I have wondered how Trump’s shiiting on so many former associates hasn’t come back to bite him, and hard, yet.
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That only happens if they go at the same time as part of the same move.
If Trump goes and Pence gets bumped he appoints a new VP, subject to approval of the Senate. If Pence goes Trump appoints a VP, subject to approval of the Senate. That’s how we got Ford. As unlikely as Trump going might be, if he does and Pence is directly involved in the cause. Pence is pretty much cooked one way or the other. But it’d be even less likely you’d be able to push them both out of office simultaneously, and I’d expect Democrats would avoid it specifically because that becomes “Nancy Pelosi is stealing the presidency!”
Should Pence remain in office, he’d have significant personal risk lingering over his head. His own potential impeachment or removal, without the backing of a GOP that either agreed to remove Trump or pushed him to resign. Antagonizing those people, who’ve already shown themselves to very not into a war with Iran, isn’t all that wise a move.
Which also speaks to the level of deep “What if” this is. Nobody seriously thinks this will happen, or can even be made to happen. Stuff like Parnas and Bolton are rats from a sinking ship. Ass covering from likely patsies. With Bolton reported to be personally pissed that Trump claimed to have fired him. There was a very public spat of the “I’m not fired, I quit!” type followed by a ton of shit talking by Bolton.
You don’t need a secret plot to create someone as remarkably powerful and universally respected as Gerald Ford to make sense of this.
Every inch of coverage of the guy for 20 years, every public appearance he’s ever made, and every account of the guy ever given even by his friends.
More over nth dimensional chess is a pretty bad explaination of any of this. Bolton has ruined his own reputation a number of times already. And never showed any propensity for sinister plans. What he has done is repeatedly toss other people under the bus, and snipe at former allies after he chases himself out of prime time.
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He’s also hoping to glimpse a view of a few underage girls naked.
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Take heart…as the days go on it’s looking more and more likely that the R’s WILL be asking for witnesses. They are apparently getting plenty of heat from all the folks back home clamoring for Hunter Biden, little knowing that “witnesses” will also open the door to Mulvaney, Bolton, Giuliani, Pompeo etc.
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Fingers crossed.
As for the Bidens, and pretty much any mention at all of them by Trump’s defense team, I really wish Roberts would act like an actual judge, by pointing out that this is Trump’s trial, not Hunter Biden’s. In legal terms, how is the idea of him testifying at all even considered a legitimate idea?
The efforts of Trump’s defenders through this whole thing to talk about anything BUT the charges against Trump, and their getting away with that, is astounding to me.
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Even the bits that seem like jokes. When the Republicans are, even individually, holding two contradictory positions, each of which is dumb/obviously wrong, it’s impossible to parody.
Also, he may be a crazy warmongering asshole, but everything I read about Bolton indicates he still has a code of behavior - one that Trump egregiously violated with blatantly stupid criminality.
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By my read the violation was more along the lines of not listening to Bolton exclusively, and publicly tarnishing his reputation. Bolton certainly has his own standards. But they seem more focused on his own importance and public standing. After he washed out of the Bush administration he spent a long time trash talking others in the administration and giving “I was right, these people are weak and insufficiently manly” talks at think thanks and conservative events.
I mean the guy’s particular brand of crazy is basically “America has a big dick” as foreign policy.
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Well, there were things that happened that definitely crossed the line for Bolton - though whether his response, had the Trump administration done what he wanted, would have been more than simply not wanting to be actively involved with them, I don’t know.
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That is a worthless theory. And, let us not forget, the choice is not Trump or Pence, the choice is Trump or the Constitution. I mean, do you really want the argument “Abuse of power for personal gain is not an impeachable offence” to be the precedent set here?
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I think you’ve got that in combination with the 2/3rds of Americans who are in favor of pertinent witnesses. They’re more than willing to ignore a majority of voters, provided a majority of their voters will play along. But with their base hot to trot for witnesses for nonsense they’re kinda over a barrel.
There seems to be a lot of hand wringing over the idea of them actually questioning Biden, or a “trade” being a bad idea. Frankly I can’t see how that would work out too well for them in the end. Questioning people about conspiracy theories, generating a big “yeah no” and a bunch of noise. Followed by a string of people and documents confirming the impeachment charges isn’t really gonna do what it says on the box. Sure it delegitimizes impeachment a bit, but it delegitimizes their role in the impeachment.
We’re trying to parse the behavior of people who are actively opposed to the wrong one of those.
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This is the thing. Suddenly, now, Republicans are all into victim impact statements???
(And I would love to see Mr. Hunter Biden just respond to every question with “Donald Trump tried to extort a foreign nation with public money to make up dirt on me to embarrass my dad with in the next election because he knows that he can’t win. There was no misconduct on my or my father’s part.” As the Republicans ask harsher and harsher questions trying to look tough, just repeat it louder and more forcibly, until he is standing up and screaming it at the Republicans, pointing at them and screaming it; the words “You traitorous power whore” implied and unvoiced at the end.
And then a lone Democrat senator stands up and asks him the question “Do you know why you are here today?” and he replies with the exact same sentence, a smile on his face.)
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Sounds like a great movie!
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I think that moral cowardice is a major trait that leads to someone being willing to work for an incompetent man that belittles everyone that works for him, which actually helps Trump in this way. They show the same cowardice after they leave office rather than standing up to him and speaking their mind
edit: On second thought, looking at all the repub senators, moral cowardice seems to be a job requirement for all of them, whether they work for trump or not
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Is our Republic a joke to these Senators?
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Yep, beat me to it. I was about to write basically the same thing.
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War against Iran, end of the Republic… it’s not an easy choice, but I’m still going with President Pence on this one.
Who’re the faces in the cartoon?
Moscow Mitch?
?
Graham?
Collins?
Trump
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i wish every time that one of the popular vote loser’s team said “transcript”, one of the managers could have jumped up with an objection
the actual transcript has never been released by the whitehouse, only the “readout”.
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The only reason we’re not in a hot war with them right now is because they fucked up and shot down a civilian airliner. That was in response to a flagrant assassination of their most senior military leadership that was committed entirely to distract from impeachment.
I’d take that long game over this short one any day.
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