One suspects that those individuals, shortly after being named by the media, shuffled things around and transferred ownership around to cousins or opted for early retirement or whatever.
Only Conservatives? But now you’re talking about impeachment, not indictment? Nice pivot. Anyway, impeachment is a wild card. I’d never bet on that either way with the opposing party in The House. Impeachment or no, you still have to get a supermajority in the Senate to oust him from the oval office.
I’d love to see Trump out as much as the next guy. I just don’t let my wishful thinking cloud my judgment about what will actually happen.
Yeah, I totally said that. Good catch!!
Pivot from what? It was you who assumed criminal charges. I only talked about impeachment.
It’s not wishful thinking. The point of impeachment isn’t to get Trump removed; that’s just not going to happen. It’s to keep him distracted from governing for a year or so.
But for pete’s sake, the last time we impeached a president when the numbers weren’t there in the Senate to remove, the guy’s approval jumped 10 points. Do we want to risk that with the presidential election then less than two years away? If we can’t win this removal-- and maybe even if we could-- I’d much rather just put it to the electorate in 2020. If you take him out via beltway politics, you risk only making him stronger. If you take him out via good old fashioned rustbelt hand-kissing and baby-shaking, it’ll be an actual honest-to-goodness victory with only the yammering mouthbreathers protesting it with cries of “voter fraud.”
Now if he somehow gets re-elected, just get down on all fours and howl at the moon, we’re animals.
The other benefit to impeachment besides politically incapacitating Trump is that a Senate trial (assuming a pro-impeachment takeover by Democrats in the House) would allow for the public presentation of evidence and testimony. Right now, there is no guarantee whatsoever that any report by Mueller about Trump’s obstruction of justice and any other potential misconduct would ever see the light of day. Articles of impeachment would just be very barebones summaries of whatever grounds were alleged. A trial would allow all of the cited evidence in Mueller’s report to become public and make it harder (but of course never impossible) for skeptics and conspiracy theorists to summarily dismiss. This could have the effect of further sinking Trump in the polls, possibly prompting a Republican primary challenger and indirectly boosting any Democratic challenger.
Since Trump has never been particularly popular in the polls, any Clinton-like rise in popularity due to impeachment proceedings seems unlikely. Clinton won a resounding re-election just a few years before the impeachment came about, dipped in the polls, and then re-emerged higher as the impeachment dragged on. Trump has been on a relative decline, with some rises but never very much.
Clinton didn’t have a majority of his advisors under investigation or prosecution for wrongdoing or a whole cloud of other scandals revolving around him (and not for lack of Republicans trying).
And there’s that “treason” thing.
No doubt you’re right; they’re in danger not only from Western sanctions (and associated travel problems), but from dear Vlad, who doesn’t like to leave loose ends lying around.
And Clinton was impeached for lying about having had an affair. There is a certain portion of the population who could identify with that.
Fewer will be able to identify with the way Trump and his swamp-creature cabinet have billed the taxpayer for their efforts to enrich themselves, much less with the sharing of secrets with the Russians and others*, and aid and comfort to Russian efforts to manipulate US elections, etc.
*For example:
Saudi crown prince brags Jared Kushner handed him U.S. intelligence | Daily Mail Online
eta: granted, that is the Daily Mail. However we do know for certain that Trump himself has shared secrets, and also that Jared Kushner was the biggest customer for secrets available to him before his clearance was changed. Was it merely curiosity???
Cohen’s office is raided by the FBI:
While, ostensibly, related to the Stormy Daniels case, they have to have had a lot more to go on than her say-so that a man threatened her in a parking lot. One suspects that Mueller threw in enough to support the Daniels’ side of things in the hope that he would also get a crack on Cohen’s materials, to support the general Russia investigation.
I can’t imagine how Cohen could get charged for something and Trump not get impeached.
I feel like we may as well call it at this point.
By whom? If Hillary had done 1/100 the things Trump has, she’d have been impeached on her second day of office, not even counting any potential election tampering or supposed crimes. This Congress has ignored everything to date, because they’re getting what they want as long as Trump stays in office. Even if Mueller find evidence of genocide and conspiring with the Klingons, the current Congress will NOT impeach him, or even seriously talk about it. And unless the Dems take both houses in 2018, they’ll count it as a victory for their side and go on ignoring it.
Oh, god, don’t talk like that.
If there is a thorough and ruthless investigation, from the team of Mueller and Javert, and the worse thing they find is paying off some pornstar…I will paint my butt blue and move to the country.
I think the “Daily Mail” disclaimer needs to be worded a little more strongly than that. They’re probably less accurate than the Onion.
That’s not saying a whole lot, since these days the Onion seems to be supernaturally prescient.
Trump has been accused of many things so far by a left-leaning media that ends every article with, “No proof that the President has committed money laundering/been blackmailed/coordinated with Russians/etc. has been found”.
A criminal conviction, headed by GW Bush’s head of the FBI, in a case managed by Trump’s own cabinet, is a very different animal.
So, we got a few things that might look bad.
- Quite* a few things, and they look pretty bad. OK, a category five shit tornado of stuff that looks really, really terrible!
But that’s all!
You honestly believe that if President Hillary had claimed (falsely) to have won the popular vote when she did not, and kept making the claim after it was debunked, that Congress would not have impeached her for it? That if Hillary had fired people she believed we looking into her, then admitted having done it punitively? That if Hillary MOBILIZED THE FREAKING MILITARY to carry out Democratic Party propaganda raids against, say, white people crossing the Canadian border? If Hillary had an affair with a porn star and then paid for it to be covered up? Any of those things alone would have triggered impeachment. Trump’s done all of them.
As I said before. The supposed crimes are but icing on the cake. And I absolutely guarantee you that Congress will not impeach him (at least not the pre-2018 Congress), no matter what Mueller finds.
Yes, because I was claiming you literally said that.
Cohen is being subjected to the legal process; impeachment is a political process. There’s a world of difference.
Presidents aren’t impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors; they’re only impeached if Americans are sufficiently angry and in the mood to impeach.