Maybe I'll change my mind about Trump's Senate trial

Although not in agreement with all your commentary, I do see that you recommend a sober, common-sense, logical viewpoint about Trump's forthcoming (?) Senate 'trial'. You are unlikely to persuade any radical Democrats however. Most are in a pathetically illogical blind RAGE at this point that borders on mental instability. They want, almost literally, to eviscerate Trump and all who voted for him, with charges ranging all the way from willful destruction of the entire planet, to "White Supremacy" über Alles, and the support of police departments that endorse "murder" of Black criminals who resist arrest. Absolutely insane!

But, back in the realm of reality... as we know, the House of Representatives can "impeach" a President of the United States for any reason imaginable -- logical or illogical, true or false, partially-true or partially-false. Trump's first impeachment was a perfect example of a 'Loonie Tunes' impeachment 'gone-wrong' because the authors didn't even think to list any crimes in it! Again, absolutely stoopid, and the Senate properly threw the whole thing out with the rest of the day's garbage....

But this new 'impeachment' is as different as it is purposeless. What will the Senate be charged with DOING?! The Constitution says that they can remove Trump from his Office -- but, as any idiot can see -- TRUMP IS ALREADY GONE FROM 'OFFICE'....

Next, the hyperliberal Left will tell you that they think that this 'impeachment' would mean that Trump could never run for office again, even though the probability of another Trump "run", for so many reasons, is not likely at all.... So what would be the point? Probably, only have one last celebration of victory over Trump and everything he stood for... to 'rub it in' and express one last big gush of unrequited, foaming-at-the-mouth HATRED.

Personally? I would not (NOT) want Trump to run for office again, and I damn sure don't want to see him totally wreck the chances of any Conservatives in the future by forming a third-party organization (now rumored to be called "The Patriot Party"). We who experienced the 'Ross Perot' effect know that it is the surest way to guarantee the election of Democrats!

 

Garbage post reflecting only a distaste for Trump and a desire for vengeance not justice. But you are quite free to stew in your own bile if you find that profitable. The left has been poisoning people's minds for over a hundred years but I do not call for their leaders to be arrested and jailed.
By Robespierre would be proud of that post of yours. It certainly reminds one of something he would say of a political foe and sounds far more of fury than logic.
Trump won the Republican nomination because the base had grown tired of Neocons who would defend neither themselves nor their base from the baseless calumny of the left. Trump did that and that's why he won.

 

Agreed. You get it.

 

Very powerful post.
And the interesting thing is that in order to prevent the Dems from turning America into Venezuela, what these right wing folks did on 1/6/2021 was an attempt to... turn America into Venezuela! It's in Venezuela that the president stays in power no matter what, and sends his goons to invade parliament.

 

Sorry, nothing in your comment refutes the premise offered which is my statement of the facts. All you are doing is calling my rebuttal names, nothing you've offered refutes the data given.

Clearly, given the language you have chosen, the bias is all yours.

No one is calling for 'opponents to be arrested', we are only calling for CRIMINALS to be arrested.

I can't help it that the CRIMINAL in question is the opponent which is coincidentally an inconvenience to the right.

The logic and FACTS given in my rebuttal is IRREFUTABLE and INCONTROVERTIBLE.

Evidence for that FACT is you have offered NO data nor path of logic as a refutation, beyond your disdain for the TRUTH as evidenced by the venomous and biased language you have chosen to wrongfully characterize my rebuttal.

If Trump gets away with his SEDITION it would be a TRAVESTY of JUSTICE.

JUSTICE MATTERS. Delusions die. We will PREVAIL.

 

There is more than ample evidence that Dirty Donald fed stoked and drove the insurrection nd even Mitch is now acknowledging it. They and their attorneys are even basing their defense on the president told them to do it.

 

Not a fact in the lot just bile and opinion. Your party poisoned Trumps base we were already mad as hell at leftist name callers long before Trump showed up. Trump simply recognized what was already there and spoke to it

 

How do you define bipartisan. 10 out of 212? In a long ago political era bipartisan meant when a majority of both parties were for something. That has changed over time to a good chunk, which could mean 30-40% of the other party to apparently 10 of 212 or .047%

Considering our modern era of politics, the polarization, the great divide and the mega, ultra high partisanship, perhaps 10 is the magic number. I don't think so, but perhaps 10 makes it bipartisan.

Now I'm not defending Trump, I think he deserves whatever he gets. I don't view either impeachment as being bipartisan. But I grew up in another political era where bipartisanship mean a very large number of both parties for something. Not just 10.


Yeah, times change as do definitions. Yet, 10 out of 212 Republicans in the House and even if 3-5 GOP senators vote for impeachment, that doesn't meet my definition of bipartisan. Get 50 plus in the house and around 20 GOP senators out of 50, that would qualify today with the changing times and our modern era of mega, ultra partisanship.

My only problem is impeachment was meant to remove a president or an elected official from an office he currently holds. Trump is gone already. I understand the desire to make it so he can't run again or hold any public office. I'm for that. It seems to me that this second impeachment is misuse of the impeachment clause. Take Trump to court on the insurrection and sedition charges, we have laws against that and let the court decide.

 

Absolutely. It would be amazingly entertaining. Good TV. Let's protest for it.

 

I do not want Trump, let alone his family, to have Secret Service protection for life. That to me is the number one thing he should no longer have, though any other perks of being president should be denied too. He's a civilian now and he should have to deal with the consequences of that. We'll let the courts determine the rest.

 

Your math is a little off. That's 4.7%, not 0.047%.
Otherwise I agree.

 

Indeed, 10 out of 212 can hardly be called real bipartisan. However, it seems that this is the highest bipartisanship rate ever reached in an impeachment vote - I didn't check that personnaly.
Now, to be precise 10 out of 212 is 4.7%, not .047%. It doesn't affect your argument though.

I think Trump should be impeached, even though he's now out of office. He has amply deserved it.

 

Not true, as evidenced by the fact that many who voted for Trump were going to vote for Bernie. But, they liked Trump's shoot - from - the - hip style. They didn't particularly hate the left, they hated politicians in general and Trump was the 'anti-politician'.
the hate the left mantra came entirely from Trump, they would just go with whatever he told them.

Oh, but it's much more than that.

Well, I agree on the point he's an opportunist and saw an opportunity to con a large group of people, which he expanded upon and used it as a means to launch a presidential campaign. The question then becomes, why would he do that? What is the end game for Trump? Remember, Trump was a democrat and actually believed democrats were better for America on the economy




so why would he decide to be a republican?

For one thing, he percieved that republicans are more likely to be amenable to a super rich guy than democrats would be. While tis is not really, it is somewhat true, enough that he decided to run as a republican. Although, historically, populism has been more associated with the left than the right, though the right has it's own version of it with the addition of nationalistic, anti-immigrant fervor which is more correctly called 'nationalism' but his message was a combination of populism ( helping the little guy ) and nationalism ( xenophobia, anti-immigrant ) and add to that 'the press is the enemy of the people, all mantras he knew this disaffected group would easily latch on to, and he exploited it to garner publicity. The truth is, Trump cared less about this group, what he cared about was the world wide attention that would be paid to the Trump Brand be being a candidate, and pandering to this group would keep him in the game for a good while. No way in hell did he predict he would actually win the election in 2016. After he won, that's when his life started to become hell because if there ever were a recipe for disaster, put a malignant narcissist in the most powerful job in the world and things like January 6 happen.

But the salient point, the basis for the hate-the-left rage that drove the seditionists to seize the capitol was they believed 'democrats rigged the election'. That is what the essence of their rage, they didn't want democrats to get away with it, otherwise, why lay siege to the capitol? It was congress counting the votes, at which point, Jan 6 would be the last opportunity Trump would have to overturn the election, after Jan 6, it wouldn't be possible. THAT IS WHY THEY LAYED SEIGE TO THE CAPITOL on January 6. Rage driven by their beief, instilled into their hearts and minds that democrats were stealing the election away from Donald Trump.

THIS IS THE IRREFUTABLE AND INCONTROVERTIBLE FACT.

Well, in no prior election was the question of stealing the election by either party a big question, or concern ( to any extent as extolled by Trump), it only happened in THIS election, and who was the prime mover of that idea?

Donald Trump

There is no way in hell there is any argument that refutes the following fact: that ...

But for Donald Trump, the five people killed would still be alive, and mayhem against the capitol would not have occurred.

End of argument.

 

Darn decimal point. I think you're right about 10 being the highest in an impeachment vote. But it is far from bipartisan. At least in the bipartisanship that was shown prior to our modern political era of politics, the polarization, divisiveness and mega, ultra high partisanship.

 

You'll be hard pressed to find anyone more vehemently opposed to Trump on this board than I am. His policies, his personal conduct, his illegal acts, and in recognition of the terrible toll he has taken on the country.
That said, your claim..... "They want, almost literally, to eviscerate Trump and all who voted for him," only comes from people, as you say, "borders(ing) on mental instability."
Asking that he be brought to justice for his actions, whether they be related to Jan. 6 or prior illegalities, is simply a call for him to be treated as though he is not above the law, because he is not. As I hope he will find out very soon.

 

All this is far too consequentialist in its reasoning. Just because Trump is an imbecile does not mean that his elevation to the presidency didn't constitute a mortal threat to the democracy. In fact, with Trump the US was playing a dictator-simulation-game, at the lowest level of difficulty; and even still it strained the social fabric and our institutions severely. Trump's tenure revealed in stark terms, how much our system relies on basic unwritten norms of fair play, how much it relies on an appreciation of the kinds of things that are just not done, even though there are no rules telling a president "you can't do that." A more clever and capable demagogue could actually have been popular while doing worse damage to the system. Just because the truly worst did not materialize out of Trump's tenure, that is not to say that it was for lack of Trump trying, and we cannot afford to be complacent about it. We cannot afford the "no harm, no foul" attitude which you are adopting, here.

It is notoriously difficult to bring the powerful to account, in this country. Through his whole life Trump has relied on that fact, and no more brazenly than as president. We need to make an example of him, we need to demonstrate that "even the nobles are properly handled/once that the cops have chased after and caught'em," in Bob Dylan's phrasing.

For that purpose we need to throw the book at Trump; we need to raise every legal sanction we have against him, to punish him. In a Republic actually ruled under law, Trump should be being arraigned right now over charges of election fraud, in connection with the Stephanie Clifford hush-money affair. And there is so much more that also needs to be pursued.

That includes following through on impeachment. The first impeachment itself was an open-and-shut case; the Founders would certainly have recognized it as such. The Founders understood that partisanship would feature prominently in any impeachment proceeding; that did not discourage them from giving Congress this power. In fact I find it unbelievable how cavalierly you dismiss what Trump did - the precedent he set - in meddling directly in the American electoral process (to his own benefit) this way. It was an utterly incompetent con that Trump tried to pull, so you take it at face value and merely shrug at it; you seem incapable of imagining things going down any other way, of imagining how the corrupt gambit might well have worked. Take the hypothetical of an incumbent Hillary Clinton blackmailing the government of Taiwan to announce a trumped-up "investigation" of Marco Rubio (or else military aid vital to the defense of the island would be cut), since she viewed Rubio as posing the greatest threat to her re-election. By your logic, if Clinton was caught, it would only be worthy of censure??

As it is, a failed impeachment means, almost inevitably, that any (and all) follow-up impeachments would be subject to diminishing returns. Now your advice is that since Trump is out of office (which is not to say that he is out of power), Democrats should just fold instead of following through on the rule of law? On an offense which this time at least, you are able to recognize is in fact impeachable(?) - though you still don't grasp that that offense establishes a dire precedent for what a president can do and yet still remain in office. "Your coup failed? Ah well, no harm no foul! We'll censure you and then go about our business like nothing happened."

You will chalk up my ire against Trump and his regime, to mere "partisanship" - but I am constrained to say that objectivity does not mean neutrality. Conflating these two is a category-mistake which Independents routinely fall into; i.e., that since you have two sides contradicting one another, well they must both be wrong. No.

No, at least some of the time, one of our national parties will find itself on the wrong side of history. In the aftermath of the Civil War, it was the Democrats who were in the wrong; it was the Democrats who called for "unity" and "reconciliation" on their terms - and it led to a century + of Jim Crow discrimination. No, sometimes making the more Perfect Union means that when the bad guys lose, they have to be made accountable. And in the case of Trump and his regime, we cannot have a more open-and-shut case. This is a time when we have to act on the basis of principle, not consequentialist considerations.

 

I agree with everything you said. Biden could truly send a message of unity and take his place as the leader of his party by stopping all this. He could also win much needed favor from some of those 50 senators in the GOP. Eventually one party is going to have to be the bigger person as they say, after the last 12 years I don't care who it is anymore.

 

These are very powerful arguments and you are very convincing. I think you defend your view better than most commentators I've seen. You would do a good job if you were a House Manager for the impeachment trial. Well done!

 

Well for your part CenterField, your response here is a model of intellectual honesty - it is truly rare for an interlocutor to be so forthright about taking on board an opposing view, especially one that is barbed as the one I wrote in response to your OP. That's an example all of us partisans in the forum can learn from, beginning with me.

 

It's so refreshing to have the opportunity to read a nicely argumented exchange between two honest and intelligent posters!

Not enough of them on the forum, sadly.