Favored her so much they hired Trump’s former campaign manager.
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Can anyone explain what happens if the 2016 election is found to be so compromised as to be invalid? Either by finding the millions that voted illegally, or serious Russian hacking, or whatever?
I understand the rules of succession; POTUS -> VPOTUS -> Speaker of the House -> etc… But this succession happens if POTUS dies or resigns. And I assume if successfully impeached.
Is there any sort of do-over process?
The “salacious” stuff would be interesting but I doubt it would damage Trump. I suspect the Good Old Boys in the Trump Base would envy him while the Christian Fundamentalists, who should be outraged, would forgive him anything as long as he pushes their political agenda. The only thing likely to shame Trump is for him to be publicly upstaged–for example, if it became general knowledge that Steve Bannon is the “real” President and Trump his stooge.
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In a sane world - what happens is when the president resigns in disgrace the VP takes over and admitting humility just does the ‘business’ of running the country - that is without trying to ram an agenda down the gullet.
Then if they can keep things calm they get a chance to go for broke and re-election as a sitting president.
In a case like this - they’d have to impeach the president - and possibly vp at the same time - otherwise - Penske get’s the spot and names his own vp - who then takes over if they impeach him at a later time.
Should they impeach both at the same time - then Ryan would take over - and again - a sane and humble man would accept the role as a stand in to keep the government working - however - we are talking about the ‘new republican’ party here - the one that doesn’t care how they get power - only that they wield it with a maul.
It would be a complete cluster fuck.
Impeach, Pence, repeat.
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Some of us still feel tat following The Constitution is worthwhile. Trump is in clear-cut violation of Article 1 Section 9 Clause 8. HE SHOULD BE IMPEACHED. Then we move on to the next one. It’s as simple as that. As soon as we’re willing to ignore basic tenets of the law, let me tell you: The entire game is over, and the American Experiment is dead. I would prefer not to see that, and even if there’s chaos. One imagines that under proper investigation, there’s enough corruption in the GOP to perhaps take the party itself down. We should do that. One bastard at a time.
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They’re not.
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They give Van Jones airtime – I’m about to watch his program with Bill Maher, a town-hall type event. I imagine it’s going to be somewhat awesome. 9pm Eastern Friday 2/10.
That’s why I’m spending some time engaging with my congressional representatives, telling them almost daily:
Publicly declare Donald Trump to be in violation of Article 1 Section 9 Clause 8 (foreign emoluments). There is not even question as to the fact he’s in violation, a blatant and clear Constitutional breach. He has NOT been granted explicit authorization by the House, on a case by case basis, for all of his foreign payments. We KNOW those payments are occurring.
CALL FOR IMPEACHMENT NOW!
Give it a couple of weeks.
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Thanks. So no do-over election.
I’m stocking up on popcorn. Gonna be a busy 2, 4, or (gulp) 8 years.
So you couldn’t keep that under your hat?
Or should I say that you could keep it under your hat, with ample room for more?
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Well, there’s something in his tax returns bad enough that he decided to keep them secret.
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Pretty sure it’s probably MOST of the tax return that would raise eyebrows…
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I find myself asking the same question as when there’s another mass shooting: what will it take for things to change for the better? I’m very strongly leaning in favour of this footage existing somewhere because 45 is that much of a narcissistic orange fuckwit, of course he knew there were cameras and likely relished in it. I have very little belief it would make one jot of difference to the support of his devoted spawn however, if this alleged behaviour doesn’t do it then surely nothing whatsoever will.
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LOCK HIM UP!
LOCK HIM UP!
Yes these are complete sentences.
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That my friend is what’s called a constitutional crisis. There is no clear answer from the constitution so its not entirely clear that a resolution can be found through legal means. Legislative hail marys and fights in the courts might develop a resolution. But its very much a “we don’t know” sort of thing.
Because there really isn’t a “do over” set-up in the constitution, and I don’t believe there is any legislation on the subject. If there is its probably open to challenge. As it’s pretty clear this sort of thing is only the realm of the constitution.
That’s not how impeachment works. Its not a remove a president for any reason sort of thing. The president can be impeached for “high crimes and misdemeanors”, and then must be tried and convicted in the House of Representatives. So to remove a president from office over an invalid election the President would have to be directly complicit in that invalidity. In some way that violated the law.
And dropping the president, even along with the VP. Doesn’t exactly solve the central issue. Since his party will maintain control of the presidency due to fraudulent election results. So you’ve still a messy constitutional conflict on hand. Who takes power? Can you call a new election? And so forth.
Several past actions likely fulfill the standard of High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Like that whole acknowledging wrong doing by settling the Trump University case case thing. He almost certain should be impeached, and already could be. But the House does the impeaching. And the house is huffing Trump’s taint like an over excited puppy.
He’d have to lose support from his own party.
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You still need 2/3rds of the Senate to convict as well? I doubt Trump would resign if impeached.
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Yeah I glossed the details then typo’d. Was coming to fix it.
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Stupid sociopathic illiterate people, my theory goes, crack under pressure. So we need to ratchet that shit up. Nixon got elected too, and he got impeached. I’m pretty sure he had higher approval ratings than Trump at this point into his final term, as well.
Lots of interesting stuff going down. Looks like the intelligence community might be starting to (intentionally?) leak – can’t imagine where today’s info on Flynn and his little illegal chat with the Russkies would have otherwise come from (last I checked there’s a specific DOD sub-agency who would have been listening into something like that). Yep, going to be a really interesting 2017…
Starting to? That Russia Dossier was circulating for months (though not from intelligence) and there seemed be plenty of leaking when it became a big story. There were tons of leaks after his CIA wall speech. His administration is leaking like a sieve from all fronts. The borked raid story got big almost exclusively due to military and intelligence “leaking” their grievances and the details. And there are daily embarrassing leaks from white house staff.
The military doesn’t seem too fond of this guy. And he’s done everything he can since the campaign to antagonize intelligence agencies specifically. That’s not smart.
As for the rest of it is really only a matter of time before something comes out or he does something that’s indefensible. And that’s sort of what’s dangerous here. If our system works as it should, and our currently ruling party finally breaks from Trump then all will be fine (ish). But given the way the GOP is acting its going to take a lot. You need a situation where the consequences or fallout look worse for the GOP than the perceived electoral downsides of breaking with your own president or impeaching him. And the difficulty of ruling afterwards. Because they’re crass.
When that “only a matter of time” moment happens and they don’t do the right thing. Then you’ve got a problem. Particularly if it starts to look like what we saw hints of with the Muslim ban. If there’s out and out refusal to comply with court orders and rulings. If Trump refuses to leave office when impeached. If there’s sufficient backing from the complacent and the cynical to keep letting him do things he can’t do. You get chaos. With despotic strong men leaders. All those checks and balances seem to curiously fade away. He ignores the courts and well… nothing happens. Opposition parties get arrested. Rule changes gimp what they can do in legislature. And when its challenged, and he loses. Well nothing happens. And we’ve already seeing a bit of that. The inaction from Ethics offices. Your Utah Congress critter aping the Trump camp’s claim the presidents are above conflict of interest laws. Our ethics oversight apparatus has quietly vanished.
I’m relatively convinced by the last couple of weeks that Trump is far to incompetent (and impatient) to really seize power in that way. But all that instability. It creates opportunities. Opportunities for things like coups and opportunist despots with better skills and chances. And it all severely undermines support of and confidence in the structures that could reign those things in.
So even if that big thing happens. And everything goes as it should. Trump removed, government stabilized. Its all really bad anyway.
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