Tag: GOP now the cult of Trump

Statement on the Acquittal of President Donald Trump

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Yesterday, DFL Chairman Ken Martin released the following statement in response to the acquittal of President Donald Trump:

“This is a deeply tragic day for our country, our Constitution and our Republic. Senate Republicans have chosen corruption over justice, party over country, and the shameless pursuit of power over their oaths to protect and defend our Constitution.

“Today, Republicans have emblazoned their names into a disgraceful chapter of our history books. Through their acquittal votes, Republicans normalized foreign intervention in our elections and set a precedent that politicians can lie to the American people, abuse the power of their offices, obstruct justice, and get away with it.”

 

How Trump’s subservient GOP exposes the failure of American exceptionalism

AlterNet logoThe impeachment trial was never going to produce a conviction, of course, but it could have at least served to shore up even a few of the nominal pillars of democracy yet intact. Decades of erosion by chief executives, packed courts, congressional (in)action, and general malfeasance have weakened protective mechanisms in areas from voting and campaign finance to government transparency and individual rights. Now, with the short-circuited process and inevitable outcome of the impeachment hearing, there is another nail in the coffin of a fractured system that still sits on an idealized pedestal.

American exceptionalism, when it’s considered at all, is mostly viewed in the context of foreign policies: intervening in the affairs of others and holding the world to standards from which we are somehow exempt. This principle asserts the view that the U.S., as the primary global hegemon (militarily, if not culturally, or economically), has a sacred responsibility to take action deemed necessary to protect and promote our interests and support causes in which we believe. In practice, this looks like geographical incursions, political manipulations, and rights deprivations when larger concerns make such expedient.

There is, however, another version of American exceptionalism that applies more internally. Under this construct, the national identity becomes entirely bound up with bedrock beliefs in the idyllic virtues of democracy, justice, freedom, and associated “blessings of liberty.” Parallel to the international variety, this aspect holds up a national image that silences dissent when invoked but isn’t met in actual practice. In this guise, the mantle of patriotism can be claimed by those working actively against the higher ideals. Continue reading.

These 14 GOP Senators Supported Clinton’s Removal, But Not Trump’s

Donald Trump is expected to to be acquitted in his Senate impeachment trial on Wednesday, with most Republicans predicted to vote in his favor.

Among those standing steadfast with Trump are 14 current GOP senators who voted to impeach or remove President Clinton from office in the late 1990s. Many of those senators have since shifted their reasoning on why a president can’t  be removed from office.

Seven Republican senators serving today voted in 1999 to remove Clinton from office: Sens. Mike Crapo of Idaho, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Pat Roberts of Kansas, and Richard Shelby of Alabama. Continue reading.

Ernst walks back her Biden impeachment remarks

The Hill logoSen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) on Monday walked back her comments a day earlier warning that Congress could immediately impeach Democrat Joe Biden over his Ukraine dealings if he’s elected president in November.  

Speaking with reporters just off the Senate floor, Ernst said her weekend remarks were overblown and that she was trying to argue that Democrats have made impeachment — once a political tool reserved for extreme circumstances — the new normal in today’s partisan warfare.

“That was taken entirely out of context. The point is that the Democrats have lowered the bar so far that … regardless of who it is, if you have a different party in the House than that of an elected president, you can have just random comments thrown out there with folks saying we’re going to impeach,” Ernst said when asked by The Hill about her earlier Biden comments.  Continue reading.

Senate Republicans defend decision to bar new evidence as Trump acquittal vote nears

Washington Post logoSenate Republicans on Sunday acknowledged that President Trump was wrong to pressure Ukraine for his own political benefit, even as they defended their decision to prohibit new evidence in his impeachment trial while pressing ahead with the president’s all-but-certain acquittal.

The remarks from key Republicans — including Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and Joni Ernst (Iowa) — came after the Trump administration revealed the existence of emails that could shed light on the president’s reasons for withholding military aid to Ukraine.

“I’m going to vote to acquit,” Alexander said in an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” “I’m very concerned about any action that we could take that would establish a perpetual impeachment in the House of Representatives whenever the House was a different party than the president. That would immobilize the Senate.” Continue reading.

Graham Promises Senate Probe Of Bidens

From the February 2 edition of Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo:

MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): Schumer this morning signaling that the Democrats will not accept an acquittal as legitimate. Nancy Pelosi hinting that she is going to call Bolton in the House. John Bolton. What’s the dems next move? And how are you going to get anything done, Senator, if you actually got the other side constantly pushing to find out dirt on Donald Trump?

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Well, the president has been successful in spite of all of this. I hope we can turn the page as a nation and focus on issues important. But as Nancy Pelosi calls Bolton, here is what I would say. They’re impeaching the president for suspension of aid that was eventually received, trying to leverage an investigation that never happened. This is ridiculous. Mueller broke their heart. They won’t let it go. They hate this man. Pelosi is no longer Speaker of the House. Just in name only. I don’t know if they will ever let it go. Here is what I’m going to do. If they talk to Bolton, I will bring in State Department officials, and ask them why didn’t you do something about the obvious conflict of interest Joe Biden had? Joe Biden’s effort to combat corruption in the Ukraine became a joke, when Joe Biden got before the Ukrainian parliament talking about sweetheart deals, and reforming the energy sector, I can only imagine how they were laughing under their breath. What about your son, Vice President Biden, sitting on the most corrupt board in Ukraine, Burisma, receiving $3 million dollars. I can only imagine if a Republican done what Biden had done. But we’re going to get to the bottom of this. And I can prove beyond any doubt that Joe Biden’s effort in the Ukraine to root out corruption was undercut because he let his son sit on the board of the most corrupt company in the Ukraine and we’ll not give him a pass on that. Continue reading.

Senate GOP ‘cowards’ who voted against calling witnesses show ‘moral failure’ of ‘quasi-authoritarian party’: conservative columnist

AlterNet logoBefore Donald Trump’s presidency, Max Boot was a proud Republican — and the conservative Washington Post columnist is still decidedly right-wing. But Boot left the GOP because of Trumpism, which he believes has been terrible for the conservative movement and terrible for the United States. And following Senate Republicans’ vote against featuring any witnesses during Trump’s impeachment trial, Boot is asserting that the GOP doesn’t even deserve to survive as a party.

“Trump will leave office someday — I hope! — but he will leave behind a quasi-authoritarian party that is as corrupt as he is,” Boot stresses. “The failure to call witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial revealed the GOP’s moral failure.”

On Friday, January 31, only two Republicans joined Senate Democrats in voting in favor of featuring witnesses in the trial: Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. Democrats were hoping for testimony from former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who in his forthcoming book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir” (which is due out on March 17), alleges that Trump made an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, a condition of military aid to Ukraine. Bolton, in other words, alleges the very “quid pro quo” that Democrats have been offering as a reason for removing Trump from office. Continue reading.

Schiff: Senators who fail to convict Trump will not be ‘off the hook’

“I still think it’s enormously important that the president was impeached.”

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said on Sunday senators voting to keep President Donald Trump in office will not be “off the hook,” as Democrats look ahead to the president’s likely acquittal in the impeachment trial.

“I’m not letting the senators off the hook. We’re still going to go into to the Senate this week and make the case why this president needs to be removed,” Schiff said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “It will be up to the senators to make that final judgment, and the senators will be held accountable for it.”

Although the president will most likely remain in office, the lead House impeachment manager said, “I still think it’s enormously important that the president was impeached.” Continue reading.

Mitch McConnell’s New Legacy: Impeachment Trial Rigger For Donald Trump

The Senate leader has gone from admiring Henry Clay to packing the courts to guaranteeing the acquittal of a president caught cheating ahead of an election.

WASHINGTON ― Years after professing admiration for the “Great Compromiser” Henry Clay but then engineering a dramatic remake of the federal judiciary, Mitch McConnell is now earning a different legacy: The guy who rigged a Senate trial to protect a president impeached for trying to cheat his way to reelection.

With even members of his own caucus agreeing that Donald Trump behaved badly by leveraging $391 million in taxpayer-funded foreign aid to damage a political rival, the Senate’s majority leader is on the brink of acquitting Trump without hearing from a single witness ― defying the three-quarters of Americans who say they want witnesses.

“Sadly, the constitutional travesty that he orchestrated here will serve as his legacy,” said George Conway, a prominent Republican Trump critic and husband of a top White House aide. “Not the legions of fine judges he has put on the bench, judges of the sort that would have been nominated by a President Pence even if Trump had been removed, as he rightly should have been.” Continue reading.

Senate to emerge from impeachment trial guilty of extreme partisanship

Washington Post logoThe Senate is poised to end its impeachment trial of President Trump far deeper in the partisan trenches than when it started.

That’s a remarkable feat given how deep the Senate has already descended the past decade, but conversations with several of the more widely respected senators revealed a troubling state of affairs that looks nothing like the last time the supposedly august chamber came out of a presidential impeachment trial.

“I’ve got to figure out where we go from here, because right now, my view, this is the saddest day that I’ve seen in the Senate,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said Friday. “I’m really disgusted with everybody, just really — the House, the Senate, the Republicans, the Democrats. It’s just a sad day.” Continue reading.