Category Archives: Donald Trump

Democracy, Donald Trump

“If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost.”

If right doesn’t matter, if right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. It doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. It doesn’t matter how well written the oath of impartiality is.

If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost. If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost.

The framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves, if right and truth don’t matter. And you know that what he did was not right. You know, that’s what they do in the old country — that Colonel Vindman’s father came from. Or the old country that my great-grandfather came from. Or the old countries that your ancestors came from, or maybe you came from.

But here right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No constitution can protect us [if] right doesn’t matter anymore.

And you know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to.

This is why, if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters. And the truth matters. Otherwise we are lost. – Adam Schiff, Thursday, January 23, 2020 

Donald Trump, Tribalism

Trump’s legal wizards argue that abuse of power is not impeachable conduct

“The Articles of Impeachment … are a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their President.” A “brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn … the 2016 election” and a “highly partisan and reckless obsession,” the “Articles … are constitutionally invalid on their face.”

They fail to allege any crime or violation of the law whatsoever, let alone “high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” as required by the Constitution. They are the result of a lawless process that violated basic due process and fundamental fairness. Nothing in these articles could permit even beginning to consider removing a duly elected President or warrant nullifying an election and subverting the will of the American people.

So Jay Alan Sekulow and Pat A. Cipollone attest (“Answer of President Donald J. Trump“; all quotations from page 1 of the six-page brief). While I realize that this is political pamphleteering, not strictly the practice of law, it is a breathtaking response to the weighty, well-documented case – virtually uncontested in this defense by Trump’s personal attorney and counsel to the Office of the President –  that the House presents for the President’s removal.

The brief insists that a president cannot be impeached for abuse of power if he has violated no federal statute. While Alan Dershowitz, another of the President’s lawyers, did not sign the brief, he has made this case in a book on impeachment:

Assume Putin decides to “retake” Alaska, the way he “retook” Crimea. Assume further than a president allows him to do it, because he believed that Russia has a legitimate claim to “its” original territory. That would be terrible, but would it be impeachable? Not under the text of the Constitution.

Adam Schiff replies:

The logic of that absurdist position that’s being now adopted by the president is he could give away the state of Alaska, he could withhold execution of sanctions on Russia for interfering in the last election, to induce or coerce Russia to interfere in the next one.

That would have appalled — the mere idea of this would have appalled the founders, who were worried about exactly that kind of solicitation of foreign interference in an election for a personal benefit, the danger it poses to national security. That goes to the very heart of what the framers intended to be impeachable.

The narrowest reading of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” which Trump’s lawyers rely on, has been refuted again and again. It is hard to see how we can reconcile the view of Sekulow, Cipollone, Dershowitz, et al. with the concerns of Hamilton (and the men who drafted our constitution) with “the abuse or violation of some public trust,” as distinct from prosaic violations of the law.

Trump has famously boasted of his supporters’ extraordinary loyalty to him: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

What if Putin decided to retake Alaska with Trump’s acquiescence? Would Republicans accept that? Perhaps Lisa Murkowski, if not Susan Collins, would find grounds to object. Mitch McConnell would certainly strive to deflect the issue if he believed control of the Senate were at stake.

There’s a serious point embedded in that counter-factual. Trump has welcomed the intervention of foreign powers in our elections (past and future). Is that in any sense less significant, if we are concerned with democracy and constitutional governance, than ceding one of 50 states to a foreign adversary? The facts, when push comes to shove, don’t matter to Trump’s Republican defenders. The bottom line is: what will the base accept (looking no further into the future than the 2020 election)?

There is scant evidence of a deeper principle at stake for Trump’s Republican defenders in the House or the Senate.

(Photos: ACLJ and Politico.)

Democracy, Donald Trump

Congressional leaders differ on Constitutional responsibility and the conduct of the President

“I think this President is a coward when it comes to helping kids who are afraid of gun violence. I think he is cruel when he doesn’t deal with helping our Dreamers, of which we are very proud. I think he is in denial about the climate crisis. However, that’s about the election. This is about the election. Take it up in the election.

This is about the Constitution of the United States and the facts that lead to the President’s violation of his oath of office. And as a Catholic, I resent your using the word ‘hate’ in a sentence that addresses me. I don’t hate anyone. I was raised in a way that is a heart full of love and always pray for the President. And I still pray for the President. I pray for the President all the time. So don’t mess with me when it comes to words like that.” – Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House

“We’ll listen to the opening arguments by the House prosecutors. We’ll listen to the President’s lawyers’ response. And then we’ll have to make a decision about the way forward. And everything I do during this I’m coordinating with White House counsel. There will be no difference between the President’s position and our position as to how to handle this – to the extent that we can. We don’t have the kind of ball control on this that a typical issue, for example, comes over from the House, if I don’t like it, we don’t take it up.

We have no choice but to take it up, but we’ll be working through this process, hopefully in a fairly short period of time, in total coordination with the White House counsel’s office and the people who are representing the president in the well of the Senate.” – Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

The Republican Party is fulfilling the most extravagant dreams of Vladimir Putin

“I think both Russia and Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election.” — Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana on Meet the Press

In carrying Donald Trump’s water, Senator Johnson – along with many of Trump’s Republican allies – is also carrying Vladimir Putin’s.

Fiona Hill testified last month:

“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.

The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.”

An incredulous Chuck Todd asks the Senator from Louisiana, “Are you at all concerned that you’ve been duped?”

Nope!

We are witnessing a disgraceful charade in the service of political partisanship.

Mark Shields, whom I’ve long regarded as a savvy observer of U.S. politics, astonished me (on November 8) when he dissented from the view (expressed by David Brooks) that, no matter what testimony was presented to the House Intelligence Committee, Republicans would not change their minds.

Shields responded, when Judy Woodruff asked if he agreed:

No, I don’t. I like to agree with David, but I don’t on this one.

(LAUGHTER)

I don’t think you can understand the impact until you see the face and hear the voice of the people making this case and, as I say, putting their own careers, their own professional lives at risk to do so.

And these are people with very impressive credentials, resumes of long public service. And I think I recall — David was too young. I recall Watergate, which was 45 years ago, when, all of a sudden, there was a voice that said, yes, there is — Alexander Butterfield — there is a taping system in the White House, and the impact that had on people.

And when John Dean said, yes, the president — I told the president there’s a cancer on the presidency. And I just — I don’t think you can overstate…

(CROSSTALK)

A week later (November 15) this exchange occurred:

David Brooks: There has to be a surprise for this to change. And Trump’s behavior today and over the course of this episode is totally in character.

Mark Shields: Stay tuned, David.

Last week (November 22) Shields offered this mea culpa:

“What I have underestimated — and I think David was right — is the fear that David — that Donald Trump exercises over Republicans. I mean, people talked about Lyndon Johnson being a fearsome political leader. They don’t even approach. I mean, he strikes fear into the hearts of Republicans up and down the line. And I think that is — that, to me, has been eye-opening in its dimensions.”

Lyndon Johnson, then Senator Majority Leader, speaks with Senator Theodore Green, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Although I was flabbergasted by Shield’s belated recognition of the state of Trump’s Republican Party, give him credit for the perfect comparison. The fearsome Lyndon Johnson’s political influence over the Democratic Party (in the first two years of his presidency, when LBJ pushed through the Civil Rights Bill and other programs comprising the Great Society) was puny compared with the hold Donald Trump — an extraordinarily weak president in the judgment of political scientists: see Jonathan Bernstein — wields over sycophantic Congressional Republicans who anticipate a primary election in their futures.

(Photo of LBJ and Senator Green: Smithsonian on Pinterest.)

2020 General Election, Democracy, Donald Trump

Five Takeaways following the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings

I. Putin’s authorship of the “Russia hoax.” II. Distinguishing a national security foreign policy channel and a channel dedicated to a domestic political errand. III. Closing statements from Ranking Member Nunes and Chairman Schiff. IV. What pushed Schiff to impeachment. V. Will Hurd can’t justify impeachment, as Justin Amash tries to nudge him in that direction.

I. In her opening statement before the committee, Fiona Hill, former Deputy Assistant to the President Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs, noted with dismay that Republicans on the committee, in denying Russian interference in the 2016 election, were fulfilling Vladimir Putin’s stratagem to weaken our country:

“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.

The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.

The impact of the successful 2016 Russian campaign remains evident today. Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined.

U.S. support for Ukraine—which continues to face armed Russian aggression—has been politicized.

The Russian government’s goal is to weaken our country—to diminish America’s global role and to neutralize a perceived U.S. threat to Russian interests. President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter U.S. foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine, where Moscow wishes to reassert political and economic dominance.

I say this not as an alarmist, but as a realist. I do not think long-term conflict with Russia is either desirable or inevitable. I continue to believe that we need to seek ways of stabilizing our relationship with Moscow even as we counter their efforts to harm us. Right now, Russia’s security services and their proxies have geared up to repeat their interference in the 2020 election. We are running out of time to stop them. In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.

As Republicans and Democrats have agreed for decades, Ukraine is a valued partner of the United States, and it plays an important role in our national security. And as I told this Committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine—not Russia—attacked us in 2016.

These fictions are harmful even if they are deployed for purely domestic political purposes. President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a Super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives. When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each another, degrade our institutions, and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy.

I respect the work that this Congress does in carrying out its constitutional responsibilities, including in this inquiry, and I am here to help you to the best of my ability. If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention. But we must not let domestic politics stop us from defending ourselves against the foreign powers who truly wish us harm.”

II. In response to a question from minority counsel Steve Castor, Dr. Hill responded with a succinct delineation of the two policy channels the Trump administration was pursuing. After acknowledging her anger at Ambassador Sondland, she continued:

“And what I was angry about was that he wasn’t coordinating with us. I now actually realize, having listened to his deposition, that he was absolutely right. That he wasn’t coordinating with us because we weren’t doing the same thing that he was doing.

So I was upset with him that he wasn’t fully telling us about all of the meetings that he was having. And he said to me: “But I’m briefing the president. I’m briefing Chief of staff Mulvaney. I’m briefing Secretary Pompeo. And I’ve talked to Ambassador Bolton. Who else do I have to deal with?”

And the point is, we have a robust interagency process that deals with Ukraine. It includes Mr. Holmes. It includes Ambassador Taylor as the chargé in Ukraine. It includes a whole load of other people. But it struck me when—yesterday—when you put up on the screen Ambassador Sondland’s emails, and who was on these emails and he said, “These the people need to know,” that he was absolutely right. Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand. And we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged. 

So he was correct.

And I had not put my finger on that at the moment, but I was irritated with him and angry with him that he wasn’t fully coordinating. And I did say to him, Ambassador Sondland—Gordon, I think this is all going to blow up. And here we are.

And after I left to my next meeting, our director for the European Union talked to him much further for a full half-hour or more later, trying to ask him about how we could coordinate better or how others could coordinate better after I had left the office. And his feeling was that the National Security Council was always trying to block him.

What we were trying to do was block us from straying into domestic or personal politics. And that was precisely what I was trying to do.

But Ambassador Sondland is not wrong that he had been given a different remit than we had been.

And it was at that moment that I started to realize how those things have diverged. And I realized, in fact, that I wasn’t really being fair to Ambassador Sondland because he was carrying out what he thought he had been instructed to carry out. And we were doing something that we thought was just as or perhaps even more important, but it wasn’t in the same channel.”

III. Mr. Nunes, in his closing statement, offered a timeline that made no reference to any testimony from the public hearings over the past two weeks. Replete with references to the Steele dossier, a coup, “the Russia hoax,” “the so-called whistleblower,” “secret depositions and mid-hearing press conferences,” and “a show trial,” the gentleman from California condemned Democrats, the media, executive branch officials, James Comey, and the FBI, and complained that tyranny of the majority had led to “a process that was grossly unfair.”

Throughout the hearings, as Adam Schiff noted, Republicans attempted to smear and demean witnesses, while failing to raise substantive questions about their testimony. Witness after witness offered accounts without any refutation. In the words of the chairman, “So much of this is really undisputed.”

Mr. Schiff then reviewed and knocked down the various ‘defenses’ Republicans have offered for Trump, and finally lands on the I’m-not-a-crook defense (which comes to the fore because Donald Trump spoke the words, “No quid pro quo”):

“You said it and, I guess, that’s the end of it.

Well, the only thing we can say is that it’s not so much that this situation is different in terms of Nixon’s conduct and Trump’s conduct. What we have seen here is far more serious than a third-rate burglary of the Democratic headquarters. What we’re talking about here is the withholding of recognition in that White House meeting. The withholding of military aid to an ally at war. That is beyond anything that Nixon did.

The difference between then and now is not the difference between Nixon and Trump. It’s the difference between that Congress and this one.

And so, we are asking, where is Howard Baker? Where is Howard Baker? Where are the people who willing to go beyond their party? To look to their duty? I was struck by Colonel Vindman’s testimony because he said that he acted out of duty. What is our duty here? That’s what we need to be asking.”

IV. Mr. Schiff concluded his statement with words about why he could “resist no more” the calls for an impeachment inquiry:

“It came down to the fact that the day after Bob Mueller testified. The day after Bob Mueller testified that Donald Trump invited Russian interference: Hey, Russia, if you’re listening, come get Hillary’s emails. And later that day, they tried to hack her server.

The day after he testified that not only did Trump invite that interference, but that he welcomed the help in the campaign. They made full use of it. They lied about it. They obstructed the investigation into it. And all this is in his testimony and his report.

The day after that Donald Trump is back on the phone asking another nation to involve itself in another U.S. election.

That says to me, this President believes he is above the law. Beyond accountability. And in my view there is nothing more dangerous than an unethical president who believes they are above the law. And I would just say to people watching here at home and around the world, in the words of my great colleague, ‘We are better than that.’ “

By the time he reaches the last four sentences of his remarks (finally concluding by quoting the late Elijah Cummings), and gavels the hearing to a close, Mr. Schiff is visibly angry.

V. Will Hurd, who is leaving the House without seeking reelection and is the lone Republican on the panel who was regarded as a possible vote to send Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, rejected that course of action on Friday:

“An impeachable offense should be compelling, overwhelmingly clear, and unambiguous. And it’s not something to be rushed or taken lightly. I’ve not heard evidence proving the President committed bribery or extortion.”

His colleague Justin Amash, who has left the Republican Party, offered a reply that is highly unlikely to resonate with any current Republican Members of Congress:

“With respect, my friend @HurdOnTheHill applies the wrong standard. House impeachment is an indictment, not a conviction. The question in the House is whether there is probable cause to charge President Trump with an impeachable offense. The answer to that question is clearly yes. “

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Can there be any doubt of Donald Trump’s unfitness to protect and defend our Constitution?

A linchpin of U.S. and Western security has been keeping Vladimir Putin’s Russia in check. Time and again Trump has acted to sabotage this goal and undermine our allies. That’s the subject of the impeachment inquiry.

“Mr. Trump had a choice between executing his administration’s own strategy for containing Russia or pursuing a political obsession at home.

He chose the obsession.

In an otherwise divided Washington, one of the few issues of bipartisan agreement for the past six years has been countering Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s broad plan of disruption. That effort starts in Ukraine, where there has been a hot war underway in the east for five years, and a cyber war underway in the capital, Kiev.

It is exactly that policy that Mr. Trump appears to have been discarding when he made clear, in the haunting words attributed to Gordon D. Sondland, who parlayed political donations into the ambassadorship to the European Union, that “President Trump cares more about the investigation of Biden” than about Ukraine’s confrontation with Mr. Putin’s forces.” — David E. Sanger, “Trump’s Choice: National Security or Political Obsession.”

(Image: AP Photo/Evan Vucci via 8Red Current Events.)

Democracy, Donald Trump, Short & Sweet ... Short & Sour

Did Misguided Certainty of Clinton’s victory ensure her defeat? It won’t happen in 2020.

Insight of the day — on the third anniversary of Donald Trump’s election:

“Now, there’s no way to prove that people who didn’t bother to vote, or cast a protest vote for a minor-party candidate or even for Trump while assuming he could not actually be inaugurated, cost Clinton the election (there’s actually some evidence that minor-party voting hurt Trump more than his opponent). But if you add together the substantial evidence that nonvoters skewed Democratic and consider the tactical mistakes Team Clinton seemed to make due to misperceptions of the state of the race (e.g., focusing resources on Arizona rather than Wisconsin), it’s clear the element of surprise was an important — perhaps critical — asset for the 45th president.
If so, he’s lost it for good heading toward 2020, and that could be a hidden asset for his Democratic opponent, whoever it is.” — Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine

There are a ton of factors that contributed to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss. I haven’t any proof that the conventional wisdom that Clinton would win actually bolstered the number of third party votes or, more significantly, increased the number of prospective voters who just didn’t bother to cast a ballot (or even, as Kilgore suggests, pulled the lever for Trump knowing he wouldn’t win).

But it would be difficult to convince me that this isn’t so.

This won’t happen in 2020.

(Image: detail from cover of Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here.)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans

Never-Trumper Steve Schmidt is back — and still spinning for the (pre-Trump) GOP

Steve Schmidt returned to MSNBC last week, having spent eight months consulting with Howard Schultz regarding a presidential campaign by the billionaire, and his criticism of Donald Trump is as sharp and on target as ever. It is great fun to read (or listen to) this never-Trumper, who left the Republican Party last year (“Today I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump.“). He has Trump’s number.

But he is still whitewashing the complicity — pre-Trump — of the Republican Party in what it has become.

“Voting in America for a substantial part of the population is no longer about affirming a belief in the future, it’s an act of aggression. It’s an action taken to choose someone to punish their enemies. And that more than anything is how Trump has redefined American politics. Not even the pretense of unity.“

And:

“My perspective is that the Republican party is profoundly corrupted by Donald Trump and it has been corrupted by a tolerance for all and any type of amoral and immoral behavior. Tolerance for astounding levels of corruption and exposure of hypocrisy from the religious far-right leaders like Falwell, to everybody who screamed and shouted about some perfidious act that Obama or the Clintons allegedly committed. Trump has remade the Republican party into an isolationist, grievance-driven, resentment-driven political party. The party looks like what it might have looked like if George Wallace had captured its nomination and become president.”

Strike the word ‘isolationist’ from Schmidt’s indictment. While individual Republicans — John McCain, whom Schmidt advised, stands out — might have stood for more than grievance-driven and resentment-driven politics, these strands were deeply embedded in the contemporary Republican Party long before Trump’s ride down the escalator.

I’ll grant that George W. Bush (whom Schmidt also advised) gave us a bit more than “the pretense of unity.” But the GOP establishment in Washington repudiated Bush’s outreach to ethnic and religious minorities (which was the most significant element of Bush’s electoral strategy that made unity more than a pretense). This Republican pushback came years before Trump became a candidate. To put it bluntly: the party resisted unity.

And Schmidt’s post-Trump indictment doesn’t even make sense on its own terms: “Tolerance for astounding levels of corruption and exposure of hypocrisy from the religious far-right leaders like Falwell, to everybody who screamed and shouted about some perfidious act that Obama or the Clintons allegedly committed.”

The unhinged screaming and shouting about Obama and the Clintons cannot possibly be placed at the feet of Donald Trump. George W. Bush couldn’t have come close enough to steal the 2000 election (even granting Bill Clinton’s sleazy behavior) without the far right’s bizarre tales of murder and more. And Donald Trump didn’t found the Tea Party or advise Mitch McConnell on his scorched earth opposition to Barack Obama.

So, I’m with Schmidt on his repudiation of Trump and the post-Trump Republican Party. But the GOP’s corruption and hypocrisy have been flourishing for more than a generation. Trump didn’t remake the Republican Party. He is just the most recent step in an ugly evolution.

(Image: MSNBC.)

Democracy, Donald Trump

“Know that you are an essential part of our great country.” – Justin Trudeau to his opposition

A split between urban and rural Canada — similar to that in the United States — was brought into sharp relief as the Liberals swept all 25 seats in the greater Toronto area.

Also on display was a stark regional division, with Liberals completely shut out in Saskatchewan and Alberta. The east-west rift has defined contemporary Canadian politics the way the Solid South — first a Democratic stronghold and then a Republican one — has defined U.S. politics since Reconstruction.

A chastened but triumphant Trudeau acknowledged those divisions and offered a verbal outstretched hand to Saskatchewan and Alberta, which along with Manitoba recoiled at his support for a carbon tax and other energy and environmental policies.

“Know that you are an essential part of this country,” Trudeau said. — A report from this morning’s Los Angeles Times on how yesterday’s Canadian election revealed a closely divided nation. [Editor’s note: Other news organizations, including CNBC, reported the version of the quotation in the headline, not the wording in the LA Times report.]

CNBC offers another excerpt from Trudeau’s remarks: “And to those – to those who did not vote for us – know that we will work every single day for you. We will govern for everyone.” [Quoted excerpt begins at the 1:00 minute mark.]

I can’t vouch for the analogy – that Canada’s East-West rift defines politics in our northern neighbor much as the distinctive preoccupations of the South have shaped American politics since Reconstruction – but both these quotations reveal a huge difference in the national leadership of the two nations.

Trudeau reached out – at least rhetorically – to the folks on the other side of the divide. Donald Trump consistently has catered to the Southern-dominated GOP base, while denigrating cities and regions (as well as religious and ethnic minority communities) where he lacks political support.