I have a feeling that the momentum is accelerating for something big to happen with Trump in the near future. Hard as it is to believe, the dude has only been in office since January and it’s only May…and yet, ISTM that there is a building mountain of evidence that he needs to go. It might not be impeachment, but this latest (in a seemingly endless series of lashups and fuckups) seems to have finally pushed things over the top. One of the cornerstones of Trump’s campaign against Hillary was about her email server and how it allowed many confidential and even secret information to be stolen. It was a real and serious issue (though I voted for her anyway). But what Trump has done seems to me to be just as bad or worse…he’s given secret information to a Russian diplomat then compounded that by talking about it in public. The information seems to have been from an ally who specifically had flagged this for very tight distribution across the board (not even all US intelligence or other agencies were privy to it)…and Trump gave it away to the Russians who presumably would be free to share it with, oh I don’t know, say Iran and Syria. :smack:
And from what I’ve been reading the White House is in such disarray over this (with some having gone on record saying Trump had done no such thing, then Trump going on record to defend his actions…thus indicating that these idiots don’t seem to be talking to each other or using any sort of play book), and the lack of confidence seems to be spreading like a rot. Allies, Republicans, and the public seem to all be feeling that lack of confidence.
Or, maybe this is just my impression from the sources I generally read? Does anyone else feel this downward momentum in the Trump administration, or is it just me?? To me, it feels like Nixon, Carter or Bush after the public lost confidence…but a lot worse. I’ve never seen a president or administration this fucked up and at this level of disarray so early in a presidency. I keep watching for the first sign of rats leaving the sinking ship and the momentum to reach an event horizon such as Nixon to get this guy out and get him out now.
If people are going to try to impeach Trump, it needs to work on the first try. Otherwise, if you build up momentum for an impeachment, and it builds up, and crescendoes to a climax, but then eventually fails, it will be very difficult to build up momentum a 2nd time around. Trump’s bad behavior will become the new normal.
Has the GOP stopped getting everything they want passed with no resistance? Otherwise, there’s zero chance of Trump getting impeached any time soon. He’s an idiot, but he’s a useful idiot, and mere evil or incompetence isn’t enough to even raise a GOP eyebrow at the current time.
What’s really changed is that people are starting to normalize Trump. We’ll be a lifetime getting the Overton window back to “non-comic-book villain” any time soon.
Well, they didn’t get Repeal and Replace through the House until the 3rd try. It seems to me you could view Trump as a downward pull on the Party outside of his core base.
Really? How many threads on his impending impeachment have we had this year already? Remember the clamour for the impeachments of Obama and Clinton, and Bush before? That’s all we hear abroad. American politics needs to grow up. Sure Trump’s done umpteen things with which you disagree, but your disagreement doesn’t make any of them wrong, let alone illegal.
This, I suspect, is the answer. No offense, but I think you probably live most of your day inside a liberal bubble that gives you the impression impeachment is imminent. Go check out some conservative sources and message boards, and see what they are talking about. It doesn’t appear, to me, to be serious consideration of impeachment.
I don’t think impeachment is imminent. But fewer Republicans in office are defending him in his latest screw-ups, which bodes very poorly for his effectiveness in instituting his agenda. And he seems incapable of discipline or learning from (or even acknowledging) his mistakes.
Predicting the future in this environment is a fool’s errand, IMO. I hope he goes down soon, and goes down hard, but I don’t know if he actually will. If I had to bet, resignation seems a lot more likely to me than impeachment, but I wouldn’t put much money on either without 10 to 1 odds or better.
And that oft-repeated conservative refrain: that they don’t see anything wrong with anything that Trump’s done, and this is all just “the same as with Obama, but the other way around” is what makes me freaking terrified for the future of this country.
It’s going to take a whole lot more than this, what with Ryan, McConnell, and all the rest of the GOP as reluctant as they are to start some shit with the President, at least not before they’ve had a chance to use him to push through their own personal agendas, which they may or may not ever got around to because they’re too busy trying to navigate through Trump’s ever-growing, increasingly dense minefield. If the Democrats controlled both, or even either the House or Senate, it’d be a whole different story, but as it is, Trump might actually be able to get away with strangling children to death on the White House lawn during the Easter Egg Roll. “These children were clearly the new face of ISIS!”
Well, as I said, it might not be impeachment…but ISTM, perhaps in my ‘liberal bubble’, that there is a momentum to these things, and that the sharks are circling. We haven’t YET reached the buzzards circling which would be even worse.
I was reading this CNN article just now and it seems to confirm my impression. Granted, CNN is probably considered part of the ‘liberal bubble’ as well, but quotes from some conservatives in this and other articles also seem to have the same flavor, and certainly, it seems (to me) to be clear that this is a White House and administration that’s under siege. Do you disagree?
I have no idea. I think he ought to be but I have no faith in the Republicans to pull the trigger. I think it mostly depends on if Donald breaks his thumbs.
I think if they are going to do it - they should do it next week and give Mike Pence time to settle in before 2020.
Some further data points -
Article from the Independent about a new poll that says Americans now mostly support impeachment:
A (possibly?) related article about how the dollar weakening:
The apologists have already moved from “He has done nothing wrong” to “He has done nothing illegal”.
Of course, it’s not illegal if the president does it. Nobody has argued that his recent lip-flapping episode of revealing sensitive information to the Russian foreign minister is technically illegal. But that does not stop folks from bleating “NOT ILLEGAL!”
I full expect that Trumps future actions will move us down the continuum over the next few months, to “It wasn’t THAT illegal”
to
“OK, definitely illegal, but hey, it’s not a capital offense”
to
“Alright, so ordering those killings was bad, but technically not murder, since he didn’t pull the trigger, and he did declare a state of war against the FBI first”
and finally to “Look, we all know nuking those cities was probably a bad idea in retrospect, but it was in the heat of the moment, OK? Cut the guy some slack.”
Polling from sources who Thrump likes are now reporting that a majority of Americans want impeachment…
What his people refuse to say, what the press seems loath to point out…revealing a piece of intelligence, even if you don’t know the source, the method it was obtained, is often enough for the enemy to tell where or who must have been their traitor. That thinking is too deep for Thrump. That degree of discernment is beyond him. His staff is tiring of the constant struggle to keep him from destroying himself.
The timing of the mideast trip is horrible. I wonder if the Massad has a turncoat Hezbollah guy who will try to eliminate the existentialist threat, thrump, to Israel. I wonder if our Intelligence folks would try to stop them? Thrump has very few friends or supporters left in the Agencies in Washington. His appointees don’t seem to have any support from the rank and file. Every agancy is resisting, all they are worth, the wacko people like Price, DeVos, and Ross. I suspect, if Thrump were to be offed by a terrorist group, there might be actual dancing on the rooftops in some parts of this country, and a sigh of relief in others as Pence is sworn in and goes to the mattresses.
I think there’s a growing sense of regret in the GOP and among Trump supporters in general that he shouldn’t be president. There’s no recall vote for presidents so the ‘I’ word will come up a lot. I think it’s entirely possible he’ll screw up badly enough for a bipartisan effort to remove him from office but more likely he’d leave before that point because he’s becoming increasingly miserable trying to do a job that he just doesn’t understand. Other presidents have been even less capable but weren’t in the habit of alienating their political friends and allies and remained as figureheads, but Trump is burning every bridge behind him.
In terms of public sentiment he’s a highly impeachable president, in terms of high crimes and misdemeanors he ain’t quite there yet.
“… sharks are circling. We haven’t YET reached the buzzards circling which would be even worse” seems like about the right characterization to me, but that’s probably how I would’ve described every few weeks since January. It wasn’t very long ago that the firing of James Comey was going to be the doom of the Republicans / Trump, and before that, it was the House passing the AHCA, and before that the Obama ‘wiretap’ tweet, and before that, Michael Flynn, etc. To paraphrase, rumors of his impending demise have been greatly exaggerated, at least thus far.
He’s a President that has a particularly contentious relationship with the media, and has since before he won election. It generally seems to work for him, but also means there’s virtually always breathless stories available to reinforce one’s worldview with news of his most recent abomination.
He’s not going to be removed from office by impeachment. Bricker is offering $200 even odds. I’d happily offer $200 that Trump isn’t removed by impeachment and I’ll give you 2:1.
The reason is simple: the GOP base DGAF. Trump really could shoot a person on 5th avenue, as long as that person is a Democrat. Removing him is a political death sentence for at least 34 GOP Senators, and it will remain so regardless of what Trump does.
If we ever reach a point of impeachment, regardless of evidence or fact, Trump supporters will see it as an unjust which hunt propagated by the “liberal media”. While it pains me to say it, I think the best thing from a democrat’s perspective, is to allow Trump to continue to crash & burn for a full 4 years. Hopefully the country will not be too much worse off for it, and the voters will simply vote him out due to his incompetence.
That said, I think Trump will easily go down in history as the worst president ever, but have resigned myself to the fact that he’ll probably get re-elected anyway. That, or the GOP will run someone against him, and next to his absurdity, even a far-right extreme conservative will be seen as reasonable to a frighteningly large portion of the country.
More than one way to skin a cat, but some are more entertaining than others.
A massive and unrelenting disapproval might move him to quit. Or, as I have elsewhere suggested, a tangible threat to his moneyed status. Who has a clue to the workings of his squamous and writhing mind?
Could the Senate Republicans be crazy enough to impeach him? Well, they were crazy enough to support him! And at least half of them know better.
Who knows? Creativity often abounds, even in the unlikeliest of places. Reason is a reliable predictor in reasonable situations. But this isn’t one of those.
