Still a Snowflake

Adding to her MAGA credentials, a Republicn congresswoman is joining the effort to rewrite Donald Trump's history as we learn

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said the allegations that Trump was guilty of colluding with the Russian government were false….

"I will be putting forward a resolution to void the fraudulent impeachment of President Trump during his first term in office. Russia collusion never happened," Luna wrote in a statement on social media.

She did not come up with this idea on her own because the effort of congressional Republicans

first reported by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed by a White House official, would allow Trump to claim a symbolic victory on a key grievance from his first term. But experts say it would have little legal significance, since the constitution provides no procedure for undoing an impeachment.

Trump is the first president in US history to be impeached twice. The first case, in 2019, centred on allegations that he abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, a political rival. He was acquitted by the Senate in February 2020.

The second followed the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, when members of Congress accused him of inciting an insurrection. He was again acquitted after leaving office.

According to the Journal, Trump and his allies are seeking a congressional resolution that would effectively expunge the impeachments from the historical record. While such a measure would carry no legal force, supporters view it as a symbolic repudiation of what they regard as politically motivated proceedings.

I will be putting forward a resolution to void the fraudulent impeachment of President Trump during his first term in office.

Russia collusion never happened. This has been proven by evidence released by ODNI Gabbard. It was a terrible lie that tore this country apart, and was…

— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) June 12, 2026

The two impeachments agains Donald Trump were not based on the Mueller report. The first, pertaining to Ukraine, had little to nothing to do with either "Russia collusion" or Donald Trump's status as a Russian asset and the other pertained to the coup attempt of 1/6/21. 

However, erasing the record has been an obsession of Donald Trump for several years. Even during the presidential campaign of 2024, there was an attempt to expunge the two impeachments of Donald Trump from the historical record, as the NBC affiliate in Birmingham, Alabama reported at the time.

The effort resumed after Trump began serving his second term. The New Republic noted last August 

The Smithsonian has removed Donald Trump from its exhibit on impeachments under pressure from the White House, reported The Washington Post. The remainder of the exhibit focuses on Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton, effectively returning the exhibit to the way it looked in 2008.

A temporary label had been plastered on the exhibit since 2021, playfully notifying visitors: “case under redesign (history happens).” The “American Presidency” wing’s updated signage now explains that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal” over the course of American history.

The change was the result of a White House–initiated content review in the wake of an art director’s ousting.

Of course, the two indictments of President Trump cannot be annulled, cancelled, repealed, rescinded, revoked, or voided. (Insert preferred synonym here ______ .)  Article I of the U.S. Constitution, which enumerates the powers of Congress, gives the House of Representatives the authority to impeach, and the US Senate the authority to convict, a federal official.

The document says nothing suggesting any authority to reverse an impeachement, and clearly neither body of Congress can do so. Congress can pass a resolution to pretend the impeachment(s) never occurred, just as it could pass one declaring that the winner of Super Bowl 60 was the New England Patriots. 

That would not erase the Seahawks' victory or championship. Of course, it would make Donald J. Trump feel good. And there is nothing more important to Donald Trump than feeling good, other than reipping off the American people and making the American people and his adversaries feel bad.

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McCarthy's Brief Moment

A newly released recording shows House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy

preparing to formally break from Trump in the aftermath of the deadly riot, just as House Democrats started drawing up an impeachment resolution.

“Again, the only discussion I would have with him is that I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign,” McCarthy said of the impeachment resolution. “Um, I mean that would be my take, but I don’t think he would take it. But I don’t know.”

McCarthy also suggested he was concerned Trump would ask him about obtaining a pardon from Mike Pence, who would have ascended to the presidency if Trump resigned. Joining McCarthy on the call was Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who was then the third-ranking Republican, along with other Republican leaders. They briefly discussed the prospect of Trump’s Cabinet invoking the 25th Amendment, which would allow Trump to be immediately removed from office, and McCarthy revealed he had spoken to Trump within the previous “couple days.”

“I would be highly surprised if President Trump allowed these left-of-center journalists and pundits to gain a victory by engaging in this warfare,” Jason Miller, a former Trump spokesman, told POLITICO. 

If this is "warfare," the bullets, bombs, and missiles are missing.  So was release of the information when it would have had an impact, determinative or otherwise, on President Trump. President 45 was impeached, for the second time, on January 13, 2020 and was acquitted by the Senate on February 13 after a trial which began on February 9. 

Neither release of the audio nor the conversation it captures casts any further light on the ex-president, who probably will forgive McCarthy once the latter pledges further allegiance to Donald the King.  Predictably, no one has taken credit for leaking the audio to New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin or Alexander Burns. It never hurts, however, to look to motive and the third highest-ranking House Republican is the obvious suspect:

After talking to some smart people in DC and elsewhere, the case that @Liz_Cheney leaked the @gopleader tape is weak.

The breadcrumbs lead back to a surprising quarter.

In related news...

How's your morning going, @EliseStefanik?

— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) April 22, 2022

 

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Hit Piece Falls Short

There is no reason Democrats should eat their own when Republicans glorify theirs. Mike Allen of Axios may be auditioning for a stand-up gig when he writes

Gov. Andrew Cuomo should be facing explicit calls to resign from President Biden on down, if you apply the standard that Democrats set for similar allegations against Republicans. And it's not a close call.

I don't remember Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell asking for Donald Trump's resignation.  It's true that the all 26 women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual harassment or assault allege that the misconduct took place before Trump was elected President. It's also true that he ordered payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels/Stephanie Clifford shortly before that election so that he might become President Donald Trump.

Why it matters: The #MeToo moment saw men in power run out of town for exploiting young women. Democrats led the charge. So the silence of so many of them seems more strange — and unacceptable by their own standards — by the hour.

The most notable man "run out of town" for sexual impropriety was Al Franken after charges of sexual impropriety, behavior which would have taken place before he was a US Senator. He was run out of town by Democrats, because that's what Democrats do.

Their only plausible explanation would be to argue that three women are exaggerating or misremembering things. This is precisely what Democrats said was unacceptable in GOP cases.

Democrats didn't say the behavior was unacceptable because they were committed by Republicans. They said it was unacceptable regardless of party. And they were wrong- wrong because each case deserves to be considered on its own merits rather than a blanket "believe women."  Men don't always tell the truth.  Unless women are of a super gender, they, too, are capable of exaggerating, forgetting details, or- occasionally- lying. It's the human condition.

One top New York Democrat told me the reaction has been "disheartening" — an approach by both parties of believing women "except if they accuse a member of your party."

As pointed out by Axios Sneak Peek on Sunday: Democrats hammered Donald Trump after "Access Hollywood," pilloried Brett Kavanaugh over Christine Blasey Ford and defended Joe Biden when he was accused of inappropriate touching.

The reference to Brett Kavanaugh is the most telling in this hit piece. Were Andrew Cuomo to have a sense of humor, he would urge an investigation of the allegations against him similar to the one conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of charges against Brett Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh was not serving in an elected position, had never served in an elective position, and had been nominated for a lifetime appointment. It would be (is) a lifetime appointment to the United States Supreme Court, to serve alongside a mere eight other individuals to make rulings which are not reviewable.

If ever there needs to be a thorough review by law enforcement of a nominee for any position, it would not be of an individual who was elected to his position and could not continue in the position without again facing the voters.  It would be of someone tapped to serve on the High Court.

Nonetheless, the FBI "investigation" of accusations against Brett Kavanaugh took a mere five days in which neither of the two principals- Kavanaugh and Ford- was interviewed. . One of the accusers, Deborah Ramirez, had been at a drunken dormitory party at Yale when, according to the authors of "The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation,"

a freshman named Brett Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her, prompting her to swat it away and inadvertently touch it. Some of the onlookers, who had been passing around a fake penis earlier in the evening, laughed.

Therefore, Ms. Ramirez's legal team

gave the F.B.I. a list of at least 25 individuals who may have had corroborating evidence. But the bureau — in its supplemental background investigation — interviewed none of them, though we learned many of these potential witnesses tried in vain to reach the F.B.I. on their own.

Two F.B.I. agents interviewed Ms. Ramirez, telling her that they found her “credible.” But the Republican-controlled Senate had imposed strict limits on the investigation. “‘We have to wait to get authorization to do anything else,’” Bill Pittard, one of Ms. Ramirez’s lawyers, recalled the agents saying. “It was almost a little apologetic.”

Nonetheless, maybe Donald Trump is a victim, as Jonathan Allen seems to believe.

Trump was a victim who bragged about routinely sexually assaulting women. He then got elected President, tried to pressure a foreign government into investigating his political rival, then obstructed an investigation into his actions, and gained nearly nearly unanimous support from his party's members of Congress. On his way out the door, he incited an insurrection against the United States government, receiving the support of the vast majority of those members of Congress. He now is extended the privileges of all former Presidents:  office space and staffing allowances; travel expenses (up to $1 million in costs annually); health annuities, lifetime Secret Service protection, and the right to burial with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery, next to individuals he has called "losers" and "suckers."

Whatever the future may hold for him, Trump has enjoyed a charmed life- and charmed presidency, thanks to a party whose leaders have found no crime, no grift, and no contempt for Americans unacceptable as long as it's committed by Donald Trump. When the governor of New York gets 5% of the breaks the 45th President has, or 20% what Brett Kavanaugh has, Mike Allen can legitimately accuse Democrats of hypocrisy.

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The Incredible Shrinking Rafael Edward

If there is one thing Donald Trump is right about (and there must be) it's Ted Cruz. The New York Daily News reports

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, bombarded with national criticism over a Cancun getaway as his frozen state shivered in the dark last week, said Tuesday that the incident illustrated “how ridiculously politicized” the country is — but he didn’t stop there.

“Here’s a suggestion, just don’t be a--holes,” said Cruz (R-Texas). “Yeah, like just you know treat each other as human beings. Have some degree, some modicum of respect." Somehow, that was not the fault of Heidi Cruz's friends, who leaked the information, nor to Mrs. Cruz herself, who, as an executive of Goldman Sachs feels so entitled as to flaunt a trip to coastal Mexico while her husband's state is being devastated. It was the fault of the press, you see.

Complaining about a paparazzi who photographed his wife wearing a bikini on the beach in Cancun, Cruz nonetheless added "Heidi is smoking hot, so I looked at the pictures and said, ‘Man, you look great.’” Fortunately, though he once called Ohio senator Sherrod Brown on the Senate floor a "complete ass," Cruz spared us his favorite "a" word in describing his wife's physique.

The whine took place on the podcast Ruth Less, not coincidentally begun soon after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. However, Cruz is more than peculiarly classless.  We recall March of 2016 when

After a super PAC unrelated to Cruz published an ad using a suggestive photo of Trump’s wife, Melania, from GQ, Trump laid the blame on Cruz anyway.

“Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad,” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!”

While it remains unclear what “beans” Trump was referring to, he posted an image on his Twitter account Wednesday another user had tweeted insulting the appearance of Cruz’s wife, Heidi Cruz. 

As the Texas Tribune pointed out in December

Cruz has proven in the past four years that he’ll stand by Trump in the president's most pressing times. During Trump's impeachment trial early this year, Cruz joined forces with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as part of the in-house impeachment advisory team and met with Trump and his lawyers to help “frame their legal strategy,” which ultimately contributed to the president’s acquittal.

And now, Cruz has been a leading voice in sowing doubt in Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat.

Cruz even collaborated with Trump's legal team during the more recent impeachment trial, when "after Democrats wrapped up their case against Trump"

Senators Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Mike Lee huddled for roughly an hour with Bruce Castor and David Schoen, evidently to go over strategy. “I just wanted to sit down and say, ‘Okay, what are y’all looking to put forward?’ and to share our thoughts in terms of where things are,” Cruz recalled in a Fox News interview Thursday evening. “And certainly what I urged to the Trump defense lawyers was to focus on [on the legal standard of incitement].” On Friday morning, CNN’s Kaitlin Collins reported that the three senators specifically intended to give Trump’s legal team “advice for the rebuttal” to Democrats’ arguments.

Although few if any senators of either party would confront their colleagues, this does not make for credible jurors.. Nor was Cruz credible when on his podcast he complained of the paparazzi's photograph "I will tell you,that she is pissed about." The senator was terribly concerned about his wife, once publicly humiliated by Donald Trump a few months before his boots were licked by Cruz.

And that is why Donald Trump understands Ted Cruz.  The Washington Post noted a year ago after Trump's first acquittal

at a Jan. 29 event celebrating the ratification of a new North American trade deal, Trump singled Cruz out for praise. “Thank you, Ted, for everything,” he said. “You’ve been incredible.”

Incredible.  That is one of the best descriptions ever of Ted Cruz- incredible, as in "not credible."

 

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Propagating Propaganda

Emerging from his basement, Donald Trump will soon be making his first public appearance, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, since leaving the presidency. So Chris Cuomo on Monday night interviewed the chairman of CPAC, veteran Republican strategist Matt Schlapp. They spoke about GOP claims of (imaginary) widespread voter fraud. But then the exchange turned (at 7:12 of the video below) to a related topic:

Schlapp: And you spent four years saying there was Russian collusion and that there was not- and that the election should be questioned and Hillary Clinton said Joe Biden should never, ever concede and this is like, this is like hypocrisy I've never seen.

Cuomo: Not only, hold on, hold on, this is why. Not only did I say there was collusion. I will say it now that there was collusion. Collusion is not a crime; it's a behavior. And Trump's people did what they do best. They did dumb things for bad reasons. But look, you made your arguments. I gave you your time. We'll look to see what happens at CPAC. You're welcome on the show.

Schlapp: Bob Mueller found no collusion, my friend. He did not find no collusion.

Cuomo: Collusion is not a crime. He wasn't even looking at it as such. Learn to read, my brother. It's right in the details. Good to see you. I gotta go.

Schlapp: There was nothing inappropriate with Russia in the 2016 election.

Cuomo: He never said that; never said it. I'm glad to offer you the platform. Let the people decide.

No collusion; nothing inappropriate with Russia in the 2016 election.  Following Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in June, 2018 about the Special Counsel's report, lawyers Barbara McQuade and Joyce White Vance explained in June 2019

Mueller spent almost 200 pages describing “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.” He found that “a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.” He also found that “a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations” against the Clinton campaign and then released stolen documents.

While Mueller was unable to establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians involved in this activity, he made it clear that “[a] statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.” In fact, Mueller also wrote that the “investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

Thanks in part to the pre-emptive report of then-Attorney General Barr which flagrantly misrepresented the Special Counsel's findings, the Republican base denies the link between the Trump campaign and Moscow. The likes of Matt Schlapp know better but are well-versed in Mythmaking 101.

Nonetheless, lies about the election of 2016 and of 2020 both serve to undermine public confidence in elections, thus laying the groundwork for accelerated voter suppression. It's not bad strategy, actually. for a party which knows it cannot win other than by preventing the other side from voting.

 

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Unserious Senator

I don't subscribe to the modern instinct, especially popular on the left, to demand everyone with whom there is a disagreement to "resign." However, if I did, my nominee would be Delaware senator Chris Coons, closely allied with Joe Biden. He appeared Valentine's Day on 'This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, at which time

"So you don't believe that a full trial, more witnesses, more documents giving us a sense of what was going on in the inside the White House, would have better served the cause of justice and accountability?" Stephanopoulos asked Coons.

Coons said he was impressed with the 57 votes that Democrats managed to get, the most bipartisan impeachment in the history of the country.

"They could have had 500 more witnesses, it wasn't going to change the outcome. Once Mitch McConnell made it clear he intended to acquit even despite the compelling evidence, what the House managers needed wasn't more witnesses or more evidence, what we all needed was more Republican courage," Coons said. "I, frankly, at that time did not think that spending months fighting over additional witnesses would have changed the outcome of this trial one bit."

Sen. Chris Coons defends decision to not have more witness testimony at Trump's impeachment trial: "What we needed was more Republican courage." pic.twitter.com/MdWwSivkNe

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 14, 2021

Senators need not have spent months fighting over additional witnesses.  Even if Republicans had demanded a hundred or more to slow the process, Democrats could have balked. That's what control of the Senate means- or at least does when Republicans control it, as they did when Mitch McConnell decided at President Trump's first impeachment that there would be no witnesses.

Moreover, the rough consensus going into Saturday morning was that there would be five (though possibly even fewer) Republicans voting to convict Trump. Instead, there were seven, suggesting that Democratic senators could not be certain that with the personal, passionate and emotional testimony of witnesses there would have been an acquittal. (That's apart from any other reasons to call witnesses.)

However, that was Coons' explanation for the decision of Democrats to unfurl the white flag of surrender. Or at least it was on Sunday morning after he got his lines straight because on Saturday morning

Frustrations rose among Senate Democrats. One Democrat familiar with the internal discussions said “it was clear the managers had no plan” and “didn’t know what their next step was.”

Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), a close ally of President Biden’s, visited the managers’ room off the Senate floor, according to a House aide. He told the managers any delay would cost Republican votes to convict — and potentially Democratic votes, too.

“The jury is ready to vote,” he told them. “People want to get home for Valentine’s Day.”

The Senate could have put off trial-related work till Tuesday, especially because Valentine's Day, 2021 is a Sunday, a fortuitous fact which seems to have escaped Coon's attention.

Valentine's Day is a swell day for an elite group- a mere 100 individuals entrusted with the work of governing the nation- to be home with their "significant others." So, too, would the wife of Howard Liebengood, of Jeffrey Smith, or of Brian Sicknick prefer to be with her husband on this occasion. However, due to the deaths of those law enforcement officers, closely related to the insurrection of January 6, they will be denied the privilege enjoyed by United States Senators.

 

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Better A Scumbag Than A Convicted Scumbag

It's just a hunch, but this guy may not be fond of Donald Trump:

And of course he incited them and then completely threw them under the bus because he thought they were tacky dirtbags.

Idiots thought they’d get pardons. https://t.co/eOibvPZ3s8

— Joshua Holland (@JoshuaHol) February 10, 2021

But while Donald Trump is a "ridiculous, obvious grifter," and weasel, he's no nincompoop.

Texas real estate agent Jenna Ryan, arrested for her participation in the Capitol riot, told a home-state reporter on January 15

I think we all deserve a pardon. I’m facing a prison sentence. I think I do not deserve that and from what I understand, every person is going to be arrested that was there, so I think everyone deserves a pardon, so I would ask the President of the United States to give me a pardon

Four days later, President Trump would issue 73 pardons and 70 commutations, for both the infamous and the relatively unknown.

Because a Senate vote for conviction would have been reached otherwise, those pardons were not extended to anyone arrested for the January 6 uprising against his/her own government. Unlike so many Republicans in the Senate, Donald Trump is not stupid, an unintended lesson from this tweet:

The footage the House managers have shown is sickening. Many GOP Senators who will ultimately vote not to convict Trump were making frantic calls to the White House to get him to say something. He didn’t and they will still vote against impeachment. How can they sleep at night?

— Mike Walker (@New_Narrative) February 10, 2021

Any criminal defense lawyer will tell her client to keep his mouth shut unless testifying under oath. Trump understood that anything he might have said could have (and should have) been used against him. He did not speak out against what was happening and, unless he acts out again before the Senate vote, will not be convicted.

He was given a heads up by the then-Senate Majority Leader. Mitch McConnell, who joined 43 of his GOP colleagues in voting to hold the proceedings unconstitutional, artfully warned Trump a week before the inauguration "I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate.”

It isn't only being thrown off Twitter and Facebook that is keeping the ex-Presient from making a foolish remark. He can still call in to Fox News, let alone OANN or Newsmax, to put on record anything he wishes. However, the ridiculous, scumbag grifter (or is it a ridiculous, grifter scumbag?) knows most of those senators who called into the White House will ultimately vote to acquit him while he holds on to his base. Not a bad strategy if you're Donald J. Trump.

 

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Do It

Donald J. Trump's legal team has turned down a request by the House impeachment managers that the former President testify in his upcoming trial. Prior to this expected rejection, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig offered a tweet thread in which he observed "Trump might simply defy- ignore- a subpoena," which would "push the limits of the law and look terrible politically."

Issuing a subpoena would put the former President into an even more difficult spot. Yet below, Norm Eisen can be seen remarking 

The House managers sent their letter, made the point, their point to the empty chair. Ah, there's no real, uh, end to be achieved to serving a subpoena that he won't answer.

 

Trump won’t show up live at trial because he can’t defend his own actions. However, the House managers will put him on the stand via his own videos, as I told @VictorBlackwell @CNN @newday pic.twitter.com/6jUFj3Ps9F

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) February 7, 2021

Eisen's argument about "the empty chair" seems to refer to the the remark by the House impeachment manager, in response to Trump's refusal, that "his immediate refusal to testify speaks volumes and plainly establishes an adverse inference supporting his guilt."

However, "there is no real end to serving a subpoena that he won't answer" suggests a subpoena should be served only on those individuals who are largely cooperative. If they are not, wave the white flag. In response to Eisen, this tweeter understands 

Given the reluctance of conflict-adverse Democratic senators such as Joe Manchin and Chris Coons, the Senate would be unlikely to approve a subpoena. Were Trump subpoenaed, he would tie up the process in the courts. That should not be an impediment to issuing a subpoena, though, because as one tweeter understands "serving him says more about the legitimacy of impeachment than not doing so. And, Trump ignoring the subpoena says more about him delegitimizing the Senate, which should be on the record."

Call it white privilege; more accurately, call it the privilege of the rich and powerful because very few of us of any ethnicity would have the resources or the influence to fight a subpoena.  That would yet again make clear what it takes to manipulate the legal system. It's one of the reasons a request for a subpoena should be made, and why it won't be.

 

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Handing Trump And Pence A Gift

This is an interesting argument by Will, whose last name is not "Bunch sign up for my newsletter":

The thing that's driving me crazy about the impeachment coverage on TV cable news is that the primary goal isn't getting him out of office these last 12 days (although that would he helpful). It's all about banning him from running in 2024 and removing him from public life

— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) January 8, 2021

Surely, as Bunch suggests, the primary goal should not be getting Donald Trump out of office in the last few days of his presidency. That's especially true given that President Pence's first act would be to pardon Donald Trump in what would be for once, a President actually doing something on "Day 1."

Unless the US Constitution was, unbeknownst to the public, changed overnight, neither Donald Trump nor anyone else can be "removed from public life" except by incarceration.

Donald Trump could be impeached for a second time or be removed via the 25th Amendment, the latter highly unlikely, though it would let congressional Democrats and Republicans off the hook.

Yet, there is little chance Democrats will be officially in charge of the Senate before January 20 and thus there will be no conviction, if even a trial, of the President before that date. Obviously, then, he would not be banned from running in 2024 because he'd first have to be convicted by the Senate; nor removed from public life, whatever that phrase means.

Once he leaves office, Donald Trump could be impeached and tried in the Senate. The former may well happen; the latter will not, given that conviction requires a two-thirds majority and the distribution of power in the next Congress between senators Schumer and McConnell is yet to be determined.

If the Senate were to convict and- as is uncertain even in the next Congress- then rule that Trump could not again run for public office, it would be a punishment akin to that rendered upon more than 99.9% of Americans. Donald Trump could not enter another presidential race, just as you, I, and virtually every other individual will never even sniff the presidency.

This would not be a fate worse than death, the latter a far more likely condition for what in 2024 would be a 78-year-old man who has made at least two trips to the hospital in the past 14 months.

Nonetheless, there is an action which Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic officials, and much of the media realize holds greater peril for Donald J. Trump. That is prosecution, and not of the variety being investigated by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office nor the New York State Attorney General but that which would be pursued by the Justice Department.

Joe Biden- and probably Merrick Garland, the presumptive upcoming Attorney General- would like to go in another direction. It would be easier for them to fulfill their fantasy of moving on or "not looking backward" were ex-President Trump to be impeached, thus "punished enough already," as we might hear.  Paradoxically, that may be why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, her caucus, many Senate Democrats, and Democratic-leaning legal analysts see impeachment, if the 25th Amendment is not invoked, as the easy way out.

 

 

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Not The First Time

It didn't start yesterday.

George Will is accurate and being celebrated on left Twitter after noting "on Wednesday, the members of the Hawley-Cruz cohort will violate the oath of office in which they swore to defend the Constitution from enemies “foreign and domestic.” They are its most dangerous domestic enemies." And you can't beat (emphasis Will's) "Hawley — has there ever been such a high ratio of ambition to accomplishment?"  (Hawley is right about $2,000 stimulus checks but the push by him and Sanders hasn't succeeded.)

Nonetheless, Will is trying to blow smoke up our posteriors when he advances the notion that there are three discrete parties in politics:

America’s three-party system — Democrats, Hawley-Cruz Republicans, and McConnell-Sasse Republicans — will continue to take shape on Wednesday. Watch how many of these Republican senators who might be seeking reelection in 2022 have the spine to side with the adults against Hawley-Cruz et al. and the Grassy Knollers among their constituents: John Boozman, Richard Burr, Mike Crapo, Charles E. Grassley, John Hoeven, Mike Lee, Jerry Moran, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Rob Portman, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, Richard C. Shelby, John Thune, Todd C. Young.

Today, they are assuring what was already assured, that Joe Biden will be inaugurated President on January 21, 2021. However, each one has sided with the authoritarian on nearly every vote in this regime. All of them delivered a stunning rebuke to the rule of law and American democracy when they ignored the overwhelming evidence against President Trump in order to vote not guilty at his impeachment trial.

During the impeachment hearing early this year, House impeachment manager Adam Schiff warned 

Can we be confident that he will not continue to try to cheat in [this] very election? Can we be confident that Americans and not foreign powers will get to decide, and that the president will shun any further foreign interference in our Democratic affairs? The short, plain, sad, incontestable answer is no, you can't. You can't trust this president to do the right thing. Not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country. You just can't. He will not change and you know it.

What are the odds if left in office that he will continue trying to cheat? I will tell you: 100 percent. A man without character or ethical compass will never find his way.

After the President was impeached, all 15 of those GOP senators, though (or maybe because) aware that Trump would cheat, then not go quietly if defeated for re-election, voted for acquittal.

This isn't the GOP's first rigging rodeo. CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer recalls

On November 21, the Florida Supreme Court authorized manual recounts in four counties and set a November 26th deadline. The next day, the Miami-Dade County canvassing board decided to focus solely on the contested ballots in order to meet the deadline. To hunker down and avoid the media frenzy that had descended on Miami, the officials decided to move to a smaller room on the 19th floor so they could be closer to the ballot-scanning machine, according to an account in Salon.

But Republican operatives, congressional staffers and lawyers had organized a group of protesters to fly to Florida, and the mob of "50-year-old white lawyers with cell phones and Hermes ties," as described by the Wall Street Journal, gathered in the high-rise building where the recount was taking place.

When New York Congressman John Sweeney, who was working for the Bush campaign, learned that the recount had been moved to another room, he ordered, the troops to "shut it down."

The protesters yelled and screamed, accusing the canvassers of trying to steal the election. The chants became fiercer and the demonstration increasingly raucous as they directly confronted the county officials. "Stop the count. Stop the fraud," they chanted.

Miami-Dade Democratic County Chairman Joe Geller bore the brunt of the protesters' ire. When someone handed him a sample ballot to test one of the voting machines, the protesters surrounded him and demand that he desist, accusing him of stealing ballots.

"This one guy was tripping me and pushing me and kicking me. At one point, I thought if they knocked me over, I could have literally got stomped to death," he recalled. The police escorted Geller so that he could safely leave the building. Republican organizers denied that the situation ever became violent.

The strategy worked. Hours after the riot, the board decided to shut down its operations and the manual recount in Miami came to an end. (David Leahy, one member of the canvassing board, told the New York Times, "This was perceived as not being an open and fair process. That weighed heavy on our minds." But days later he denied the protests played a role in ending the manual recount.) The Supreme Court later handed the victory to George W. Bush, and a number of the participants in the Brooks Brothers Riot went on to serve in the administration and work in conservative politics.

Nor did the lying about the election process begin in 2020 as

“This one guy was tripping me and pushing me and kicking me,” recalled Geller, who is now a state legislator. “At one point, I thought if they knocked me over, I could have literally got stomped to death.”

Brad Blakeman, a Bush campaign operative who proudly admits to coordinating what he prefers to call the “Brooks Brothers Rebellion,” denies that things got violent.

“That’s all bulls---,” he told The Post. “There was no violence. There was no threatening behavior.”

Although senators Hawley and Cruz are straight-up authoritarians, their GOP colleagues chose to condone the President's crimes when they had the chance to shut them down.  Assaulting democracy is how Donald Trump rolls. But it's also how the Republican Party rolls.

 

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Details To Be Determined

Back in the good old days- or at least what we thought were much better days, before most of us were aware of the looming pandemic- President Trump was impeached by the United States House of Representatives.  The Republican Senate preferred to remain deaf, dumb and blind and defiantly refused to hear any witnesses. But recognition that the GOP places party above country was enhanced by eloquent and piercing speeches of House impeachment manager Adam Schiff, including one which featured (beginning at :50 of the video below)

Can we be confident that he will not continue to try to cheat in that very election? Can we be confident that Americans and not foreign powers will get to decide and that the President will shun any further foreign interference in our democratic affairs? And the short, plain, incontrovertible answer is "no, you can't." You can't trust this President to do the right thing, not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country.

You just can't. He will not change and you know it....

What are the odds if left in office that he will continue to try to cheat? I will tell you:  100%, not five, not ten, not even fifty, but 100 percent. If yo have found him guilty and you do not remove him from office, he will continue to try to cheat until he success.

We don't know exactly how, when, and where Trump will try to cheat his way back into the Oval Office. However, we know more of how he has done so previously, aside from the deal he tried to work with Ukraine which prompted the impeachment hearings.  Last week we learned

During a one-on-one meeting at the June 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan, Xi complained to Trump about China critics in the United States. But Bolton writes in a book scheduled to be released next week that “Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats. Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats.

“He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes. “He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s pre-publication review process has decided otherwise.”

Republican senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who with 51 of his colleagues voted against conviction of the President, effectivelyacknowledged the President's guilt when he explained his  opposition to calling witnesses to testify at the trial.  "I don't need to hear any more evidence to decide that the president did what he's charged with doing," he maintained, "so if you've got eight witnesses saying that you left the scene of an accident, you don't need nine."

The vast majority of the US Senate realized that the President was guilty of abuse of power, obstruction of justice, or both.  We now know, almost for certain, that Donald J. Trump tried to put American democracy up for sale previously. As Adam Schiff warned us, he will do it again.

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Stay And Fight

Following on Friday yet another highly troubling news conference held by the President of the USA, Trump advisers, according to Gabriel Sherman

are numb to this kind of performance. “There’s very little that fazes anyone now,” a former official said. But one person who spoke to the president over the weekend saw the press conference as an ominous sign. “He’s just now waking up to the fact that this is bad, and he doesn’t know how to respond"...

Stories about Trump’s coronavirus fears have spread through the White House. Last week Trump told aides he’s afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One, a person close to the administration told me. The source also said Trump has asked the Secret Service to set up a screening program and bar anyone who has a cough from the White House grounds. “He’s definitely melting down over this,” the source said.

As alleged by "a person close to the adminstration," Donald Trump is afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One. 

President Trump will not perform his job. But someone has to do so, beginning with whomever believes that the President of the United States of America, usually considered to be the leader of the free world, believes journalists will try to contract a deadly virus so they can pass it on to him.

This, however, is not how the nation's legislative body should do theirs:

BREAKING from me & @AlexNBCNews : Members of Congress are becoming increasingly anxious about coronavirus and there is growing pressure on leadership to take steps to protect lawmakers — even potentially recessing for a period of weeks, according to two Democratic sources

— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) March 9, 2020

The problem is not that Congress is doing too much. It is doing too little, including deciding five weeks ago that a President can do whatever he wants as long as it helps get him re-elected.

This is not a time for advisers to the President to remain silent members of Congress. Nor should Congress flee Washington, D.C., leaving the capital to a President who not only is the modern face of evil, but is not a well man. 

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Her Objective

Steve M argues what some of us believed all along (italics his, favorably quoting Jonathan Chait):

ordinary Americans don't care about the fate of Ukraine. They cared about the Cold War, and about the hot wars we've fought over the years. They care about fighting terrorists. They may know Russia is a bad actor, but it's not a bogeyman the way Hitler, the Soviet Union, and Osama bin Laden were. If your car is in the shop and you just found out your kid needs braces, concerns about Ukraine's security seem very, very remote. And behind that simple summary is an ungainly, convoluted narrative. (A September post by Chait was titled "The Ukraine Scandal Is Not One Phone Call. It’s a Massive Plot.")

Presidential buckraking is extremely easy to understand: Trump takes advantage of his office to channel money to his own businesses. Presidents aren't supposed to personally profit from the presidency. Some of this money comes from foreign governments. The Constitution specifically forbids that. To comprehend this, you don't need to have a grasp on geopolitics. Also, when Trump pockets this money he can't claim to be engaging in a noble act, the way he can when he says he's very concerned about corruption in Ukraine.

The crimes for which Trump was impeached were serious -- but they were remote from most Americans' experience. Trump's profiteering is much simpler to understand. If House Democrats wanted to grab the attention of the public, that's where they should have turned.

"If."  If House Democrats wanted to grab the attention of the public, that's where they should have turned. Nor was the objective to undermine the President's re-election campaign nor to enhance the prospects of the eventual Democratic challenger.

Quite valid. But House Democrats- spelled "P-e-l-o-s-i"-  did not want "to grab the attention of the public."

The time frame tells the tale.  The House Speaker had been opposed to launching an impeachment inquiry despite the growing number of individuals in her caucus urging a probe.

Then on Monday, September 23, official Washington awoke to read

Our lives have been defined by national service. We are not career politicians. We are veterans of the military and of the nation’s defense and intelligence agencies. Our service is rooted in the defense of our country on the front lines of national security.

We have devoted our lives to the service and security of our country, and throughout our careers, we have sworn oaths to defend the Constitution of the United States many times over. Now, we join as a unified group to uphold that oath as we enter uncharted waters and face unprecedented allegations against President Trump.

As became clear in the Washington Post op-ed, that was because of Ukraine and only because of Ukraine, in which "the president of the United States may have used his position to pressure a foreign country into investigating a political opponent, and he sought to use U.S. taxpayer dollars as leverage to do it."

The short piece was written by seven freshmen, none of whom previously had endorsed an inquiry and all six of whom had "flipped" their seats, turning them from Republican to Democratic.  (Even better, to Pelosi, six are women.) Pelosi flipped on September 24.

Pelosi held her caucus together, with only two Democrats voting not to indict Donald Russia on either of the two counts of impeachment.

Virtually no one (with the "virtually" being questionable) thought there was a significant chance that the President would be convicted in the GOP-majority Senate.  The Senate fell nineteen (19) votes short of throwing Trump out of office which was arguably a marginally better showing for Democrats than expected.

For that reason and others, Steve M is right. The public would have better understood greed and corruption than an attempt to enlist a foreign government in subverting an American election. It also would have cared more because the vast majority of Trump supporters (unsurprisingly) are unopposed to Trump investigating a political enemy. And no one cares about the nation of Ukraine (an exaggeration, but barely).

However, that is none of Nancy Pelosi's concern. She is not the party's leader in the Senate nor is she a presidential candidate.

She is Speaker of the House and fulfilled her role. The chamber she leads did what it had to do, investigating the President's apparent high crimes and misdemeanors, holding the caucus together, impeaching the President, and sending the charges to the Senate.

It was only after the seven national security Democrats announced their support of the inquiry that Pelosi acted. The op-ed was highly influential, not only with the Speaker but probably also giving other centrist/center-left Democrats cover for impeachment. And Nancy Pelosi wants very much to maintain control of her chamber and to remain Speaker Pelosi.  Victory of these Democrats in the next congressional cycle is crucial to fulfilling that objective.

The American people were denied the opportunity to view, in a very visible arena, Trump family grift and greed. Had this been the focus of impeachment hearings, the Trump presidential campaign would have been undermined and the campaign of his eventual challenger enhanced.

But that was not Speaker Pelosi's calling, at least as she understood it. And despite the probability that the alternate approach would have been deleterious to President Trump's political health, thus favorable to national security, a note of caution is needed. Warring against corruption may not always stir the public. Just ask Elizabeth Warren.

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This should not go unnoticed:

I don’t know who needs to hear this but the president said “bullshit” yesterday on network television https://t.co/roeRHWcV6E

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) February 7, 2020

To be fair (as I always am to Donald J. Trump), the full context of use of a common profanity by the President should be presented. Therefore

We can take that home, honey, maybe we’ll frame it. It’s the only good headline I’ve had in the Washington Post. Every paper is the same, does anybody have them, because they’re all like that and I appreciate that. Some of the people here have been incredible warriors, they’re warriors. And there’s nothing from a legal standpoint. This is a political thing, and every time I say this is unfair, let’s go to court, they say, sir, you can’t go to court, this is politics. And we were treated unbelievably unfairly, and you have to understand we first went through Russia, Russia, Russia. It was all bullshit....

We then went through the Mueller report, and they should have come back one day later...

Wikipedia notes

Free-to-air networks in the U.S. can be divided into four categories:

Commercial networks – which air English-language programming to a general audience (for example, CBS);

Spanish-language networks – fully programmed networks which air Spanish-language programming to a primarily Latin American audience (for example, Telemundo and Univision);

Educational and other non-commercial broadcast networks – which air English- and some foreign-language television programming, intended to be educational in nature or otherwise of a sort not found on commercial television (for example, PBS);

Religious broadcast networks – which air religious study and other faith-based programs, and in some cases, family-oriented secular programs (for example, Daystar)

.

Each network sends its signal to many local affiliate television stations across the country. These local stations then air the "network feed," with programs broadcast by each network being viewed by up to tens of millions of households across the country. In the case of the largest networks, the signal is sent to over 200 stations. In the case of the smallest networks, the signal may be sent to just a dozen or fewer stations.

Most notably missing are Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. That is of no little import because as cable networks, they are broadcast on the basis of subscription services. Therefore, the Federal Communications Commission does not regulate cable networks.

Still, it wouldn't be wise for a host, or even a contributor, on a cable news network to begin spewing profanity.  But that is not what happened yesterday. The President of the United States of America, until at least recently the leader of the free world, uttered a profanity in the opening scene of his victory lap following failure of the US Senate to convict him of abuse of power or contempt of Congress. Moreover, he did it in context, denouncing the probe of the Special Counsel into interference by Russia in the 2016 election.

It's not as if Donald Trump's response to the Mueller probe is being ignored by cable news. We've heard, both in his own words and those of reporters, that he believes it was a "hoax" or a "witch hunt" and yesterday that "we went through hell unfairly." The President thus gets his point across and he does so forcefully, reinforcing his image as a guy who won't back down to his enemies- whom he defines as enemies of the USA.

It's a masterful strategy, demonstrating yet again that Donald Trump is not stupid and probably not deranged.   Cable networks which should know better- MSNBC and CNN- broadcast President Trump's message delivered with what appears to be righteous indignation- and without profanity.  He gets to have it both ways, with his supporters, disproportionately elderly, exposed to his storyline without being exposed to the crass language.

The public needs to hear the President's words, unsanitized. Reporting that Donald Trump used profanity, blotting out part of the word- as in "bull****," doesn't get it done.  He has said it, and he's President of the United States of America, president of the 359+ million people of the country.

Cable news networks could ignore the President's speeches entirely, which understandably they won't do. So they should broadcast all of it and treat Trump's use of obscene language as newsworthy- because it is. They do sometimes but far too infrequently (video from March, 2019).

To do less is to give Donald Trump a free pass. They normalized him in 2016 and repetition in 2020 likely would have far greater, more devastating, consequences.

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In The Very Long Run

Interviewed early Wednesday by Fox News' Chris Wallace, Utah senator Mitt Romney stated "There's a hymn that is sung in my church. It's an old Protestant hymn, which is "Do What is Right, Let the Consequence Follow."


]


He did, and it will. The consequences will be swift and severe from the Trumps and probably, ironically, from President Trump's white evangelical base. They will be no less so- and probably more so because Romney's speech on the Senate floor yesterday afternoon included

The allegations made in the articles of impeachment are very serious. As a senator-juror, I swore an oath before God to exercise impartial justice. I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am. I take an oath before God as enormously consequential. I knew from the outset that being tasked with judging the president, the leader of my own party, would be the most difficult decision I have ever faced. I was not wrong....

But my promise before God to apply impartial justice required that I put my personal feelings and political biases aside. Were I to ignore the evidence that has been presented and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history’s rebuke and the censure of my own conscience.

"My faith is at the heart of who I am," Romney stated, and it would have even been more eloquent had he specified "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," "Mormon," or "as a Latter-Day Saint."

That would have been especially cutting. Wikipedia describes the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as "a non-trinitarian,  Christian restorationist church," though some theologians believe "Christian" and "non-trinitarian" is a contradiction in terms. While there are three (Romney and two other) Republican Mormons in the US Senate, every other GOP senator, aside from the three as non-denominational Protestant, identifies with a Christian denomination of some sort.

Fifty (or fifty-three) Christian Republicans in the Senate, and there was one Republican senator who found a conscience Wednesday.

There was only one out of 53 Republicans who did the right thing; only one out of 53 whose legacy will not include giving a profane and bigoted, non-believing egomaniacal abuser of the presidency license to continue demeaning and degrading America and his fellow Americans.

Among Republicans, there was only one member  (except for Independent Justin Amash) of the entire Congress of 250 Republicans who decided that the consequences in this life of betraying his party are secondary to the consequences of betraying his God.

This impulse on the part of Willard "Mitt" Romney may not last; he is still a dyed in the wool conservative Republican and compromises with his conscience may be inevitable.  Still, for one day at least he had the courage- and foresight- to do as no other Republican would, to value his relationship with the divine over his own political fortunes. And in eternity, those are the true consequences.

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