In a preview of things to come, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer delivered dueling narratives on the Senate floor Thursday, following Donald Trump’s impeachment in the House on abuse of power and obstruction charges.
“By the speaker’s own standards, the standards she set, she’s failed the country”, McConnell assessed, in an effort to suggest that because Pelosi couldn’t convince any Republicans to admit that Trump was wrong to have leveraged nearly $400 million in congressionally-approved military aide (and a photo op at the White House) in the service of convincing a foreign government to publicly announce investigations into his political rivals, she shouldn’t have presided over the president’s impeachment.
“The case is not compelling, not overwhelming, and as a result, not bipartisan”, McConnell continued.
Obviously, that’s just not true. The irony is that between the witness testimony and the transcript released by the White House itself, it really wasn’t necessary to “make the case”, as it were.
As we’ve put it previously in these pages, Trump did what he did. Nobody seriously contests the facts.
What’s contested is whether he deserves to be impeached and removed from office for it, and what McConnell intends to do is avoid hearing from anyone (namely Mick Mulvaney and John Bolton) who might say something that would make it impossible for the Senate not to convict.
Cue Chuck Schumer, who, in response to McConnell’s charge that Pelosi ran “the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history”, said Mitch is “plotting the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment trial”.
“Is the president so weak than none of the president’s men can defend him under oath?” Schumer asked.
Pelosi caused a stir following the impeachment proceedings on Wednesday when she indicated she may delay the trial by declining to send the articles to the Senate.
“We will make our decision as to when we are going to send it when we see what they are doing on the Senate side”, Pelosi said. “So far, we have not seen anything that looks fair to us”.
For his part, Trump followed up on his wild rally in Battle Creek, Michigan, with some of his signature Twitter bombast.
“Pelosi feels her phony impeachment HOAX is so pathetic she is afraid to present it to the Senate, which can set a date and put this whole SCAM into default if they refuse to show up!”, the president shrieked, into the digital void. “The Do Nothings are so bad for our Country!”
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If the Republicans won’t take it seriously in the Senate, then the House just needs to wait until the courts require Bolton, Mulvaney, and Pompeo to testify.
That AND give the courts time to force the WH to release the subpoenaed documents. Of course, with the stacked supreme court, that may never happen. But at least it would keep the spotlight turned on…..The civil war never truly ended. America is two different countries, still. The South and middle should keep Drumpf as king, and the two coasts should join Canada with whom they have more in common.
If direct witnesses to Trump’s actual words, such as Bolton and Mulvaney had been allowed to testify in the House hearings, there might be some possible reason to not allow witnesses in the Senate “trial”, now it is simply a cover-up.
Best way to really tear the country apart: run a clearly unfair trial in the Senate that is obviously a cover-up, where the Democrats can justly say that crucial evidence was suppressed thus the “trial” was a cover-up..
Because of John Bolton’s positions as US Ambassador to the United Nations and National Security Adviser, the Ukrainians reached out to him and asked him if he could convince Trump to release the security assistance that was held up. Bolton said he would see what he could do. When Bolton spoke to Trump about it, Trump told Bolton to tell the Ukrainians that the only they will ever get the security assistance is after Zelensky announces on CNN that Ukraine is investigating the Bidens and the Crowd Strike theory that the Democrats hacked themselves and the server is in Ukraine.
Bolton, who is definitely not a radical leftist democrat, also has ample documentation that proves the Ukrainians were very well aware and concerned that Trump was holding up the security assistance, and that Trump’s reason for doing so was solely to force Zelensky to announce on CNN that Ukraine is investigating the Bidens and the Crowd Strike theory.
That would be completely consistent with what all the witnesses in the Intelligence committee hearings said. Is that all true? If so, that would put to rest any questions regarding whether the Ukrainians knew the aid was cutoff and what Trump’s motives were. The Senate Republicans want to make sure we never know.
Trump and McConnell are now doing exactly what they did when Trump said it was the Senate that prevented the FBI from interviewing the witnesses who had evidence that Bret Kavanaugh was lying in the hearings for his confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice. And McConnell said it was up to the White House. Net result 40 people who tried to give information to the FBI were never spoken to.
Now Trump says it is up to the Senate to have witnesses in the trial and McConnell said it was up to the White House. Net result no witnesses.
Pushing impeachment is an “own goal” for Democrats comparable to what happened in the U.K. when parliament thwarted the will of the majority that voted for Brexit. This is political suicide.
no, pushing impeachment is a Constitutional imperative when the president has committed impeachable acts. arguably, democrats would be breaking not only their oath, but the actual law not to push impeachment of a president who, according to every, single witness (even Gordon Sondland), attempted to convince a foreign government to interfere in a US presidential election – again.
also, the “will of the majority” characterization of the Brexit referendum is highly questionable. by all indications, many voters in the UK didn’t even know what the EU was when they voted to leave it.
This how ignorance leads to loss of freedom.
So, H it appears that you are saying that the Republicans ARE breaking their oath and are breaking the law by not seriously pushing the impeachment? I agree with you. How do charges get laid, arrests made and their trials underway?