Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

You are here: Home / Politics / Impeachment / Impeachment Trial Live – January 23, 2020 – Open Thread

Reader Interactions

136Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    god I hate the prayers, even if as I listen this guy is telling to Republicans to believe their lying eyes and ears for once

    and now he says: “which choice will bring god the greater glory”. What the fucking fuck?

  5. 5.

    Ajabu

    Another episode of. American Kabuki.
    “La, La, La, we can’t hear you.”
    At least we can make the motherfuckers own it…

  9. 9.

    patrick II

    If nothing else, if there are not witnesses, no documents, no conviction of Trump in the Senate, what the whistleblower, the House Impeachment Hearings and the Senate Trial have done has given light to the treachery of Trump, the Republicans, and the media. If this had not happened, we would have had Hillary II, unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing repeated over and over again. The advantage of nebulous, untrue claims is that they are difficult to disprove.
    It is not that the hardcore Trumpers will be convinced by anything, but that middle ten percent have had the opportunity to see behind the curtain, and it is more difficult for media to make the same play.
    If Biden is our strongest candidate, then these hearings help him.

  11. 11.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    And just to put the cherry on the week, Trump plans to attend Friday’s anti-abortion/pro-forced birth “March of Life” in Washington.  I almost said he would march in it and then my brain went Bwahahhahahah, Yea right

  12. 12.

    Kent

    If we assume (as most seem to) that the acquittal vote is in the tank for Trump no matter what.  Then I think we need to game-play the next 9 months for Democrats.   I think the GOP is making a very strategic error by not allowing any evidence or witness testimony in the Senate Trial where they can control it.  Because that basically leaves it up to the House to go back and do it for them.

    Starting in February the House should task various committees into investigating the White House COVERUP of the Ukraine scandal.  Pull on every remaining string and subpoena every single possible administration witness.  Make them all tap into their life savings to pay for expensive attorneys to fight in court if they decide to.  And then spend the next 6 months dripping every example of Trump obstruction and corruption into the national conversation during the heat of the campaign.  Don’t call it a second impeachment inquiry.  Just call it oversight hearings.  Clog up the SCOTUS and circuit court dockets with endless subpoena requests. No like they are doing anything beneficial anyway.

    When Trump and the GOP complain that the Dems are dredging up old settled issues the obvious answer is that:  “YOU had your chance to come clean and hear all of this material back in January.  Instead you chose to obstruct and cover-up.”  We are not investing the crime for which Trump was acquitted.  We are investing the ONGOING COVERUP.

  14. 14.

    Ruckus

    @patrick II:
    How many times have we been assured that the rapture will come in the next 30 years?
    Are the refucklicans trying to make it as bad as possible so that their guy shows up to end it all?

    The 

  17. 17.

    Kent

    Trump is losing his grip.  And this is getting to his head.  According to TPM:

    President Trump set a new personal record last night with the most posts to his Twitter feed in any single day. As we noted in our liveblog coverage, as of 8:30 p.m. ET, he’d tweeted or retweeted 140 posts about a litany of topics, from the impeachment trial, to immigration, to attacks on a favorite nemesis — Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).

  18. 18.

    WaterGirl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: That sounds like the prayer from yesterday.

    Why can’t he say “God is watching what you do here today.  God is listening to the truth, and listening for the lies.  God is going to be fucking pissed if you Republicans don’t shape up.”

  20. 20.

    Bill Arnold

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Also, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set their clock at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s ever been.

    Sigh/Ugh.
    Both the full statement and the press release are good.
    Closer than ever: It is 100 seconds to midnight – 2020 Doomsday Clock Statement
    Press Release—IT IS NOW 100 SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT (Gayle Spinazze, January 23, 2020)

    This situation—two major threats to human civilization, amplified by sophisticated, technology-propelled propaganda—would be serious enough if leaders around the world were focused on managing the danger and reducing the risk of catastrophe. Instead, over the last two years, we have seen influential leaders denigrate and discard the most effective methods for addressing complex threats—international agreements with strong verification regimes—in favor of their own narrow interests and domestic political gain. By undermining cooperative, science- and law-based approaches to managing the most urgent threats to humanity, these leaders have helped to create a situation that will, if unaddressed, lead to catastrophe, sooner rather than later.

  22. 22.

    WaterGirl

    @Leto:

    I’d do the whole embed thing but my iPhone doesn’t like the new pop up command boxes.

    Have you tried hitting reply (so you get the @ruckus), then hit the X to close the popup reply box, then hit COMMENT to take you down to the comment box, that your phone might like better?

  23. 23.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:  Can I pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster that he gets a flat  on his golf cart?  Or that it pours so we can see again how he doesn’t know how to operate an umbrella? Oh please, oh, please!!   Or both?  Yes I’m a petty bitch

    And now I check the details he is apparently actually giving a speech too…Blrgh

  24. 24.

    Leto

    @Kent: Losing his marbles and avoiding work. Isn’t he still in Davos? I guess he has a lot of free time considering he’s a pariah on the world stage, and all of his counterparts openly laugh in his face.

  25. 25.

    Cheryl Rofer

    This is a really good lecture. The last two days, I’ve only been able to listen to short parts of the trial, which were good, but listening to the whole thing is excellent. The whole thing could be made into a short course on impeachment.

  27. 27.

    jimmiraybob

    I’ve only been able to watch the last 20-30 minutes of Nadler’s presentation.  It seems to me that it is strong: 1) laying out a solid and substantial history of our constitutional principles as a foundation for the impeachment articles and 2) making a plain case that any act to summarily dismiss impeachment is, itself, in violation of constitutional principles.

    In my humble opinion, Nadler’s presentation and Schiff’s, from yesterday, should be woven into a textbook for a required course on constitutional law.  And everyone running for public office should be required to pass that course.   If you don’t know anything about the constitution then you cannot swear or affirm to preserve, protect, and defend it.

  31. 31.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Kent: I agree with the gist. However, I don’t think Pelosi will do this. I think she was genuinely reluctant to hold impeachment hearings at all, and only did so when it was clear that everyone would soon know that Trump was abusing his powers to affect the election.

  32. 32.

    Citizen Alan

    @patrick II: I now consider evangelical Christianity to be a fundamentally evil religion. At it’s core, it’s about people who actively desire the end of the world because they’re convinced that Jesus will come down personally to rescue them from the consequences of their own choices while leaving everyone who ever disagreed with them to be tortured for eternity.

  33. 33.

    patrick II

    @Ruckus:

    That is the sense I get — particularly with war in the Middle East. They were overjoyed with the assassination of Solemani.

  34. 34.

    patrick II

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    The problem is that they act on it in the present.  They vote for people who are more likely to bring their dreams to fruition.  I don’t know if you have ever seen the picture of Trump, head bowed, while a group of Evangilicals laid hands on him.  It was frightening.

  35. 35.

    bemused

    @Citizen Alan:

    I still laugh at the Prairie Home Companion 2004 Mystery episode when young girl Melissa calls saying her family has disappeared, left her behind. Keillor calls GW Bush, Billy Graham and the Pope who are still on earth but nobody is answering at the Unitarian Church.

  37. 37.

    Betty Cracker

    @patrick II: It’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out for Biden. Got to keep in mind the “gettable” voters — the people who will most likely swing the election — are the dumbest mofos in the country. We’re talking about people too stupid to grasp Trump’s obvious serial corruption and unfitness for office.

    These are the same people who piss and moan about how “Washington is broken” (as if it got that way all by itself!) and how everyone should just get along and work together (as if it wasn’t absurdly obvious that only one party is interested in governance).

    Such people are incredibly susceptible to “both sides” messaging, and I’m afraid Biden and Schumer may have given Republicans a reed to hang that pathetic ruse on yesterday.

    They’re right on the merits, of course: testimony from either Biden is immaterial to an investigation into Trump’s conduct. But I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to call their damned bluff.

  39. 39.

    LuciaMia

    Poor snakes. First they get the blame for that whole Garden of Eden thing and now for the Coronavirus.

  41. 41.

    Kent

    @Chief Oshkosh:@Kent: I agree with the gist. However, I don’t think Pelosi will do this. I think she was genuinely reluctant to hold impeachment hearings at all, and only did so when it was clear that everyone would soon know that Trump was abusing his powers to affect the election.

    Don’t call it Impeachment 2 or anything like that.   Just conduct endless oversight hearings.   The GOP won the fucking 2016 election doing this with Benghazi.  Seriously.  The Benghazi hearings is what got Trump elected in 2016.  It was the Benghazi hearings that dredged up the whole Clinton email thing when they subpoenaed all of her emails and discovered that lots of them weren’t on traditional State Dept servers.    Without Benghazi we have no Clinton email scandal and no Comey shitting all over the election in October 2016 with his “findings” related to Clinton’s emails.

    God only knows what additional shit they will dredge up if they keep pulling on strings.   The GOP wrote this playbook.  I do respect Pelosi’s judgment.  But I’ll fucking scream if Pelosi treats the top of Trump Administration wrongdoing to be a “settled issue” after this farce of a trial.

  43. 43.

    Kent

    EPIC fucking troll by Nadler to show the video clip of Lindsey Graham talking about high crimes and misdemeanors from the Clinton impeachment and how impeachment doesn’t even require a crime.

  44. 44.

    Chyron HR

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    Did you know that Bernie, yes, the One True God Bernie, actually called impeachment a “distraction” from the concerns of his chosen people, the white working class?

    But in addition to their profligate other personality flaws, his worshipers are all monumental hypocrites, so that’s okay.

  45. 45.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker:

    and I’m afraid Biden and Schumer may have given Republicans a reed to hang that pathetic ruse on yesterday.

    While I’m also tempted by the “call their bluff” strategy, I don’t blame Biden and Schumer for a bullshit, or squid-ink, idea that Rs pulled out of their ass. I’ve got a lot of problems with the whole Biden schtick around Hunter, but I don’t think the “witness trade” idea blows back on Biden or Schumer. And the idealist in me doesn’t want Dems to comply with their cynical hackitude. I think Ted Cruz is addle-pated, but I don’t think he’s stupid. He knows Hunter is irrelevant.

  46. 46.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Donald Trump hit a new record for tweets yesterday – something like 130.

    I was curious, so actually went and counted (did not read, however). The total count yesterday for tweets and retweets was a whopping 142. JFC.

  50. 50.

    Baud

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I think the Dems shouldn’t sign on to an implicit statement that Hunter is relevant. I could see a deal under which each side gets to call X number of witnesses, and let the GOP own any decision to choose Hunter.

  51. 51.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kent: different electoral targets and different media infrastructure. I don’t read the Intercept or Jacobin, but from what I gather from twitter they’re far more invested in Biden’s previous statements on Social Security and Glenn Greenwald than anything trump has done.

  52. 52.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Chief Oshkosh: I think she was hesitant on Impeachment hearings because she knows there’s only one shot and concern that it would be too close to the election.  The fact that Trump’s criminal activity was trying to cheat in the upcoming election made the difference.  I don’t think she has a problem at all with continuing oversight hearings.

  54. 54.

    sdhays

    @Ruckus: I think the original Christians were sure that Jesus would come back in their lifetimes. 2000 years later..

    ETA: I just realized this may be the first recorded version of the “Friedman Unit”, where something that was predicted doesn’t happen on schedule, so the believers just adjust another few decades out.

  56. 56.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud:

    I could see a deal under which each side gets to call X number of witnesses, and let the GOP own any decision to choose Hunter.

    That’s interesting… I don’t know how they would work it out. My first thought was McConnell and Schumer each get X number, but ideally, I would want every Senator on record voting on each witness

  57. 57.

    Aleta

    @Kent: When I looked at them (not all),  the ones I saw were all retweets.  Leading me to wonder if staff purposely put up a  high count of retweets to simulate widespread support and indignation from all corners.  Intending, of course, that “Trump’s high number of tweets” would make headlines and then be echoed (as it was here by Cheryl), and bring people to read that foxy propaganda, as I did.  It would be interesting to know what percentage of the 140  look like they could be his own.   Or are they keeping him away from twitter, so he doesn’t force them to endlessly recalibrate the defense until they’re too drunk to walk straight.

     

    Btw I want breathalyzer and urine tests on every Repub. who’s running in and out of the room during proceedings.   They’re on the job and we’re paying them.

  58. 58.

    Kent

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Schiff did exactly the right thing by rejecting this whole witness trade deal out of hand.  The GOP has already tainted this process beyond belief.  Don’t aid and abet them.

    If Trump’s attorneys want to call Hunter Biden as part of their so-called defense they are free to do so and have the Senate vote up or down on their witness request.  They don’t need some Dem “deal” to provide cover for it.  If the Senate really wants to hear from Hunter Biden they can do so without any Democratic help, either as part of this trial, or as part of some other oversight hearing.

    Impeachment is the most serious constitutional process our country has.  Don’t fucking play games with it.

    In any event, the 2020 election is going to be an absolute shitstorm of fake news and spin.  Whether or not Hunter Biden testifies or not (or whether or not Bolton testifies) isn’t going to make any difference at all for low-information voters trying to decide what to do next November.  What they read on facebook a day before, or what they heard in church or from a dingbat friend over coffee will be more important.  It is only us cognoscenti who game-play out how this stuff will affect things.  Fact is, they almost certainly won’t.  We will have moved on 25-times over to something new by then.

  61. 61.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Agreed, but the audience isn’t the non-stupid but objectively pro-evil Cruz and the rest of the Republicans; it’s unaffiliated voters who gobble up the “both sides” bullshit and uncritically worship bipartisanship. I hope it doesn’t blow back on Biden, Schumer, et al, either, but you know the Republican excuse will be something like “we wanted to call witnesses, but it wasn’t fair that only ones Democrats wanted to hear from could testify, so more in sorrow than anger, we nixed witnesses altogether.” It’s bullshit, but I’m not confident it won’t resonate with the stupider sectors of the electorate, some of whom we need to win in 2020.

  62. 62.

    Kent

    @clay: No idea.  They aren’t panning the chamber.  This isn’t like the State of the Union where the cameras pan around and zoom in on people when they are being mentioned.    But it was fucking awesome for us cognoscenti.

  63. 63.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    “I have an old-fashioned view that news is not a commodity,” Mr. Lehrer told The American Journalism Review in 2001. “News is information that’s required in a democratic society, and Thomas Jefferson said a democracy is dependent on an informed citizenry. That sounds corny, but I don’t care whether it sounds corny or not. It’s the truth.”

    Try to imagine a Chuck Todd or a Chris Cillizza or anyone at Fox News saying that with a straight face.

  66. 66.

    Kent

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:@Kent: different electoral targets and different media infrastructure. I don’t read the Intercept or Jacobin, but from what I gather from twitter they’re far more invested in Biden’s previous statements on Social Security and Glenn Greenwald than anything trump has done.

    Both Sanders and Trump have made similar statements on Social Security.  If that is the criteria then only Warren, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar are viable candidates.  And only because neither of them were around in the 1990s and Buttigieg has never been around national politics.

  69. 69.

    Kelly

    @Betty Cracker: “gettable” voters

    Dredging up the Trump’s corruption and incompetence has gotten a few “libertarian Republican” old friends of mine over to the “any Democrat” side. They used to always find some way to vote Republican on “economic” grounds. Any of my arguments about  a women’s right to choose, failure of previous tax cut to trickle down or pay for themselves, racism, militarism were waved off with vague assurances that stuff would get cleaned up. After all they intended to be rich one day. Not anymore.

  70. 70.

    patrick II

    @Betty Cracker:

    The problem with calling either Biden is that it sets up a false equivalance.  Undecided voters don’t pay attention to the details, and seeing Hunter being questioned in the same inquiry as Trump is troublesome.

  73. 73.

    dnfree

    @sdhays: it’s actually in the Bible that some followers would not die before Jesus’ return. Even though the Bible to evangelicals is inerrant and infallible and perfectly clear, that part is down the rabbit hole.

  74. 74.

    SFAW

    As usual, off-topic for an Open Thread, but I thought this tweet might lighten the mood of all you Eeyores who think the courageous Republicans will NOT do what’s right when it comes time to acquit/convict. After all, they’re loyal американцы, right?

    The text is in Italian, which I don’t speak/read — I know at least one commenter does — but I think it’s roughly “how to deal with an ant problem.”

  77. 77.

    jeffreyw

    @Ruckus: 

    How many times have we been assured that the rapture will come in the next 30 years?

    The rapture will be fusion powered and arrive to bear the chosen away in flying cars.

  78. 78.

    West of the Rockies

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    142 Tweets, which is a hair under 8 an hour for 18 hours, one every 8 minutes.  I’d think even his fluffers and rimmers would want him to shut up at some point.

  80. 80.

    Nelle

    The deep hypocrisy in the Rapture movement is that there is a claim that God is mysterious, all powerful, all knowing.  But yet these bozos not only know when the second coming is (despite the verse that no man knows the hour) but think that they and The Donald have to help it along.  One would think that they dont entirely trust their god.

  81. 81.

    Nelle

    Is there a way I can find out if either or noth of my Republican senators are among those who were out of the room yesterday?

  82. 82.

    Mnemosyne

    @West of the Rockies:

    I think that Trump believes that tweeting proves how not bothered he is by what’s going on. Problem for him is, everyone else can figure out that he’s tweeting because he’s bothered.

  83. 83.

    Betty Cracker

    I’m not a lawyer, but doesn’t the notion that there has to be a specific violation of law to meet the “high crimes and misdemeanors” threshold defy common sense? The office of the presidency inherently has powers beyond what ordinary citizens have — that’s kind of the point of impeachment and leaving it to Congress to regulate the president’s actions. Otherwise, wouldn’t you have to codify everything a president is capable of doing but shouldn’t? It’s just a dumb argument, IMO.

  84. 84.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @schrodingers_cat: It really does seem to be getting pretty terrifying, I have friends who were born in India and came to the states as children with their parents.  When they are will to talk about it at all, it seems to make them pretty aghast/sick/depressed.

  85. 85.

    FlipYrWhig

    @patrick II: Yup, that’s what I would think too:  the “optics” (I hate that word but *sigh*) of having a Biden in the dock, regardless of what was said, would legitimize the idea that something corrupt happened involving a Biden.

  88. 88.

    PJ

    @Betty Cracker:  Furthermore, to take an “originalist” perspective (not something I would normally do, but certainly relevant for this argument), at the time the Constitution was ratified, there was no federal law, so statutory violations of the law could not have been what the Framers were thinking of.

  89. 89.

    Josie

    @FlipYrWhig: 
    Additionally, I would hope that we have learned not to make deals with these people anyway. They have pretty much proved that they are not to be trusted in any shape, form or fashion.

  90. 90.

    Galahad Threepwood

    @dnfree:   This is very true, and the evidence shows that a.) early Christians clearly believed in an imminent (meaning, in their physical lifetimes) return of Christ and b.) toward the end of the 1st Century they were starting to feel some embarrassment about it.   (The famous passage in 2nd Peter about a thousand years being as a day to God is a clear response to that issue.)    Subsequently Christians developed more and more sophisticated responses to the question of the timing of Christ’s return, but the original conception was that people living in the mid-to-late 1st Century CE were experiencing the End Times, and would see the end of the world before they died.  There was clearly no expectation that it would be more than 2000 years before Jesus came back.

  92. 92.

    Mnemosyne

    @Nelle:

    And let me go into my rant about “no man knows the hour” for a moment …

    It’s very clear from that passage that he’s talking about DEATH. No one knows when or where they will die, and a sudden tragedy can mean that one person dies while someone standing next to them lives. So we all need to be spiritually prepared for death to take us at any moment.

    The Rapture believers are so terrified of death that they have to deny the clear meaning of that passage and insist that it means the opposite, that they will never have to die, unlike the rest of us. Unfortunately for them, as poet/mortician Thomas Lynch says, the mortality rate for the human race is holding steady at 100 percent.

  93. 93.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Anyone else caught up in the aapparently nationwide xfinity blackout of internet (I still have tv)?

    and wondering  if this is Iran’s revenge ?

  94. 94.

    JaySinWA

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Don’t forget the refrain:

    Executive Time:

    To the tune of Pick a little, talk a little

    Poop ‘n’ tweet,

    Refrain:

    [flush, flush, flush, flush,

    flush, flush, flush, flush,

    flush, flush, flush, flush]

    tweet ‘n’ poop,

    (refrain)

    all day, every day.

  98. 98.

    Sloane Ranger

    I think that the Democrats felt they had no option but to impeach but knew that conviction was, at best, a long shot.

    The House managers strategy is to use the high  profile Impeachment hearings to reach the widest possible audience to educate them on what actually happened, how it damages your country, how far the Trump Administration is prepared to go in order to win and force each and every Republican to go on record as supporting these sleazy actions.

    In doing this, they force Republicans in purple States to defend their votes and inoculate their eventual candidate against unsubstantiated smears during the election by making people think ‘Oh, that sounds like that Ukraine thing!’

  103. 103.

    smintheus

    PBS just interview Rick Scott, who lied his head off. When asked whether other presidents had asked a foreign leader to interfere in an election, he changed the subject rather than answer, and then doubled back to claim that it hadn’t been proven Trump asked anyone to interfere.

  106. 106.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @jeffreyw: I’m waiting for the Crapture – when all the Talibangelical faithful are bodily lifted up & dumped headfirst into the nearest septic tank.

  108. 108.

    zhena gogolia

    I have to say, Jerrold Nadler has a face for radio. I was just listening to him on the radio on the way home, and he sounded masterly! When I’m looking at him I don’t find him as impressive. I know, it’s lookist, but it’s just my visceral reaction.

    NOW I HAVE TO GET TO WORK. I feel so guilty, that our wonderful Dems are putting their hearts and souls into this but I can’t spend the whole day watching it.

  110. 110.

    zhena gogolia

    @smintheus:

    Cory Gardner did the same thing. Two reporters kept coming back at him, saying “It’s a yes or no question,” and he kept babbling irrelevancies.

  113. 113.

    p.a.

    @Mnemosyne: Fred Clark at slacktivist points out that at the rapture jeebus KILLS all the RTCs.  They only get to heaven because they’re dead.  One of the entry qualifications.

  120. 120.

    JaySinWA

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I am pretty sure it doesn’t count if you do it before your are elected. Old news, baked into the polls, non story. Elected in a massive victory so it had to be okay.

    So read the transcript of the perfect call, no there there. What is the meaning of is? Undo un-due elections is un Amurican

    This is all a distraction from Donald trying to flush crap down his gold plated throne, and make dishwashers great again.

  121. 121.

    smintheus

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: It’s interesting to observe the quantity and quality of Republican lies on the TV. PBS has 2 former Republican staffers on its panel. Yesterday they were muted and discrete and made only a few cautious attempts at misdirection, but today they are lying like mad. One insisted that Americans voted (!) to send Trump to Washington to clean up corruption, so they wouldn’t be angry if he’s accused of trying to clean up corruption related to the 2016 election. The other claimed that the Mueller report proved (he doubled down on this when challenged) that the Russian interference story was a false conspiracy theory, and therefore the current case against Trump is just another failed Democratic conspiracy theory. Absolutely bat-shit “analysis” from them today.

  122. 122.

    J R in WV

    @Betty Cracker:

    I’m not a lawyer, but doesn’t the notion that there has to be a specific violation of law to meet the “high crimes and misdemeanors” threshold defy common sense?

    Not only that — when Impeachment was written into the constitution, there were NO crimes as there was no federal code yet. There was no legislature yet, no federal law enforcement, none of that.

    Yet there certainly were “high crimes and misdemeanors” and we know this because that’s the definition in the Impeachment clause of the constitution!!

  123. 123.

    cckids

    @Betty Cracker:

     

    It’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out for Biden. Got to keep in mind the “gettable” voters — the people who will most likely swing the election — are the dumbest mofos in the country. We’re talking about people too stupid to grasp Trump’s obvious serial corruption and unfitness for office.

    In an earlier thread, someone referred to the Pod Save America guys focus groups with these voters. Again and again, I was left dumbfounded by the willful ignorance and batshittery of these people. They mainly despise Trump, but are . . . just unsure about the Dems. Aren’t they too lefty? Too contentious?

    These people, who supposedly are revolted by the whole Trump presidency, won’t commit to voting for the Dem nominee.

    They want someone to sing the “can’t we all just get along” chorus. They want someone as President who doesn’t rock the boat, someone who’ll bring respect back to the office. And yet, they’re not sure about any of the Dem candidates. They’re gob-smackingly oblivious to logic and reality.

  126. 126.

    J R in WV

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Very interesting. Coming from small town America, growing up in the 50s and 60s, I was fascinated by Indian history when first exposed, and took a college class my first swing at college, interrupted by Nixon’s nasty little war.

    thanks for keeping us informed on the ongoing tragedy in your nation of origin, it sounds so much like our tragedy…

  127. 127.

    evodevo

    @dnfree: Yes…and it’s Jeezus who supposedly says this…not one of his wannabe followers.  So.  When I bring this up to one of my fundie acquaintances, they just look at me.  Most of them know WAY less about the Bible than they think they do.  Cherry-picking is a way of life for fundie Xtians…

  129. 129.

    smintheus

    @J R in WV: I don’t understand why there is still debate about whether Trump committed impeachable offenses. He was impeached by the House. The House is the only body that decides what an impeachable offense is. The question the Senate faces is whether to convict him of the things he has been charged with, not whether he may be charged with them.

  131. 131.

    brantl

    Donald Trump hit a new record for tweets yesterday – something like 130. Let’s help him beat that record!

    maybe he’ll break his thumbs.

  132. 132.

    brantl

    @WaterGirl: This reminds me of the joke about the guy that doesn’t want to pay full price for a suit, so he puts on a factory second, and by the time he walks out of the store, he’s walking like a ham-stringed hunchback, to cover all the flaws in the suit…….

  134. 134.

    Ryan

    You know, Switzerland would probably grant him asylum.  Perhaps in an asylum.  There is no public charge policy in Switzerland.

  135. 135.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @p.a.: WTF is an RTC? And don’t tell me to Google it – I did, & came up with 125 possible meanings, not one of which is germane.

  136. 136.

    Splitting Image

    @Uncle Cosmo:

    WTF is an RTC? And don’t tell me to Google it – I did, & came up with 125 possible meanings, not one of which is germane.

    Real True Christian.

    Like Donald Trump, Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson.

    Not like Jimmy Carter or Martin Luther King. Or Jesus.

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