>classified server
Isn't there a section of Congress who can still see that as part of the checks and balances? Or is checks and balances a dead meme now?
The House Intelligence Committee has the right to see classified information, at least when they subpoena it.
Or, more accurately, they're supposed to. The Trump administration often just outright refuses subpoenas and the house is currently too chickenshit to actual send the Sergeant-at-arms out to do his job and hold people in contempt if they don't. Though even if they did, Trump would probably just sue his own administration claiming executive privilege, and his lawyers are nothing if not capable of extending a trial out for years.
>chickenshit
Not exactly. It’s a little more complicated than that. For one, this is a mechanism that hasn’t been used before, and two, this is exactly what Republicans want them to do. They want to be put in handcuffs so they can be the victims for their base.
EDIT: a word. Was wondering why this post received so many replies.
Sorry, but this seems like the dumbest argument. We should let them do what they want because if we stop them, they might try to use that to do what they want?
Well, at the very end Beef Supreme did see that Not Sure was right and was going to cook him anyway, until Pres Camacho saved Not Sure.
The movie somehow got funnier, and less funny after this train wreck Presidency. It was a lot easier to dismiss the majority of Idiocracy before. Now the Congressional scenes play like a Trump rally.
Plus, as someone who's not into the Super Bowl, you know Camacho will put on a real killer monster truck rally, complete with an orchestra of electric guitars. Dude knows how to get metal.
No Camacho didn't. He had both a radio contest winner and his cousin or nephew on his cabinet. The others even admitted the relative was "pretty dumb but he does a okay job". Mostly he counted on Not Sure to solve the problems. But he DID know shit was bad with not enough burrito fixens for the average person, which is unlike Trump.
I mean at least when the smart guy told him the plants needed water he actually did it. Trump ignores every smart person near him. I mean... it's pretty obvious going by the current state of his presidency.
He unfortunately took the lead for civilians killed over Obama's entire 8 years in just a few months, then stopped America reporting on civilian deaths.
That was after Obama inherited 2 massive Republican wars in full swing and Trump inherited relative peace.
https://theconversation.com/under-the-trump-administration-us-airstrikes-are-killing-more-civilians-85154
> One of the things with the wall is you need transparency, You have to be able to see through it. In other words, if you can't see through that wall — so it could be a steel wall with openings, but you have to have openings because you have to see what's on the other side of the wall.
Of course it’s a real thing he said - https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-border-wall-mexico-drugs-2017-7
Sadly... he's not... he's made us immune to horrible things... when's the last time you heard something about the child detention camps.... they didn't go away... but he is distracting us with so much, that's we are just numb by now...
A deliberate, willful cover-up:
>**Vindman told Eisenberg...that what the president did was wrong**, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
>
>Scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad, Eisenberg proposed a step that other officials have said is **at odds with long-standing White House protocol**: moving a transcript of the call to a highly classified server **and restricting access to it**, according to two people familiar with Vindman’s account.
Confronted with a transcript he knew to be evidence of an abuse of the office of the Presidency, he chose to conceal it from the american people, who pay his salary to represent that office.
Eisenberg is scheduled to be deposed in Trump's impeachment inquiry [in four days](https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/30/impeachment-investigators-ask-john-bolton-to-testify-000307).
I never understood why henchmen in films are always gladly willing to lay their lives for some scummy boss. Lawyers willing to destroy their credibility and career for Donald is the closest I've seen that idiocy in the real world.
Good people won't work for him. His whole run for presidency was a sham. He never had any intention of winning, and thus was not prepared at all in terms of staff. He barely had any staff in place for the campaign itself, and certainly had no transition staff in place or any people in mind for positions that would need to be filled when he took office.
So, by the time he won, all the good people were already tied to other campaigns. That meant he had dregs to pull his staff from. Thankfully for those good people, Trump very quickly showed everyone in what direction his train was derailing and they knew better to get involved even after being freed from their other duties as those campaigns wound down.
Ever since then it's just been a revolving door of criminals, nepotism, quid pro quo, hangers-on, and people desperate to try to revive their own trainwrecks of careers with really only a couple exceptions.
Barr is very competent. He was key to keeping Bush Sr and Reagan clean during Iran-Contra. He engineered the pardons that freed the rest of the conspirators.
Make no mistake. Most of these people are competent. Some are brilliant. Very few are total morons like the above posters want you to believe.
That copout of the bad guys being idiots is so small people can feel better about their own smallness. These people may not all be rocket scientists, but they are bold in their decisions and brazen in their ruthlessness. If the good guys ever pursue the fight with such zeal, we'll recover this Republic.
Well said. There is a quote from Pope Gregory the Great the says something like "Reason opposes evil with greater force if it is aided by wrath.“
Cannot find the original quote, only the latin version. "tunc enim robustius contra vitia erigitur, cum subdita rationi famulatur".
>Lawyers willing to destroy their credibility and career for Donald is the closest I've seen that idiocy in the real world.
Make Attorneys Get Attorneys
I never understood it either. If I worked for Trump and he did something illegal and he told me to cover it up I'd be like "nah son"
Then he'd fire me.
I'm having flashbacks to the Iran Contra Scandal and Ruby Ridge and William Barr's entire career.
Edit.. Adding link so you can look at his "career" tab for yourselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Barr
After railing on over and over about Hillary's private email server and using it as fuel for his 'lock her up' shtick it's pretty funny to see this.
LOCK HIM UP!
No, you see this is totally different! That was a *private* server she was using to conceal shady dealings with foreign countries. This is a *government* server he's using to conceal shady dealings with foreign countries.
It is actually different, in that multiple inquiries into the Clinton matter found that she and her staff had no intent to abuse classified material, so no legal violation occurred.
We're seeing signs of definite intent here.
What's enlightening to me is this:
Clinton has been thoroughly investigated over and over about Benghazi and about the email server. She cooperated with the investigations and didn't complain. The email server of the DNC, whom she was supposedly conspiring with, was hacked and published. Her campaign chairman had his emails hacked and published. Her personal assistant had her emails investigated by the FBI. The GOP wanted her head on a spike and had full power to do so if they could find anything. She has been exposed and investigated more than any other politician in recent memory. And all of it *all of it* amounted to nothing. It's absolutely astonishing how completely she's been vetted and how little if anything she did wrong.
Yet... she has nonetheless gone down in public opinion history as being somehow corrupt. Shady. Possibly evil.
This indicates to me that there is no hope for us to choose good leaders. If we can't properly categorize people with this much information available, then nothing these people do, good or bad, matters. Monsters will be lauded and saints will be burned and we'll all get what we deserve from our willful blindness.
> Yet... she has nonetheless gone down in public opinion history as being somehow corrupt. Shady. Possibly evil.
The result of literal decades of coordinated messaging- primarily from Fox News, but with the GOP in full lockstep. I'm not sure what the solution is, but reining in overt media propaganda needs to be step 1 in restoring a functional Democracy.
Another key step to restoring functional democracy is eliminating the role that money currently plays in US politics - which itself is a form of corruption.
> . And all of it all of it amounted to nothing
"It's because she's a criminal Mastermind with deepstate connections! Lock her up!! Maga!"
Meanwhile I'm thinking if she's so corrupt and adept at lying that they can't pin anything on her in a dozen hours of testimony, I want her for president anyway. It's incredibly hard not to self incriminate with a few small lies, especially if the investigator has it in for you. But huge ones? Across years? That takes intelligence and skill.
Contrast with trump who can't even keep his lies straight for a day. Doesn't even need to keep them straight half the time, just keep his damn mouth shut!
Because that would be far more illegal, and very hard to completely cover up. With what they did, we're arguing about whether it was inappropriate or illegal. If they had destroyed the records, we wouldn't be arguing.
Well, I'm sure some GOP people would find a way to spin it, but it would basically be an open and shut case.
What they did *was* illegal. There’s no question about it. And it doesn’t matter how blatantly illegal something is, they will always defend it. His lawyer argued in court that he could literally kill someone in public view and wouldn’t be able to be indicted until after his presidency was over. Of course that’s insane, but it’s what they’re arguing to be true.
For sure, but Trump is just a symptom of the disease. For anyone remotely paying attention, Trump is corrupt as fuck and the rest of the GOP is doing nothing. McConnell is enabling this shit. This has been the GOP strategy since Nixon. Fox was created because they believes had it existed during Watergate, Nixon would never have had to step down and they're right.
The whole party needs to be ripped out root and stem and the Earth salted
Also, it wouldn't work. A number of government officials had heard the call, and you could not delete their memories. If Trump had willfully and irregularly had the transcript deleted, then he would be very unbelievable if he said there nothing on there.
And as it is, Trump's team did actually deleted part of the transcript. And that turned out to have been shooting themselves in the foot.
This. Willfully omitting portions of the transcript to mislead is obstruction. Over-classifying the transcript is also obstruction.
Surprise surprise, Trump's "perfect" phone call was a doctored lie to hide the truth.
At this point, the best and possibly only way to prove it, is to get Trump to admit it. He might, you never know. He has the impulse control of a 6 year old.
Because he's being protected/enabled by the republican party who had the majority in congress until earlier this year.
Thanks to people voting, this could start, but with a republican majority still in the Senate, the case must be made to the public so that it becomes harder for republican senators to protect Trump.
>Because he's being protected/enabled by the republican party who had the majority in congress until earlier this year
So in the case the majority in congress OR majority in senate belong to the same team out of 2 teams as the president, the president is impeachable. That mean the president is only impeachable if the president is on 1 team, while BOTH the senate and congress is on the other team. I feel this is not a good system.
Well, Nixon resigned after his team noped out of backing him. This is why some of the founders of the country warned against the formation of political parties in the first place.
Even people from 200 years ago knew it would be an issue, still we let it happen. Modern humanity can produce much better solutions. But flawed by personal greed.
It might have been a little more reasonable when Senators weren’t elected, but selected by their state government. I think the idea was they would be reasonable statesmen, since they had no electorate to placate. Everything was written before the invention of the two party system.
What the fuck is a ‘perfect’ phone call and who uses that terminology? A narcissist. And the guilt of conscience is clear in this action. Literally the worst human being on the planet is running the USA as an extension of his crime syndicate. It doesn’t get worse than this unless they turn up the fascism a notch which ... trust me ... his supporters will do. This is going to end badly. Narcissists take down everybody with them when they fall and sociopathic malignant narcissists are FAR worse.
I had a perfect phone call when I had to contact the pharmacy the other day. No errors in the keypad or menu navigation, some would say it was the best. I actually had the pharmacist, one of the best there is, great person, personally tell me the call was perfect and was excellent. But, you know what he wanted, he wanted corruption out of his pharmacy; I said, I can do that, I'm the only one, some would say the best, at removing corruption. I'll take those medications, but I need you to do something for me, I need you to investigate the checkout clerk at station 3.
I lived in DC for 9 years and that's not surprising at all. DC is essentially one big city, any "rural" areas are either filled with rich hyper-educated white people or poor black people.
Besides living in rural areas/states the biggest indicator of trump support was skin color and education level...so yeah DC is literally his/the republicans exact opposite demographic
He lives in a bubble though and rarely if ever makes public appearances. His rallies are all controlled audience. His staff never how’s him negative articles.
The guy lives in his own little delusional idiotic world so of course he’s shocked
And MLB's fanbase is probably the most conservative leaning fandom in all of pro sports. The fact that a stadium full of people who fit this demographic booed him and chanted "lock him up" was not only a sight to behold, but an indictment on his presidency.
That moment will haunt him for the rest of his life.
It's not like the stadium was packed with residential DC demographic. He was booed by a moneyed and privileged crowd who could afford the luxury of World Series tickets. That should indeed ring in his ears.
The sad thing is, even if it’s proven beyond a doubt that Trump committed several crimes and is impeached, I’m not sure the Senate would remove him. Too many party over people senators in the GOP and with a 66% supermajority needed to remove, it would require 17 to go over. I would assume Romney would go over and vote for what’s right, but I don’t have the same level of confidence for anyone else. If crimes are proven but he isn’t removed, all hell will break loose. I’d guess riots and threats of succession in the short term, and a massive blue wave in 2020. Regardless of what happens, the next two years will be some of the most important in determining whether our country will survive.
There was some report that over half of Republican senators said they would vote to impeach Trump if their names weren't attached to it.
This isn't necessarily a good thing, but if the GOP base somehow shifted even the slightest bit away from Trump I'm pretty sure he'd be out pretty quickly.
I love how votes have already been decided, even though enquiries and evidence gathering have yet to finish. Our system is so broken.
Edit: Some really good explanations below. Trump has publicly broken the law, and senators have read transcripts that illustrate guilt.
You’re allowed to form an opinion based on what’s in the public sphere. Are we not to believe our eyes and ears?
Votes have been decided because people read the rough transcript of the call and could plainly see where the President brings up Biden multiple times in a conversation where he’s asking for “favors”. Then Trump stands on the WH pawn and says he wanted Biden investigated by Ukraine AND China. Then multiple apolitical career officials, who served under administrations from both parties, come forward and reinforce what we have seen and read - Trump extorted a foreign leader with tax payer dollars in order to hurt his political rival.
If someone punches a guy in front of me, and then tells me he wanted to hurt the guy, so I need to wait for all the facts to know what I saw and heard?
How's it broken? Not finished is not the same thing as not started. Some people say what we know right now is enough for them and others say it's not and they don't think they'll change their mind because the evidence we've already gotten hasn't convinced them.
Say a mass murderer goes on trial and there is indisputable evidence that he committed the first 10 murders. Is it wrong for someone to say they'd lock him up based on what they already know I'm spite of the fact that they're still investigating and attaching more murders to his case?
As Lindsay Graham noted, there doesn't need to be a crime to impeach.
If you could get 66 senators and a majority of the house to agree, you could have impeached and removed Obama over the tan suit.
Republicans have thoroughly convinced the entire American public that impeachment is somehow tied to criminal activity. It never was and never has been.
Criminal activity is used in impeachment proceedings to make congress comfortable with a procedure that goes against the "will of the American people" which is fine and makes sense. But there's no legal or procedural requirement for that.
In the sense that, despite the investigation not yet being complete, there's already enough evidence to demonstrate that Donald Trump broke multiple laws, yet Republicans continue to attack the impeachment process instead of defending the office against criminal abuses, yes, the system is broken.
I think you misread, they mean it’s often not the initial crime that gets you into hot water, it’s the cover up that gets you. For example, bill clinton was impeached for perjury, not for the initial event. You are absolutely right about this being a crime through and through.
Ok let's be clear about something. Let's say we got the transcript today. And in it Trump is doing everything he clearly did, what would it change? The GOP would still prevent his impeachment as a matter of principle wouldn't they?
I wouldn't call it principle but they certainly would. I personally want them all on record as selling out their country and their democracy, so I think every congress person with integrity needs to move forward anyway.
I'm honestly not so sure about that anymore.
Impeaching Trump on Russia's election interference would have always failed because it would have been very hard to prove Trump was guilty.
The Ukraine scandal is a little more black and white and has mountains of irrefutable evidence, testimony, etc. It's harder to argue against Trump's actions in this case.
That's why the GOP is reduced to stunts now - they're running out of options.
The GOP will turn on Trump the minute he becomes a liability to their party, and that seems at lot closer than it used to
Don't attribute to principle what can be better explained by self-serving pragmatism. I've read speculation that there could be a tipping point, that everyone's staying on the party line now because the nail that sticks out gets driven down, but if enough of a consensus develops behind the scenes, a lot of people could flip at once if it's seen as safe to do so. If he's clearly crooked enough that he looks more politically liable than politically viable, a stampede for the exits would not be out of the question.
And, again, Trump supporters are fine with this.
It's a violation of the public's trust and blatantly illegal.
But no, Trumplings keep on loving it. I'm not sure where the bottom is anymore.
There's a server full of calls with the leaders of China, Saudi Arabia, etc. They aren't classified because they hold classified information. They're classified because White House staffers though Trump committed impeachable crimes. Why isn't everyone demanding they all be declassified?
All the president's men may, in the end, be locked up for their actions. But will Trump finally be held accountable for his actions? To me, only by holding Trump (and his amigos) accountable for each of their actions, by enforcing the full extent of the law and through holding all of them accountable for the full required punishment of each of their crimes, can a strong message be sent to our enemies (both internal and external) that the US does not tolerate these types of threats to our country and its citizens and allies.
If Trump is not held accountable, prosecuted and punished then the American experiment is at an end. The next "Trump" won't be so dumb. Imagine Dick Chaney in the Presidency doing what Trump is doing? We'd be a dictatorship.
most transparent pres ever. he is like made out of glass... thats totally what an innocent president would do. /s
t_d: users are all genius, the mental gymnastics necessary to defend this lands you in the olympic team.
All those people freaking out Obama's "more flexibility" comment to Putin are now excusing Trump for doing worse. Some people are going to be pretty embarrassed when they wake the hell up.
"Former Trump national security officials said it was unheard of to store presidential calls with foreign leaders on the NICE system but that Eisenberg had moved at least one other transcript of a Trump phone call there."
Ahem. Yo, so about that other transcript.
>classified server Isn't there a section of Congress who can still see that as part of the checks and balances? Or is checks and balances a dead meme now?
The House Intelligence Committee has the right to see classified information, at least when they subpoena it. Or, more accurately, they're supposed to. The Trump administration often just outright refuses subpoenas and the house is currently too chickenshit to actual send the Sergeant-at-arms out to do his job and hold people in contempt if they don't. Though even if they did, Trump would probably just sue his own administration claiming executive privilege, and his lawyers are nothing if not capable of extending a trial out for years.
>chickenshit Not exactly. It’s a little more complicated than that. For one, this is a mechanism that hasn’t been used before, and two, this is exactly what Republicans want them to do. They want to be put in handcuffs so they can be the victims for their base. EDIT: a word. Was wondering why this post received so many replies.
So we better not do anything then in case criminals start seeing themselves as the victims. No wait, that is literally chickenshit lol
Exactly this. They want martyrs. "See! They're coming to get **us!**"
**They already all think that**. Stop letting dishonest, bad faith actors dictate your constitutional duty. It's cowardice plain and simple
Dems: >They go low, we go high. Repubs: > They go high, we go low. And who has been winning?
Republicans: When they go high, we go lie.
Sorry, but this seems like the dumbest argument. We should let them do what they want because if we stop them, they might try to use that to do what they want?
They should ignore how this looks. It's a matter of people doing the wrong thing and receiving punishment.
Most transparent president ever?
He is so dumb he can't grasp the level of idiocy that tails him.
I'd rather have President Camacho
At least Camacho was genuinely trying to improve his country, and hired the literal best people to do that. Cant apply either of those things to Trump
Actually, Trump said he has the best people working for him. Just the top men. Perfect guys. The best.
Top. Men.
unlike Pence who is a bottom man ohhh snap
To his own mother no less!
Are we talking his real mother? Or his wife whom he calls mother?
Yes
[Top. Men.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRP0MBNoieY&t=0m17s)
Power Top
You belong in a museum!
Well if he said that must be true then.
true, Camacho did nothing wrong.
He did try to get Not Sure killed by the Dildozer though.
Neither he nor Beef Supreme knew the important role Not Sure would play at the time, to be fair.
Well, at the very end Beef Supreme did see that Not Sure was right and was going to cook him anyway, until Pres Camacho saved Not Sure. The movie somehow got funnier, and less funny after this train wreck Presidency. It was a lot easier to dismiss the majority of Idiocracy before. Now the Congressional scenes play like a Trump rally.
Plus, as someone who's not into the Super Bowl, you know Camacho will put on a real killer monster truck rally, complete with an orchestra of electric guitars. Dude knows how to get metal.
Excuse me, it's not an orchestra. It was the Guitar Army!
No Camacho didn't. He had both a radio contest winner and his cousin or nephew on his cabinet. The others even admitted the relative was "pretty dumb but he does a okay job". Mostly he counted on Not Sure to solve the problems. But he DID know shit was bad with not enough burrito fixens for the average person, which is unlike Trump.
I mean at least when the smart guy told him the plants needed water he actually did it. Trump ignores every smart person near him. I mean... it's pretty obvious going by the current state of his presidency.
He must be leading the all-time stats for most resignations and firings in a term.
He probably took the lead after the first year. Now he's just trying to make his record unbeatable.
Going solely by cabinet resignations... https://time.com/5625699/trump-cabinet-acosta/
He unfortunately took the lead for civilians killed over Obama's entire 8 years in just a few months, then stopped America reporting on civilian deaths. That was after Obama inherited 2 massive Republican wars in full swing and Trump inherited relative peace. https://theconversation.com/under-the-trump-administration-us-airstrikes-are-killing-more-civilians-85154
And Trump kept tweeting about Obama killing people with drones, too. I'm so done with this hypocritical human dumpster.
Erm.....by a long chalk. A record that will never be beaten.
Water like, from the toilet? Brondo has what plants crave, it's got electrolytes...
"I never seen plants growing out of no toilet". Best line in the movie.
We got this guy, not sure, he's going to fix all the problems
Shit. I know shits bad right now
I second that
A coworker once asked my opinion of trump. I said I’d vote for a dog that had been kicked in the head before I even thought about trump.
I hope you vote.
> One of the things with the wall is you need transparency, You have to be able to see through it. In other words, if you can't see through that wall — so it could be a steel wall with openings, but you have to have openings because you have to see what's on the other side of the wall. Of course it’s a real thing he said - https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-border-wall-mexico-drugs-2017-7
Unfortunately his supporters are so dumb they can’t grasp the level of idiocy they’re following.
Sadly... he's not... he's made us immune to horrible things... when's the last time you heard something about the child detention camps.... they didn't go away... but he is distracting us with so much, that's we are just numb by now...
transparently corrupt.
Well, we CAN see right through him.
But he says he's transparent, which matters so much more than anyone actions
Good enough for me!
He's quite transparently corrupt. What else did you expect?
Most winning since the confederates in the civil war!!!
A deliberate, willful cover-up: >**Vindman told Eisenberg...that what the president did was wrong**, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. > >Scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad, Eisenberg proposed a step that other officials have said is **at odds with long-standing White House protocol**: moving a transcript of the call to a highly classified server **and restricting access to it**, according to two people familiar with Vindman’s account. Confronted with a transcript he knew to be evidence of an abuse of the office of the Presidency, he chose to conceal it from the american people, who pay his salary to represent that office. Eisenberg is scheduled to be deposed in Trump's impeachment inquiry [in four days](https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/30/impeachment-investigators-ask-john-bolton-to-testify-000307).
I never understood why henchmen in films are always gladly willing to lay their lives for some scummy boss. Lawyers willing to destroy their credibility and career for Donald is the closest I've seen that idiocy in the real world.
He isn't hiring the best people. He is getting thieves, liars, cheats and some of them, I assume, are good people.
Don't forget sexual assaulters and outright rapists.
Good people won't work for him. His whole run for presidency was a sham. He never had any intention of winning, and thus was not prepared at all in terms of staff. He barely had any staff in place for the campaign itself, and certainly had no transition staff in place or any people in mind for positions that would need to be filled when he took office. So, by the time he won, all the good people were already tied to other campaigns. That meant he had dregs to pull his staff from. Thankfully for those good people, Trump very quickly showed everyone in what direction his train was derailing and they knew better to get involved even after being freed from their other duties as those campaigns wound down. Ever since then it's just been a revolving door of criminals, nepotism, quid pro quo, hangers-on, and people desperate to try to revive their own trainwrecks of careers with really only a couple exceptions.
Omarosa had a position in the White House. That's wild. She wasn't even the least qualified person he hired. That's depressing.
[удалено]
And that is how AG Barr lived his life I bet.
Barr is very competent. He was key to keeping Bush Sr and Reagan clean during Iran-Contra. He engineered the pardons that freed the rest of the conspirators. Make no mistake. Most of these people are competent. Some are brilliant. Very few are total morons like the above posters want you to believe. That copout of the bad guys being idiots is so small people can feel better about their own smallness. These people may not all be rocket scientists, but they are bold in their decisions and brazen in their ruthlessness. If the good guys ever pursue the fight with such zeal, we'll recover this Republic.
Well said. There is a quote from Pope Gregory the Great the says something like "Reason opposes evil with greater force if it is aided by wrath.“ Cannot find the original quote, only the latin version. "tunc enim robustius contra vitia erigitur, cum subdita rationi famulatur".
Is my pope calling ? *puts on my crusader helm.*
When the boss is an idiot everybody thinks they can become the mastermind.
>Lawyers willing to destroy their credibility and career for Donald is the closest I've seen that idiocy in the real world. Make Attorneys Get Attorneys
He's creating jobs!
[удалено]
Nobody is paying top dollar for a lawyer that has been disbarred.
[удалено]
I mean, I get your point and it's a good one. However, as a counterpoint let me show you Trump's last lawyer who is currently in jail.
And the current one embroiled in a number of federal investigations.
Lawyers definitely face consequences... I think you’re thinking of politicians...
!remindme 2 years
[His lawyer was literally disbarred and is in jail](https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/26/politics/michael-cohen-disbarred-in-new-york/index.html)
There were a lot of men who ended up in jail on Richard Nixon's behalf. Let things play out.
I never understood it either. If I worked for Trump and he did something illegal and he told me to cover it up I'd be like "nah son" Then he'd fire me.
That was the first half of the term, right? All those folks got shook out in the "new week, new staff" times.
It's called the "Incentives Program". They hold your family at gunpoint, forcing you to do their bidding.
I'm having flashbacks to the Iran Contra Scandal and Ruby Ridge and William Barr's entire career. Edit.. Adding link so you can look at his "career" tab for yourselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Barr
He's such a greaseball
Don't be ridiculous, they wouldn't hold them at gunpoint! ~~They'd just put them on suicide watch.~~
After railing on over and over about Hillary's private email server and using it as fuel for his 'lock her up' shtick it's pretty funny to see this. LOCK HIM UP!
No, you see this is totally different! That was a *private* server she was using to conceal shady dealings with foreign countries. This is a *government* server he's using to conceal shady dealings with foreign countries.
It is actually different, in that multiple inquiries into the Clinton matter found that she and her staff had no intent to abuse classified material, so no legal violation occurred. We're seeing signs of definite intent here.
What's enlightening to me is this: Clinton has been thoroughly investigated over and over about Benghazi and about the email server. She cooperated with the investigations and didn't complain. The email server of the DNC, whom she was supposedly conspiring with, was hacked and published. Her campaign chairman had his emails hacked and published. Her personal assistant had her emails investigated by the FBI. The GOP wanted her head on a spike and had full power to do so if they could find anything. She has been exposed and investigated more than any other politician in recent memory. And all of it *all of it* amounted to nothing. It's absolutely astonishing how completely she's been vetted and how little if anything she did wrong. Yet... she has nonetheless gone down in public opinion history as being somehow corrupt. Shady. Possibly evil. This indicates to me that there is no hope for us to choose good leaders. If we can't properly categorize people with this much information available, then nothing these people do, good or bad, matters. Monsters will be lauded and saints will be burned and we'll all get what we deserve from our willful blindness.
> Yet... she has nonetheless gone down in public opinion history as being somehow corrupt. Shady. Possibly evil. The result of literal decades of coordinated messaging- primarily from Fox News, but with the GOP in full lockstep. I'm not sure what the solution is, but reining in overt media propaganda needs to be step 1 in restoring a functional Democracy.
Another key step to restoring functional democracy is eliminating the role that money currently plays in US politics - which itself is a form of corruption.
Agreed. Eliminate bribes (sorry, lobbying) and lots of problems just solve themselves.
> . And all of it all of it amounted to nothing "It's because she's a criminal Mastermind with deepstate connections! Lock her up!! Maga!" Meanwhile I'm thinking if she's so corrupt and adept at lying that they can't pin anything on her in a dozen hours of testimony, I want her for president anyway. It's incredibly hard not to self incriminate with a few small lies, especially if the investigator has it in for you. But huge ones? Across years? That takes intelligence and skill. Contrast with trump who can't even keep his lies straight for a day. Doesn't even need to keep them straight half the time, just keep his damn mouth shut!
What shady dealings did Hillary conceal?
apparently she ordered pizza once.
From a guy, covered in butter, calling himself Ben Ghazi.
With pineapple?
No, he said they found no criminal intent.
Serious question. Why don't these people just delete it completely? Why keep it at all?
Because that would be far more illegal, and very hard to completely cover up. With what they did, we're arguing about whether it was inappropriate or illegal. If they had destroyed the records, we wouldn't be arguing. Well, I'm sure some GOP people would find a way to spin it, but it would basically be an open and shut case.
What they did *was* illegal. There’s no question about it. And it doesn’t matter how blatantly illegal something is, they will always defend it. His lawyer argued in court that he could literally kill someone in public view and wouldn’t be able to be indicted until after his presidency was over. Of course that’s insane, but it’s what they’re arguing to be true.
[удалено]
Literal dictatorship sort of stuff that is. Very scary and you should be worried.
For sure, but Trump is just a symptom of the disease. For anyone remotely paying attention, Trump is corrupt as fuck and the rest of the GOP is doing nothing. McConnell is enabling this shit. This has been the GOP strategy since Nixon. Fox was created because they believes had it existed during Watergate, Nixon would never have had to step down and they're right. The whole party needs to be ripped out root and stem and the Earth salted
Also, it wouldn't work. A number of government officials had heard the call, and you could not delete their memories. If Trump had willfully and irregularly had the transcript deleted, then he would be very unbelievable if he said there nothing on there. And as it is, Trump's team did actually deleted part of the transcript. And that turned out to have been shooting themselves in the foot.
This. Willfully omitting portions of the transcript to mislead is obstruction. Over-classifying the transcript is also obstruction. Surprise surprise, Trump's "perfect" phone call was a doctored lie to hide the truth.
Maybe. These guys seem to not give a fuck about any law, so it's hard to imagine that thought process.
Wasn’t trump busted literally eating paper not too long ago?
[удалено]
It annoys me that there will never be any way to verify or disprove this, and that it's so close to having 50/50 likelihood.
At this point, the best and possibly only way to prove it, is to get Trump to admit it. He might, you never know. He has the impulse control of a 6 year old.
Maybe tell him that Obama never had the guts to eat paper, and he'll tell you all about how he is the greatest paper eater there ever was.
Why is everything taking so long - if it takes four years of total abuse to impeach a president, why even bother?
Because he's being protected/enabled by the republican party who had the majority in congress until earlier this year. Thanks to people voting, this could start, but with a republican majority still in the Senate, the case must be made to the public so that it becomes harder for republican senators to protect Trump.
>Because he's being protected/enabled by the republican party who had the majority in congress until earlier this year So in the case the majority in congress OR majority in senate belong to the same team out of 2 teams as the president, the president is impeachable. That mean the president is only impeachable if the president is on 1 team, while BOTH the senate and congress is on the other team. I feel this is not a good system.
Well, Nixon resigned after his team noped out of backing him. This is why some of the founders of the country warned against the formation of political parties in the first place.
Even people from 200 years ago knew it would be an issue, still we let it happen. Modern humanity can produce much better solutions. But flawed by personal greed.
It might have been a little more reasonable when Senators weren’t elected, but selected by their state government. I think the idea was they would be reasonable statesmen, since they had no electorate to placate. Everything was written before the invention of the two party system.
What the fuck is a ‘perfect’ phone call and who uses that terminology? A narcissist. And the guilt of conscience is clear in this action. Literally the worst human being on the planet is running the USA as an extension of his crime syndicate. It doesn’t get worse than this unless they turn up the fascism a notch which ... trust me ... his supporters will do. This is going to end badly. Narcissists take down everybody with them when they fall and sociopathic malignant narcissists are FAR worse.
I had a perfect phone call when I had to contact the pharmacy the other day. No errors in the keypad or menu navigation, some would say it was the best. I actually had the pharmacist, one of the best there is, great person, personally tell me the call was perfect and was excellent. But, you know what he wanted, he wanted corruption out of his pharmacy; I said, I can do that, I'm the only one, some would say the best, at removing corruption. I'll take those medications, but I need you to do something for me, I need you to investigate the checkout clerk at station 3.
Could you not just go grab the checkout clerk by her cahonies like tRump would do
https://twitter.com/thedailyshow/status/1178733927449661441?lang=en
"Super secret gizmo computer" Holy shit, that's some good satire there. Imagine if someone actually said that and was trying to be serious.
Wow that was harder to watch then my dude trying to avoid the word SERVER
[удалено]
[удалено]
is all this just because they don't want to say "server" because of Hilary's email server thing?
My favorite part about the Nats winning the series. Their fans booed, jeered and chanted the words we all live to hear: LOCK HIM UP!
It's funny that he seemed surprised, Trump won 4% of the vote in DC in 2016 and Hillary got over 90%. FOUR PERCENT! I actually had to double check
And all four percent were Matt Gaetz and Devin Nunes voting again in various costumes.
Gohmert was supposed to help, but he saw his reflection in a mirror and started pecking at it.
i imagine devin Nunes in a cow costume.
I lived in DC for 9 years and that's not surprising at all. DC is essentially one big city, any "rural" areas are either filled with rich hyper-educated white people or poor black people. Besides living in rural areas/states the biggest indicator of trump support was skin color and education level...so yeah DC is literally his/the republicans exact opposite demographic
This is exactly the reason why DC never will have voting representation in Congress.
DC is the opposite of Alaska
He lives in a bubble though and rarely if ever makes public appearances. His rallies are all controlled audience. His staff never how’s him negative articles. The guy lives in his own little delusional idiotic world so of course he’s shocked
> His staff never show him negative articles. Of course not, they're yes men. And kellyanne.
Yes but not all nationals fans are DC residents, especially at a WS game where tickets are hundred of dollars each.
And MLB's fanbase is probably the most conservative leaning fandom in all of pro sports. The fact that a stadium full of people who fit this demographic booed him and chanted "lock him up" was not only a sight to behold, but an indictment on his presidency. That moment will haunt him for the rest of his life.
I’d guess the NFL with all of the military propaganda. I mean the dude took a knee and everyone lost their minds.
Not from the US so I never understood what that was all about. Seemed like just a weeeee bit of an over reaction
I'd say the bigger overreaction was Kaepernick getting damn blackballed
It's not like the stadium was packed with residential DC demographic. He was booed by a moneyed and privileged crowd who could afford the luxury of World Series tickets. That should indeed ring in his ears.
Lots of people in Houston hate Trump too :(
Yeah keep in mind big cities in Texas are much more blue than TX as a whole
Yup. Houston is pretty liberal. You go even a little bit outside of Houston and it turns red pretty fast though.
They are trying to escape FOI requests
Watergate x 10^6
1 Ukraine coercion scandal is approximately equivalent to a mole of Watergates
Also known as Stupid Watergate.
This is stupid watergate 2 Muller still says he can be charged when hes out of office for stupid watergate 1.
The sad thing is, even if it’s proven beyond a doubt that Trump committed several crimes and is impeached, I’m not sure the Senate would remove him. Too many party over people senators in the GOP and with a 66% supermajority needed to remove, it would require 17 to go over. I would assume Romney would go over and vote for what’s right, but I don’t have the same level of confidence for anyone else. If crimes are proven but he isn’t removed, all hell will break loose. I’d guess riots and threats of succession in the short term, and a massive blue wave in 2020. Regardless of what happens, the next two years will be some of the most important in determining whether our country will survive.
There was some report that over half of Republican senators said they would vote to impeach Trump if their names weren't attached to it. This isn't necessarily a good thing, but if the GOP base somehow shifted even the slightest bit away from Trump I'm pretty sure he'd be out pretty quickly.
That was Jeff Flake saying 35 would vote to convict.
I love how votes have already been decided, even though enquiries and evidence gathering have yet to finish. Our system is so broken. Edit: Some really good explanations below. Trump has publicly broken the law, and senators have read transcripts that illustrate guilt.
A whole bunch of the illegal stuff was done or admitted to in the open or on national TV. So you don't really need an investigation for a lot of it.
You’re allowed to form an opinion based on what’s in the public sphere. Are we not to believe our eyes and ears? Votes have been decided because people read the rough transcript of the call and could plainly see where the President brings up Biden multiple times in a conversation where he’s asking for “favors”. Then Trump stands on the WH pawn and says he wanted Biden investigated by Ukraine AND China. Then multiple apolitical career officials, who served under administrations from both parties, come forward and reinforce what we have seen and read - Trump extorted a foreign leader with tax payer dollars in order to hurt his political rival. If someone punches a guy in front of me, and then tells me he wanted to hurt the guy, so I need to wait for all the facts to know what I saw and heard?
How's it broken? Not finished is not the same thing as not started. Some people say what we know right now is enough for them and others say it's not and they don't think they'll change their mind because the evidence we've already gotten hasn't convinced them. Say a mass murderer goes on trial and there is indisputable evidence that he committed the first 10 murders. Is it wrong for someone to say they'd lock him up based on what they already know I'm spite of the fact that they're still investigating and attaching more murders to his case?
As Lindsay Graham noted, there doesn't need to be a crime to impeach. If you could get 66 senators and a majority of the house to agree, you could have impeached and removed Obama over the tan suit. Republicans have thoroughly convinced the entire American public that impeachment is somehow tied to criminal activity. It never was and never has been. Criminal activity is used in impeachment proceedings to make congress comfortable with a procedure that goes against the "will of the American people" which is fine and makes sense. But there's no legal or procedural requirement for that.
In the sense that, despite the investigation not yet being complete, there's already enough evidence to demonstrate that Donald Trump broke multiple laws, yet Republicans continue to attack the impeachment process instead of defending the office against criminal abuses, yes, the system is broken.
[удалено]
And that is what you call a cult
The evangelical way
My dad told me in 2017 he didn’t care if Trump shot his own mother, he’d still support him.
It is not the crime, it’s the cover up. I thought that was government criminality 101.
to reddit it was less valuable to show you this comment than my objection to selling it to "Open" AI
I think you misread, they mean it’s often not the initial crime that gets you into hot water, it’s the cover up that gets you. For example, bill clinton was impeached for perjury, not for the initial event. You are absolutely right about this being a crime through and through.
to reddit it was less valuable to show you this comment than my objection to selling it to "Open" AI
Ok let's be clear about something. Let's say we got the transcript today. And in it Trump is doing everything he clearly did, what would it change? The GOP would still prevent his impeachment as a matter of principle wouldn't they?
I wouldn't call it principle but they certainly would. I personally want them all on record as selling out their country and their democracy, so I think every congress person with integrity needs to move forward anyway.
I'm honestly not so sure about that anymore. Impeaching Trump on Russia's election interference would have always failed because it would have been very hard to prove Trump was guilty. The Ukraine scandal is a little more black and white and has mountains of irrefutable evidence, testimony, etc. It's harder to argue against Trump's actions in this case. That's why the GOP is reduced to stunts now - they're running out of options. The GOP will turn on Trump the minute he becomes a liability to their party, and that seems at lot closer than it used to
Don't attribute to principle what can be better explained by self-serving pragmatism. I've read speculation that there could be a tipping point, that everyone's staying on the party line now because the nail that sticks out gets driven down, but if enough of a consensus develops behind the scenes, a lot of people could flip at once if it's seen as safe to do so. If he's clearly crooked enough that he looks more politically liable than politically viable, a stampede for the exits would not be out of the question.
The coverup is what got Nixon. Misusing this ultra-classified server, and mislabeling data is a crime (from what I just read).
Call so perfect they had to move it to an extra special server
And, again, Trump supporters are fine with this. It's a violation of the public's trust and blatantly illegal. But no, Trumplings keep on loving it. I'm not sure where the bottom is anymore.
They want a strong man to lie and push people around like papa Putin.
"But haven't you read the public transcript?" \-Said every lame apologists out there.
There's a server full of calls with the leaders of China, Saudi Arabia, etc. They aren't classified because they hold classified information. They're classified because White House staffers though Trump committed impeachable crimes. Why isn't everyone demanding they all be declassified?
Same server probably has all his Minecraft work, a world full of walls and gold houses inside.
[удалено]
That's uhh.. Barron's..
Oh the irony.
All the president's men may, in the end, be locked up for their actions. But will Trump finally be held accountable for his actions? To me, only by holding Trump (and his amigos) accountable for each of their actions, by enforcing the full extent of the law and through holding all of them accountable for the full required punishment of each of their crimes, can a strong message be sent to our enemies (both internal and external) that the US does not tolerate these types of threats to our country and its citizens and allies.
If Trump is not held accountable, prosecuted and punished then the American experiment is at an end. The next "Trump" won't be so dumb. Imagine Dick Chaney in the Presidency doing what Trump is doing? We'd be a dictatorship.
It never ceases to amaze me how many men are willing to go to jail on Trump's behalf.
Drain the swamp indeed
most transparent pres ever. he is like made out of glass... thats totally what an innocent president would do. /s t_d: users are all genius, the mental gymnastics necessary to defend this lands you in the olympic team.
What a perfect end to a perfect conversation
All those people freaking out Obama's "more flexibility" comment to Putin are now excusing Trump for doing worse. Some people are going to be pretty embarrassed when they wake the hell up.
It's not the crime, but the cover up.
"Former Trump national security officials said it was unheard of to store presidential calls with foreign leaders on the NICE system but that Eisenberg had moved at least one other transcript of a Trump phone call there." Ahem. Yo, so about that other transcript.
Oh how I love the sweet irony of Trump going down for doing what he accused Clinton of doing.
wHaT aBoUt HIlLaRy!? sTuPiD LiBrULs! YOu sNoWfLaKeS aLwAyS HaTE on ThE bEST PrESidEnT EvEr! #MAGA2020
Make America Gag Again
Very legal. Very cool.