dude wtf thats a lot to unpack
I fully expect this to fall on deaf ears, but since you asked, here goes. The Democrats had no choice other than to impeach Trump. The Constitution mandates that a President who behaves as if he is above the law must be held accountable. Since the POTUS cannot be charged with a crime while in office, impeachment is the only available check on his power.
but what does it accomplish? also have not seen anything "above the law"
Regardless of whether you think the impeachment is a sham, can we not agree that it's unprecedented for any elected official in US history, let alone the President, to completely stonewall a congressional investigation without any perceivable consequences? He ordered all witnesses in the executive branch to not testify (some have defied him) and his administration has provided no documents to a co-equal branch of government with legitimate oversight authority. If Trump has nothing to hide, then why has he gone to such extraordinary lengths to obstruct the scrutiny of his "perfect" phone call? This Ukraine scheme, of course, was not limited to one phone call. It unfolded over the majority of 2019 until it was exposed.
i find a couple of these statements disconcerting.
1) your government is setup far superior to mine. i envy your system of checks and balances. 2 parties is retarded, but i digress. The executive and legislative have a conflict, executive reaches out to judicial to resolve...legislative proceeds anyway. no question you can label this a delay tactic by trump, but the fact remains the house should wait for a court ruling. and so should you. if the courts rule against trump and he still blocks testimony, then you have a much better argument. as it stands, trump has a better one.
2) your comment about "nothing to hide" is inching eerily close to a popular leftist position that people be considered guilty until proven innocent. i find this disturbing. its up to the state to prove guilt, not to say "well show us everything and let us find something". very disturbing, especially considering trump has been under constant scrutiny and attack since 2016 and they still haven't found any evidence of criminality and constantly changed their accusations.
If Trump truly wanted to investigate corruption in Ukraine, why would he back-channel the investigation through Rudy fucking Giuliani rather than have the appropriate intelligence agencies/government officials investigate the corruption he was so allegedly concerned about? Why did it go unchallenged when [$1m Trump donor] Gordon Sondland testified that all Zelensky needed to do was announce an investigation into Biden on TV? Doing an actual investigation was never necessary. Why is it only now that Trump's bleeding heart for Ukrainian corruption suddenly became relevant? I would love it if someone addressed these questions one-by-one.
because trump is a boorish, incompetent boob?
i think it's pretty obvious he heard about the bidens and felt "wtf they are constantly on my ass, why not look into this".
we can both consider this inappropriate but with zelensky unwilling to support the claim of quid pro quo or bribery, you're left to constant assumptions and semantics.
is trump guilty? i think probably but you dont have a smoking gun. furthermore i'd also assume 100% of presidents have done this exact same thing. while i think its inappropriate, i also dont see it as a big deal at all. i mean we were fine with fast and furious, we were fine with snowden's evidence of mass surveillance...are we now going to be outraged over stupid aid funding to stupid ukraine? *yawn*
Let's stop pretending this is all about Ukraine though. Ukraine is simply the continuation of a long pattern which pre-dated Trump as President. Trump's entire adult life has been a perpetual cycle of cheat, lie, steal, deceive, betray, sue, walk away (not necessarily in that order). If the unchallenged timeline of events in the Ukraine story are true, Trump was on the phone with Zelensky asking for his little favor the next day after Mueller's congressional testimony. Dude, you literally just beat a years-long special council investigation about election meddling and you're on the phone the next fucking day trying to abuse your Presidential authority to cheat in the next election? I don't like the guy, but it's hard to say that he doesn't have balls of steel.
trump is a boorish, incompetent boob. everyone that voted for him knew this in advance. let him have his mandate.
Let's play pretend and imagine if Obama or Hillary were in office doing this. Really try to imagine the people they had or would have had in their cabinet and put the words of Barr/Mulvaney/etc. into the mouths of those people. If you try to say this wouldn't make you seethe with anger, I don't believe you. No matter how you feel about Hillary (I don't like her either), she sat and testified in person for 11 hours during the Benghazi hearings and answered pretty much every question posed to her in detail and strolled out of the place without a mark on her. These days it's almost nostalgic to reminisce about the old days of quasi-accountability in politics.
obama and clinton much better at this than trump is.
no question there is partisan hackery afoot here and would be if tables were turned. i think it was clintons impeachment which set a horrible precedent...this just moves the goalposts. if the goal here was to impeach the president every single time the house is controlled by a different party, congrats, this sham of an impeachment sealed that deal. the founders made it hard to remove someone from office. now it's going to become a meaningless waste of house time every 4-8 years. so...enjoy that i guess.
Another argument you guys like to make is that Pelosi and the Democrats have been champing at the bit to impeach Trump early and often for the tiniest little infraction. In reality, Nancy Pelosi had been extremely reluctant to impeach because she was well aware of how divisive it would likely become. It was obvious to everyone that impeachment would be a foolish and unnecessary political risk, particularly due to the math in the Senate. She didn't impeach over banning Muslims. She didn't impeach over separating families and putting children and babies in jail indefinitely ("Obama did it first!!!" No. Just no.). She didn't impeach over misappropriating Pentagon funds to build a pointless wall. She didn't impeach over the Russia investigation. There was absolutely no shortage of events that would have caused most/all other prior Presidents to be impeached, if they didn't resign first.
just minor corrections here. pelosi and the establishment dems didnt want to. they were forced to by the radical left pull inside the party.
as for that pull within the party, that started literally the day of his inauguration.
Democrats as a whole consistently pushed back against the idea of impeachment until Ukraine. After the whistleblower story became public, despite the massive political risk, impeachment became a matter of principle for the Democrats.
probably better not to use a term "as a whole".
there's no principle here. it's petty and ridiculous and will cost them 2020. hope it was worth it.
Let's not forget that this whole scandal began because Trump was coerced by circumstances--circumstances of his own making--into openly admitting that he had exploited the office of the Presidency to gain an unfair advantage in the 2020 election. This was repeated by himself on the White House lawn, and further corroborated by Mick Mulvaney during a press conference. Trump cheated, and there are absolutely no signs that he intends to stop cheating. This is precisely why Democrats cannot wait until the 2020 election to let the voters decide. Even if Trump is not removed by the Senate, it would be a dereliction of duty for the House to allow any President to cheat in an election without attempting to check him. That would be an unacceptable precedent to set.
Change my mind.
unfair advantage? cheat in an election? im confused by these statements.
obama/clinton did the same to trump. even wiretapped him. all trump did was ask about the truth into bidens' dirty dealings. how is that cheating? do you not care if biden did something inappropriate to remove a prosecutor? because you seem to care A LOT if trump did something inappropriate. apply your standards equally. the way i'm applying my standards is that they are all bad, all corrupt, all do this exact same thing and i choose not to think it's a big deal or a hill to die on.
