Trump may have been acquitted today, but I’m wondering if he’s too toxic to touch from here on.
Oh, his Trumper MAGA cultists will always support him (should we call him the Jim Jones of American politics?), but they have little influence on the people who matter–the Republicans who want to keep the Republican Party an effective force in American politics. I think that such Republicans would want to distance themselves from a twice-impeached former president, who has little to no knowledge of American constitutional law.
If Trump throws himself into the Republican primaries, I can easily see Republicans saying, “Yeah, no, we’re not hitching our wagon to a president who was impeached twice.”
The witnesses thing was a mess.
Yes, it could have become a circus and it was necessary to cut some kind of deal. But just adding JHB’s statement to the record was once again a ridiculously favorable deal for republicans given that Dems had just won the vote to have witnesses. Once again Dems bend over backwards for what exactly? Good faith behaviour next time?
The absolute minimum that they should have settled for, was for her to zoom testify.
Then the Republicans bring in McCarthy who lies his ass off, and denies any such conversation with Trump took place. “We discussed the weather. He is a lovely chap”. Then what?
JHB it seems would likely have told the truth; those clips would be shown on all major media, including FOX (which has avoided showing most of the prosecution’s case, but testimony is much harder to ignore).
And then if McCarthy appears and says the opposite, then it’s a fact that at least one republican has just lied under oath, and given that there’s no obvious reason to lie the other way, it becomes pretty obvious it’s McCarthy.
The point is, it was always going to be an acquittal.
So it was just a matter of how painful and public you can make it for those people voting that way. There needs to be some political cost, otherwise the chance of this happening again is increased. Sadly, that is exactly where we are right now.
Former President Donald Trump has privately voiced concern in the last two weeks about whether he could face charges as a result of the January 6 riot he’s accused of inciting, according to multiple people.
Trump has mainly been quiet since leaving the White House last month, and his silence has been in part related to those concerns.
“He’s worried about it,” one adviser close to Trump told CNN.
That’s right - it IS my argument: the Democrats are in the majority, and they didn’t have to let any bullshit witnesses testify. If you don’t care to rebut my main point, then I assume you have no rebuttal.
Instead, you jumped all over my response to a rather peripheral point - the ‘suppose Trump has no lawyers’ possibility. OK, suppose arguendo that I’m wrong on that point. (I note the absence of cites for your claims about impeachment trial procedure, but I’ll let that pass.) Then the Dems just recess the trial until the first Friday after Trump has counsel again, the relevant witnesses testify, counsel from each side questions them, then closing arguments, and it’s over by Sunday.
I’m sure you’ll come back with some unsupported claim - on this peripheral point - about how Mitch can magically throw sand in the gears. Since that’s all you seem to have about my main point as well.
There is a common misconception held by the vast majority of the TV-watching public. They see the TV shows as the product, and themselves as the customers. But in actuality, they are the product, the advertisers are the customers, and the shows are really part of the mechanism by which the product is created.
I’m seeing something like that here. This proceeding was about putting Trump on trial, the goal was conviction, and since the Dems weren’t going to achieve that goal, it was time for them to throw in the towel and get back to working on Covid reliefget home in time for Valentine’s Day.
Or, since we knew this would end in acquittal, the point was to go through the motions of doing the right thing, and now, having gone through those motions sufficiently, it was time to…see above.
Doing the right thing was certainly a big part of it. But (a) if you’re going to do the right thing, going through the motions isn’t enough; and (b) the other big part, the real business of this impeachment, was to do as much damage as possible to the reputation of the Republican Party, and especially its Representatives who voted against impeachment and its Senators who voted for acquittal.
The trial here is in the court of public opinion, the jurors are the public, and the GOP and its elected officials are in the dock. Putting a statement into evidence, which many people here and elsewhere are talking up as if no more was necessary, may work great in a trial before a judge, but in the court of public opinion, most people won’t even notice.
…
“While the final vote did not lead to a conviction, the substance of the charge is not in dispute,” Biden wrote.
“Even those opposed to the conviction, like Senate Minority Leader McConnell, believe Donald Trump was guilty of a ‘disgraceful dereliction of duty’ and ‘practically and morally responsible for provoking’ the violence unleashed on the Capitol.”
…
Classy, as we expect our President to be. He is absolutely correct on this. A conviction would have been good, but it didn’t happen. However, the FACTS are out there. Trump on video saying all the things the Republicans deny that he said. And their denial is on the record, too.
And the news this morning makes the Dems’ caving yesterday look even worse. According to the NYT (link to a non-paywalled excerpt), Mitch was so upset about the possibility of witnesses that he threatened to throw sand in the gears, alright - not in the trial, but once the trial was over and the Dems were trying to pass legislation and get nominations confirmed. He threatened to do maximal obstruction on all of that, and the Dems caved to that.
Paying Mitchgeld won’t get rid of Mitch, that’s for damn sure. He’s still going to filibuster whenever it’s important to him.
The Dems fucked this up. They keep telling themselves the Republicans can regain their honor and their collective conscience, if only something something something.
I just finished another article – one where there isn’t an obvious SDMB place to put it, so I’ll put it here – that’s a bit haunting, and a pretty comprehensive ‘forensic psychological autopsy’ of the most radicalized of Trump supporters.
I saw way too much of my beloved SIL (and a few other friends and family) in here, and it’s both deeply troubling and deeply sad:
I’ve long said that wealthy and powerful people need the Soylent Green carpet of meat-grinder-processed underlings to create a plush carpet on which they can hedonistically stroll and dance.
IOW: that timeless dynamic of the greedy and the ignorant.
Interesting aspect of the article was that not all of these RW crazies lack formal education.
I’ve long said that – despite having studied Electrical Engineering in college, years ago, I don’t really understand how my TV works. But that isn’t any kind of proof that there’s a supreme being running everything.
Similarly, taking comfort – or even joy – in wonder, bewilderment, amazement, awe, and simply not knowing – can help you avoid the intellectual version of “nature abhors a vacuum.”
Here’s to not knowing, and not being a batshit crazy conspiracy theorist, all at the same time !
We had disagreements about healthcare, or social safety nets, stuff like that. Sometimes the discussions would become somewhat heated, but it was all within normal family discussion.
But over the last some years, we’ve had disagreements about reality itself. I think the first time I noticed was Benghazi, where she repeated right wing talking points, and not just verbatim, but adding in her own little bits. She was convinced that Clinton had actually orchestrated the attack on the consulate.
Trump certainly did no favors for their ability to see reality, vs the fantasy that he spun from his bully pulpit.
I haven’t spoken to them since the Jan 6th insurrection, so I don’t know their stance on that, and I don’t want to know, it would just disappoint me even further.