SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 2021
Removed? Tried/convicted? Disqualified?: Should Donald J. Trump have been impeached this second time around?
We're forced to admit we're not sure. Once you're "in blood stepped in so far," there's no good way to get out or wade o'er.
It may be that the instant impeachment kept our disordered commander-in-chief from engaging in even crazier conduct as January 20 drew near. To cite one example, he didn't try to start a foreign war.
For that we should be grateful. That said, once he had departed the White House, should we have proceeded with the Senate "trial?" Should that trial have been delayed, permitting further investigation?
And not only that! If the commander had been convicted, should he then have been disqualified from seeking future office? Should he have been disqualified by a simple majority vote? Should we try to disqualify him now, through use of the Fourteenth Amendment?
To all those questions, we'd say we aren't sure (at best). Once you're in a mess this bad, there's rarely a good way out.
In Impeachment I and Impeachment II, our overall view has been this:
Removal from office is a necessary tool, but our system doesn't run on impeachment; our system runs on elections. We're reminded of two events from 1998.
In 1998, Bill Clinton was impeached by the House on a "too much oral sex" rap. In our previous 206 years of presidential history, we'd only had one such impeachment. That had occurred in 1868, as an offshoot of our nation's Civil War!
At the time, some pundits were saying that the impeachment of Clinton might normalize the practice—might lead to regular future impeachments.
That seemed unlikely to us at the time, but threats of impeachment did become more common after that. In this New York Times report, Mark Leibovich has now suggested that performative impeachment might become common in the future. We can't say that prediction is wrong.
Some sages were predicting that outcome back in 1998. Along the way, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) offered some good sound advice:
NADLER: The effect of impeachment is to overturn the popular will of the voters. We must not overturn an election and remove a president from office except to defend our system of government or our constitutional liberties against a dire threat.
And we must not do so without an overwhelming consensus of the American people. There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment supported by one of our major political parties and opposed by the other. Such an impeachment will produce the divisiveness and bitterness in our politics for years to come. And will call into question the very legitimacy of our political institutions.
Nadler was speaking of impeachment itself, not necessarily of removal from office.
He said there should never be a one-party impeachment. Except at times of terrible danger, we'd call that good sound advice.
Regarding removal from office, Nadler's point is even stronger. Of course, given the way Senate politics works, and given the need for a two-thirds vote. there could virtually never be a one-party removal from office.
Our system does suffer, in ways Nadler described, from heavily partisan impeachments. That doesn't mean that this latest impeachment was wrong. It means there may be a price to be paid.
In our view, the deepening craziness of Donald J. Trump presented a special challenge. In our view, politicians and journalists here in Our Town only heightened that challenge in recent years by refusing to discuss his apparent cognitive/psychiatric disorder—most especially, by refusing to discuss his apparent medical disorders in a sympathetic way.
(As we've noted in the past, no such discussion could have unfolded in an intelligent way. Our public discourse is too primitive to permit any such outcome.)
We've mentioned two events from 1998—Jerry Nadler's good advice, and the warning that flimsy impeachments might become more common.
Now, we'll mention two events from this very month. In each case, it seems to us that the event we mention made Our Town look bad.
We start with an analysis offered by one of Donald Trump's lawyers. We refer to the widely mocked Michael van der Veen. We offer a brief side point:
Last Wednesday evening, Rachel Maddow was still laughing and clowning about Trump's lawyers twenty minutes into her program. She was especially hatrd on van der Veen, a fellow who lacks the Rhodes Scholar sheen this corporate star offers Our Town.
Brian Williams was also mocking van der Veen. MSNBC's ditching of transcripts means that we can't show you the various things they said.
Having said that, we'll add this:
Our Town is strongly inclined to behave that way. We're strongly inclined to have our former Rhodes Scholars mock such others who aren't.
It's the stupidest thing a person can do. Our unnamed, top-ranking cable star has behaved this way from the start.
Van der Veen was a bit rough-hewn, but we thought he was rather effective. We were embarrassed for Our Town when he discussed the repetitive claim by our House managers that the disordered commander-in-chief had said the word "fight" twenty times in his January 6 speech.
They said it and said it and said it again, playing us every time. On Friday February 12, van der Veen played the videotape of all twenty utterances. We thought it was one of the most intelligent bits of exegesis we've ever seen on our home TV screen.
It's true! On January 6, the commander gave one of his standard meandering speeches, going on and on and on. Much of what he said that day was utterly pathetic—was barely this side of sane.
But just so you can understand why The Others don't think Our Town is so great, here are six of the twenty uses our tribunes kept yapping about:
TRUMP (1/6/21): As you know the media has constantly asserted the outrageous lie that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. You ever see these people? “While there is no evidence of fraud…” Oh, really? Well, I’m going to read you pages. I hope you don’t get bored listening to it.
Promise? Don’t get bored listening to it, all those hundreds of thousands of people back there. Move them up, please. Yeah. All these people, don’t get bored! Don’t get angry at me, because you’re going to get bored because it’s so much. The American people do not believe the corrupt fake news anymore. They have ruined their reputation.
But you know, it used to be that they’d argue with me, I’d fight. So I’d fight, they’d fight. I’d fight, they’d fight. Boop-boop. You’d believe me, you’d believe them. Somebody comes out, you know? They had their point of view, I had my point of view. But you’d have an argument.
Now what they do is they go silent. It’s called suppression. And that’s what happens in a communist country. That’s what they do. They suppress. You don’t fight with them anymore, unless it’s a bad story. They have a little bad story about me, they’ll make it ten times worse and it’s a major headline.
But Hunter Biden, they don’t talk about him. What happened to Hunter? Where’s Hunter? Where is Hunter? They don’t talk about him.
That's the speech of a punch-drunk Palooka, a disordered fellow who's out on his feet and is barely hanging on.
Regarding Covid, regarding the election, Trump had been making such punch-drunk orations on a remarkably regular basis all through the previous year. That said, there you see six (6) of the twenty times he said the word "fight" during his ludicrous speech.
Obviously, those silly statements had little to do with trying to incite those "hundred of thousands of people" to stage a deadly riot at the Capitol. But our tribunes stood up and pretended otherwise, over and over again.
Van der Veer went through the rest of the twenty uses of the word "fight." When he did, it was embarrassing for our side.
Our response? Brian and Rachel mocked van der Veer's Philly accent. This is the dimwitted way Our Town has played it since the dawn of time.
We'll mention one other embarrassing moment which emerged during the trial. This embarrassing moment involved videotape of Our Town's leading House manager on January 6, 2017, three days after he began his tenure in the House.
Jamie Raskin is a good, decent person, but this was embarrassing stuff. In his role at (outgoing) vice president, Joe Biden was trying to certify the electoral votes which had elected Donald J. Trump. As Biden tried to muddle through, of our tribunes were being highly performative. Three days into his House career, a good decent person said this:
RASKIN (1/6/17): I have an objection because 10 of the 29 electoral votes cast by Florida were cast by electors not lawfully certified.
BIDEN: Is it signed by a senator?
RASKIN: Not as of yet, Mr. Vice President.
BIDEN: In that case, the objection cannot be entertained. The objection cannot be entertained. The debate is not in order.
"Not as of yet," the performative tribune said.
We found that embarrassing (and disappointing) as we watched the videotape during the trial.. If you want to know why many Others may not hold us in the highest regard, we'd suggest that you consider behaviors which sometimes occur in Our Town.
Our view? We thought the House managers made a compelling case on Wednesday, January 10. By the end of the week, we had come to think less well of them as a group.
They combined absolute certainty in their cause with the kind of silly tricks which included their constant claims about those twenty uses of the word "fight." Meanwhile, as we finish today, we'll mention something Chuck Schumer said.
Last Saturday, Donald J. Trump won "acquittal" by a 43-57 vote. (Truly, Trump is a master at winning with well under half the votes.)
After the Senate vote, Chuck Schumer rose to speak, followed by Mitch McConnell. As he closed his speech, Schumer said something which strikes us as almost definitively wrong:
SCHUMER (2/13/21): This trial was about the final acts of a president who represents the very antithesis of our first president, and sought to place one man before the entire country, himself. Let the record show, let the record show, before God, history, and the solemn oath we swear to the constitution, that there was only one correct verdict in this trial, guilty.
And I pray that while justice was not done in this trial, it will be carried forward by the American people who above any of us in this chamber determine the destiny of our great nation. I yield the floor.
We agree with Schumer's general statement about what Donald J. Trump "represents." Concerning the highlighted statement, we will only say "Wow."
"Let the record show, before God...that there was only one correct verdict?" It's almost never true, in our human affairs, that there's only one correct assessment.
Nor can you run a modern continental nation on the basis of such tribal certainty. That's especially true if that nation is going to run on "the consent of the governed."
Was guilty "the only possible verdict?" We can't necessarily say that it was.
That said, we looked back at the rambling, innocuous ways Donald J. Trump used the word "fight" in that ludicrous rambling speech. When we did, it it didn't make us admire the way the trial was run by the House members from Our Town.
Our tribunes were running a bit of a con as they kept telling the nation that he'd said the word "fight" twenty times. We thought van der Veer performed an excellent bit of textual analysis as he showed us, all twenty times, what the Palooka had actually said.
Van der Veer did an excellent job with that. When he did, Brian and Rachel mocked him for his choices of words and for his Philly accent.
We frequently play it that way in Our Town. This may help explain why a badly disordered commander-in-chief—one who's likely a sociopath—is so widely loved in so many other towns.
Final point:
If the commander had been convicted, should he have been disqualified by a simple majority vote? Should we be trying to disqualify him now, through the Fourteenth Amendment, which would also require a simple majority vote?
Our tribunes have said yes each time. In a nation which runs on elections and on consent of the governed, the notion strikes us as less than perfectly sane.
We're lucky we got that guy out of office. Can we possibly learn to persuade?
"Should Donald J. Trump have been impeached this second time around?"
ReplyDeleteBut of course, dear Bob: we love your liberal cult's clown shows.
Plus, it's certainly helped a number of humyn beings to recognize your hate-mongering zombie cult for what it is.
What's not to like?
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DeleteMao. You will be impoached in trump's spooge
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“He said there should never be a one-party impeachment. Except at times of terrible danger, we'd call that good sound advice.”
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think that was on Jan 6, Bob, a sightseeing tour of the Capitol?
‘Nor can you run a modern continental nation on the basis of such tribal certainty. That's especially true if that nation is going to run on "the consent of the governed."’
ReplyDeleteThe consent of the governed was that Biden become president.
Trump and his allies in Congress were trying to overrule the consent of the governed.
Bob wrote: "he didn't try to start a foreign war. For that we should be grateful."
ReplyDeleteIn fact, Trump has an enviable record of not starting a war and bringing peace. He was far superior to Obama and Bush in this respect.
Putin's enemy is the United States, so Trump went to war with that country instead. I'm sure if Trump had the time, or Putin wanted him to, Trump would have happily attacked a foreign nation as well.
DeleteBob claimed (accurately) that Trump almost started wars with Venezuela, China, North Korea, and Iran! Bob claimed (accurately) that Trump might start a war to stay in office! Why in the world would Bob say this?
DeleteFar superior to Obama? Go ahead and name them: all the wars he started. As in “far superior”. And while you’re at it maybe reflect on what train of thought Republicans who cheerleaded Bush’s tragic escapade in Iraq allows them now to gloat over Trump's isolationism. Given what Trump allowed to happen to the Kurds you could say he went to war with them by proxy.
DeleteBernie persuaded, and he got fucked over by the Dems. He would have been President otherwise.
ReplyDeleteDonald persuaded, and he got the entire GOP to follow, no questions asked.
That's USA politics in a nutshell.
Leroy
You are insane.
DeleteJoe Fucking Biden lost Florida because the Right was able to paint him as a far left Marxist Commie, who wants to give away all the money to lazy people, while taking away their freedoms (and not at all a long-time Senator from the uber-corporate friendly state of Delaware).
If they can paint Biden that way, Sanders would have been lucky to win only Vermont.
Also, in 2016, Sanders didn’t persuade enough Democratic primary voters to vote for him. Hillary won the nomination in a fair fight. If Dem voters preferring Hillary to Bernie is an example of “fucking over” Bernie, then that term doesn’t mean what you think it means.
DeleteYes
ReplyDeleteMcConnell found his technicality to avoid convicting Trump, and Somerby has found his. They are equally despicable, in my opinion.
ReplyDelete“We were embarrassed for Our Town when he discussed the repetitive claim by our House managers that the disordered commander-in-chief had said the word "fight" twenty times in his January 6 speech.”
ReplyDeleteThe House managers did not mention the number of times Trump used the word “fight.” They pointed to specific instances of it in the Jan 6 speech which could legitimately be construed as incitement, and put them in the context of Trump’s months-long lie about a stolen election and the pre-planned nature of the event.
“We'll mention one other embarrassing moment which emerged during the trial. This embarrassing moment involved videotape of Our Town's leading House manager on January 6, 2017, three days after he began his tenure in the House.”
ReplyDeleteIt is neither embarrassing nor relevant to the impeachment trial.
Trump was on trial here, not House or Senate members. What Raskin did was a procedural challenge to certain electoral votes, which House members are allowed to do. Trump is charged with trying to overturn the official electoral count by inciting a mob to a violent insurrection.
This is classic sleazy whataboutism from Trump’s lawyers.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, yes, my client, the reputed mob boss, talked for months about fighting his enemies, that they were trying to get rid of him, and yes, he called his friends together on that day and stoked their anger.
ReplyDeleteIn his speech he says “Kill my enemies”, but he also said “kill the lights, because we’re going to have a slide show.”
Thus you must acquit.
(Hey, it’s good enough for Bob Somerby.)
Remember that “gift” McConnell supposedly gave liberals, according to Somerby, who claims that McConnell agreed with all the claims of the House managers?
ReplyDeleteWell, that’s untrue.
McConnell said that Trump was “morally and practically” responsible, but not criminally:
“By the strict criminal standard, the president's speech probably was not incitement.”
Ok. Therefore, conviction in the Senate must surely be the appropriate action, because impeachment isn’t a criminal case. Nope:
“If President Trump were still in office, I would have carefully considered whether the House managers proved their specific charge.”
Note that McConnell specifically indicated that he did not even consider the House managers’ claims.
What is the upshot? That Trump escapes any actual, practical accountability for his “moral and practical” responsibility.
McConnell’s speech is a textbook example of equivocation.
Somerby frequently mentions Wittgenstein, who he claims pointed out the absurdity of philosophy, and how it’s all just “word games.”
ReplyDeleteAnd here Somerby is praising Trump’s shyster lawyers’ absurd word games over the word “fight.”
Somerby is attracted to the snark and gaslighting of Trump and the modern GOP, probably because he developed both of those techniques for his comedy act. He sees fellow travelers and, since he joins in their hatred of liberals, he approves of their behavior.
One gets the sense from this blog that it’s all a game, all performative outrage, and all very reflexively cynical baiting and trolling.
It should be noted that Trump’s lawyers didn’t use the insanity defense.
ReplyDeleteThat is Somerby’s own special contribution to Trump’s defense, which renders Trump’s entire legal defense strategy moot.
'This is the dimwitted way Our Town has played it since the dawn of time.'
ReplyDeleteYou mean your Town of hardcore, malevolent Trumptards ?
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