Tag: GOP now the cult of Trump

Rep. Collins (Sort Of) Apologizes For “Democrats Love Terrorists” Outburst

After a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian military commander Qassim Suleimani, Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia smeared Democratic critics of the operation as being “in love with terrorists” on Wednesday. By Friday, the GOP congressman was apologizing for his remark, though only a few hours before he went on Fox News and vigorously defending it.

During his Friday Fox News appearance, Collins said of Democrats, “Do all of them love terrorists? No. I think the issue that we have here, though, is that they won’t acknowledge that (Suleimani) was a terrorist. They won’t acknowledge that this was a good thing for the world for Suleimani to be taken out. And from my perspective, that needs to be called out.”

Collins continued, “If they would start calling him a terrorist and stop saying that our president assassinated him — that’s accusing our president of a crime…. Our president took out a terrorist, and the world is a better place for it.” Continue reading.

Pompeo defends intelligence behind Soleimani strike amid press grilling

The Hill logoSecretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday defended the decision to authorize a drone strike to kill Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, saying intelligence suggested that he was plotting a “large-scale” attack that threatened U.S. embassies, among other American facilities.

Pressed by reporters at a press conference in the White House briefing room, Pompeo said that the Trump administration didn’t know precisely when or where the attack would occur, but insisted it was imminent.

“We had specific information on an imminent threat and the threat stream included attacks on U.S. embassies. Period, full stop,” Pompeo told reporters. Continue reading.

 

‘It’s depressing, isn’t it?’: With little protest, GOP succumbs to Trump on spending

Washington Post logoBefore adjourning for the year on Thursday, the GOP-controlled Senate approved a $1.4 trillion funding package embraced by President Trump that will push deficits to record levels — with hardly a peep from many Republicans who have shut down the government over spending in the past.

“It’s depressing, isn’t it?” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said ahead of his vote opposing part of the package focused on domestic spending. “There are a lot of Republican colleagues who like to spend money.”

When a reporter suggested that Trump is one of those Republicans, Johnson flashed a pained smile and said, “Precisely.” Continue reading

Vladimir Putin Backs Trump, Calling Impeachment Charges ‘Completely Made Up’

Halfway across the world from Washington, D.C., where President Trump on Wednesday became just the third president in U.S. history to be impeached, Trump’s counterpart in the Kremlin made clear that he has the American president’s back.

During his annual marathon news conference in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the charges against Trump as “completely made up.”

“The Democratic party, which lost the elections, is now trying to revise this history through the means that they have at their disposal — first by accusing Trump of collusion with Russia. But then it turned out there was no collusion,” Putin said Thursday during the hours-long event, echoing the arguments put forth by Trump and his Republican colleagues in Congress. “It could not form the basis for impeachment, and now there is this made-up pressure on Ukraine. Continue reading

The GOP is escalating a historic constitutional crisis over impeachment

AlterNet logoAs headlines and news hosts proclaim the historic weight of Wednesday’s impeachment of an American president, there’s a barely spoken murmur of malaise that few are willing to state out loud: it just doesn’t feel that historic. For conservatives, it’s a barely registered bump on the road to either Trump’s re-election or some version of a Second Civil War. For liberals and progressives, Trump’s impeachment provides less an exclamation of justice than a notice of strategic defiance. This act may ultimately be designed less for immediate accountability than to ensure the opposition party acted appropriately to this lawless president in the eyes of history.

This is not the Democrats’ fault. Impeachment feels less historic than it should because the Republican Party has utterly abandoned its sense of shame and responsibility to the country. The unprecedented event Wednesday was less about the impeachment itself than the Republican Party’s unanimous refusal to hold to account a corrupt tyrant clearly unfit for office. If it feels like our democracy is slowly spiraling out of control, that’s because it’s true.

First, the obvious: President Trump is so clearly guilty of attempting to bribe and extort Ukraine that it hardly requires repeating here. His own doctored transcript states the case bluntly even as he declares it “perfect”; multiple witnesses that he appointed corroborated his guilt during Congressional testimony; and Trump’s own Chief of Staff openly admitted as much in a public press hearing—he likely thought it was so obvious that it was better to brazenly deny that Trump’s behavior was a problem than to attempt to deny it happened at all. Continue  reading

Most Americans Want A Full And Fair Senate Trial

To hear some people tell it, House Democrats are like the dog that finally caught the car. Voting to impeach Donald Trump could turn out to be politically suicidal. Essentially because voters turned against Republicans for impeaching Bill Clinton—the GOP lost five seats in the 1998 mid-terms, ending the political career of Speaker Newt Gingrich—conventional wisdom assumes that Democrats will pay a similar price for acting against Trump.

It’s even been suggested that Speaker Pelosi save herself and her party by offering a motion of censure: surrendering to the president’s bullying, and to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s vow to hold a purely perfunctory Senate trial, calling no witnesses and rushing to a party-line acquittal.

In this formulation, Pelosi becomes a political battered wife, fearful that impeachment would only make her antagonist more dangerous and inflame his cult-like supporters. Continue reading

Mark Meadows, top Trump ally, to retire from Congress

The Hill logoRep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a top ally of President Trump, announced Thursday morning that he will retire from Congress at the end of his term.

Meadows, a four-term lawmaker who represents part of western North Carolina, said in a statement that he “struggled” with leaving what he has long considered a “temporary job.”

“For everything there is a season. After prayerful consideration and discussion with family, today I’m announcing that my time serving Western North Carolina in Congress will come to a close at the end of this term,” Meadows said. “This was a decision I struggled with greatly.” Continue reading

Trump gets vindictive at rally after House slaps him with impeachment

The president, in a disjointed appearance in Michigan, went after political enemies, touted accomplishments and complained about dim light bulbs.

BATTLE CREEK, Mich. — Six hundred miles away from the epicenter of his own impeachment, President Donald Trump took the stage at a rally here on Wednesday night and offered one of his longest, most frenetic appearances to date.

During an appearance stretching over two hours, Trump mocked the Democrats vying to replace him, while also dwelling on his accomplishments. The regular rallying cries of victimhood at the hands of the “deep state” made their usual appearance — but so, too, did seemingly unrelated tangents on infrastructure that included complaints about dim light bulbs and toilet water pressure.

And all the while, the specter of the historic impeachment vote hung over the rally. Continue reading

Impeachment underscores the ‘moral relativism’ of Trumpian Republican — and knocks ‘conservatives off a high horse’: political journalist

AlterNet logoWhen Donald Trump — with his Patrick Buchanan-influenced emphasis on nativism, protectionism and isolationism — was elected president in 2016, it marked a new era for the Republican Party and, in many ways, rejected the Ronald Reagan/George H.W. Bush view of conservatism. Politico co-founder John H. Harris, in a December 18 op-ed, analyzes Trump’s impeachment and the ways in which it underscores the GOP’s departure from the Reaganesque conservatism of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

“One consequence of the Trump years is that it has knocked conservatives off a high horse that they had been riding since the Reagan era,” Harris asserts. “Ideas matter, they said triumphantly, drawing a contrast with the supposedly transactional, spoils-based nature of Democratic politicians and the interest groups they relied on. Another favorite: denunciations of moral relativism, a way of justifying any kind of selfish behavior when, in fact, right and wrong are absolutes.”

But with so many Republicans vigorously defending Trump during impeachment efforts against him, Harris adds, the 2019 edition of the GOP can hardly complain about Democrats’ “moral relativism” with a straight face. Continue reading

Democratic Representative Calls on McConnell to Recuse Himself and Threatens Mistrial

Representative Jackie Speier (D., Calif.) has called on Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to recuse himself from the impending impeachment trial over his admission that he would not be an “impartial juror” and his claim that the trial was politically motivated.

“I’m not an impartial juror,” McConnell told CNN on Tuesday. “This is a political process. There is not anything judicial about it. Impeachment is a political decision.”

Speier responded by arguing that McConnell’s statement should disqualify him from participating in the impeachment trial. Continue reading