What does that have to do with what I said?
You stated “They chose not to fight the refusal to honor subpoenas.” I showed that they are, in fact, fighting the refusal to honor subpoenas.
I figured you might learn that your statement “They chose not to fight the refusal to honor subpoenas.” was demonstrably false, and reconsider your view. Or don’t. I did what I could to correct your ignorance. How you progress from here is on you.
Please explain, keeping in mind that I am not a mind reader. I don’t *know *why no one wants to discuss it. I offered an idea.
To splatterpunk I also should have said that if the idea that Trump did not start the whole thing is “ridiculously implausible”, then that would be a good reason. I happen think it is very far from implausible.
Which leads me to ask, what do you, fellow Dopers, think about the plausibility of this?
In that I said that during a discussion of the impeachment hearings, I would think it obvious that I meant during the time period of the hearings. I guess it was not obvious, so thanks for allowing me to make that clear.
Well the question was, why should we WANT to discuss it, not why are we avoiding it. Why we’re avoiding it has already been addressed – there’s no evidence to support your hypothesis. That’s the baseline.
You think it matters whether turnp decided to do this without prompting, or was given the idea by rudy? They are pretty much equally reprehensible in any sense that matters for our politics. Also to a judge or jury they aren’t very different.
Also, why are you defending your general posting here with things that “just occurred to you”? What is the deeper conviction? You know, from before that.
Anyway are you taking this time to be lecturing us that dt is not as reprehensible as we think? Is that the eventual point? Who is your audience?