“Those RINOs were part of the conspiracy all along!”
45% v 38% plurality now support a vote by the House of Representatives to impeach President Donald Trump.
44% v 35% of those surveyed say the Senate, which would then be charged with holding a trial of the president, should convict Trump and remove him from office.
He put that in a tweet on the internet forever, huh?
Republicans: WTF?
"I never asked a foreign country to investigate American citizens. Come on, I got a little more sense than that.
Yeah, I remember asking China to investigate American citizens"
No, these quotes were in a presser held by Trump earlier this morning. They’re of the spoken variety, not the tweeted kind.
At this point, everything that the Mueller report was meant to uncover with Russia has been publicly admitted for Ukraine and now China. How does this not matter to the GOP?
That IPSOS/USA Today poll was of 1,006 adults over October 1-2, and comprised of 412 Democrats, 403 Republicans, and 115 Independents across the fifty states. The sampling was drawn from some weird sources that I couldn’t find information about (it says follow the link below but there is no such link).
Notably, 65% of the Republican respondents answered “No” to the question “Is there enough reliable information or evidence to decide if President Trump should be impeached?”, which almost matches the 68% of Republicans who then said he shouldn’t be impeached, and matches the 65% of Republicans who say the Senate shouldn’t convict.
Also note that 80% of Republican respondents - more than the 73% of Democrat respondents - said “Yes, a president is subject to all laws just like any citizen”.
Only 30% of Republicans agree that “President Trump asking Ukraine to investigate Biden is an abuse of power” (39% disagree and 30% don’t know or neither agree nor disagree), and 65% of Republicans agree that “There are valid reasons to look into Hunter and Joe Biden’s behavior in Ukraine”.
Presumably the 35% of Republicans who think there aren’t valid reasons to look into Biden’s behavior overlap with the 30% of Republicans who think the President abused his power. If this poll is to be trusted, for the most part Democrats should attempt to convince their Republican colleagues that there are not valid reasons to look into Biden’s behavior in the Ukraine.
~Max
You’re talking about other countries conducting investigations like Trump asked Ukraine and China to do, right? Democrats should not have to work to convince Republicans of the obvious.
(major snip)
Maybe they should start with the GOP senators who signed the February 2016 bipartisan letter that backed Joe Biden’s actions with regard to the Ukrainian prosecutor. Surely some of them are still in office.
iokiardi
I disagree.
~Max
I also want to hear what those Senators have to say.
~Max
Dear Republicans, asking other countries to investigate American citizens for your political gain is a fucked up thing to do.
Sincerely,
bobot
How’s that? That’s as hard as I’m going to try.
Sen. James Risch (IH) June 2017, during interrogation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “Collusion with the Russians—or any other government, for that matter, when it comes to our elections—certainly would be improper and illegal. Would that be a fair statement?”
Risch now: “I looked at the transcript. This conversation that the president had with the head of Ukraine is a typical conversation…I saw nothing in the conversation that was inappropriate.”
Lindsey Graham (SC) earlier this year: "The big thing for me, guys, has always been: Did Trump work with the Russians? And I told him to his face, almost two years ago: ‘If you did, that’s it between me and you. And anything that follows, you deserve.’ I will say that about any politician of any party.”
Graham now: "I have zero problems with this phone call.” When asked “Do you think it was ethical for the president to bring up Joe Biden?” he replied, “Yes, absolutely.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (WI), in March: “We should all be happy that after an extensive investigation, the Special Counsel did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.” In April, asked if he agreed with Giuliani’s statement that it’s OK for Republican campaign members and candidates to welcome support from a foreign adversary: “No.”
Johnson now: “We all kind of looked at it and said, ‘There’s nothing here.’… I never got any sense at all there was any kind of pressure him. I just put the best construction on the call.”
Nice quotes, Troutman.
Whatever one’s views, I would think it hard to imagine how to imagine how someone could be so morally bankrupt as to offer absolutely contradictory opinions based solely on one’s belief of potential political gain.
The counterargument is that if “[t]here are valid reasons to look into Hunter and Joe Biden’s behavior in Ukraine”, then “President Trump asking Ukraine to investigate Biden” may not be “an abuse of power”.
Therefore, as I said, the Democrats should work to convince Republicans that there are no valid reasons to look into Hunter and Joe Biden’s behavior in Ukraine.
~Max
Disagree. There’s no reason to prove their innocent to show that Trump has abused the office.
This is analogous to Hoover spying on MLK for purely political reasons: whether MLK had affairs is immaterial to the offense.
for Ukraine, on Trump’s behalf
Democrats should not. If this is what you’re saying.
Sounds like the story the GOP is settling on is “This thing with the Bidens in Ukraine is so terribly, terribly corrupt that it’s entirely proper for the president to use any leverage he has to get to the bottom of it, and the fact that Joe is his likely opponent in 2020 is pure coincidence.”
As absurd as that is in the face of actual evidence and events, a lot of poorly informed voters will at least be distracted enough by the idea to buy that the impeachment is just another political witchhunt. The Dems have to destroy this narrative. Maybe it’s time for Obama to speak up.
But now we have a contemporaneously signed document by Republicans who agreed with Biden. So this argument makes even less sense.