This week, with just a few days til 2020 and 311 days till the 2020 presidential election, Trump, though on holiday at Mar-a-Lago, nevertheless kept his impeachment and his ire at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi close by his side.
On Christmas night, Trump focused a significant amount of energy not on his family, but on his phone, sending out copious tweets attacking Pelosi, who led the impeachment charge against him, and who is currently withholding the articles of impeachment from the Senate until the GOP-dominated Senate lays out a clear plan as to what Trump’s trial in the Senate will look like.
“Why should Crazy Nancy Pelosi…be allowed to Impeach the President of the United States?” Was the general flavor of Trump’s Christmas night tweet frenzy.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already proclaimed that he won’t be an impartial juror in Trump’s trial.
“Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with the White House counsel,” McConnell told Fox New’ Sean Hannity. “There will be no difference between the president’s position and our position as to how to handle this.”
In the House, Republicans walked in lock step in their opposition to impeachment, presenting a defense of Trump that consisted largely of deflection. In the Senate, however, some Republicans are not comfortable with McConnell’s planned impartiality.
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has voiced her concern this week. “In fairness, when I heard that, I was disturbed,” she said.
Referring to not only McConnell, but also to many GOP lawmakers who have already indicated they will not be impartial, Murkowski said, “For me to prejudge and say there’s nothing there or, on the other hand, he should be impeached yesterday, that’s wrong, in my view, that’s wrong.”
Elsewhere in the world this week, a Saudi court sentenced five people to death for the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi royal family. Khashoggi’s gruesome murder at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul brought global condemnation and cast suspicion on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Lawyers concluded that Khashoggi’s killing was not premeditated, though evidence had been found that a hit team was sent to the Consulate to dispatch Khashoggi. Outside Saudi Arabia, questions remain as to what Crown Prince bin Salman may have had to do with the killing.
In North Korea, a promised “Christmas gift” to the U.S., widely interpreted by the White House to mean a provocative North Korean weapons test, never came. U.S. intelligence remains watchful.
“Maybe it’s a nice present,” joked President Trump when asked how he would respond if North Korea fired a missile over the holidays. “Maybe it’s present where he sends me a beautiful vase as opposed to a missile test. … You don’t know. You never know.”
Back in the U.S., where health care has been ranked among the worst among the industrialized countries, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) continues to fight for its life. This week, a court ruling that further jeopardizes the ACA by declaring it unconstitutional may actually empower Democrats. As the GOP continues its attempts to dismantle the ACA while offering no palatable replacement, more Americans are beginning to feel the crisis our health care is in.
Additionally, more Americans are discovering how the ACA benefits all Americans with protections such as for pre-existing conditions and full coverage for physical exams. This has given Democrats the opportunity to demonstrate their support for protecting the ACA, as well as their desire to create a health care system that works for more Americans, as Republicans appear to be working to restrict access even more. Democrats won the House majority in 2018 in large part on their message of protecting the ACA and its protection for preexisting conditions.
Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said “I think it’s an opportunity to reset with the new year to remind people that there’s a very real threat to tens of millions of Americans. We Democrats are always striving to improve the system, but, at a minimum, the American people expect us to protect what they already have.”
President Trump resumes lashing out against impeachment on Twitter | CBS Evening News [2019-12-26]
Lou Dobbs Tonight 12/26/19 SHOW| Breaking Fox News December 26, 2019 [2019-12-26]
This week, with just 318 days till the 2020 U.S. presidential election, President Donald J. Trump was impeached. On Wednesday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 230 to 197 on the first of two articles of impeachment, abuse of power; and 229 to 198 on the second article, obstruction of Congress. Trump joins a select club of three U.S. presidents who have been impeached.
The votes on both articles of impeachment were split down partisan lines, with all Republicans voting against impeachment; two Democrats (two different ones for each article) voting with them; the remaining Democrats and the lone independent voting in support of impeachment; and one Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, voting “Present” instead of choosing either side.
“I could not in good conscience vote against impeachment because I believe President Trump is guilty of wrongdoing. I also could not in good conscience vote for impeachment because removal of a sitting President must not be the culmination of a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country.”
Some praise Gabbard’s courage, while others question it. Several Democrats who won their seats in Trump-supporting districts stuck their necks out and voted in favor of impeachment, despite the risk to their jobs come next election.
Tulsi Gabbard is right about the extreme and divisive partisanship of this impeachment process, however.
Weeks of heated debate did little or nothing to change anyone’s mind regarding whether Donald Trump committed impeachable offenses. Unlike with the previous two U.S. presidential impeachment proceedings, opinions were almost completely split down party lines.
Despite sworn testimony by reliable witnesses that Trump withheld military funds from Ukraine for a personal political favor, and despite the fact that Trump openly prevented the release of requested documents and blocked the testimony of White House staff who had firsthand knowledge of Trump’s conversation with Ukraine, all Republicans maintained that the impeachment inquiry was a “sham,” and that Trump did nothing wrong.
One must speculate as to why, if Trump “did nothing wrong,” he wouldn’t be glad to bring witnesses to testify that the conversation was “perfect,” as he claims. And with no real defense of Trump but flimsy, repetitive pseudo-defenses (“You just don’t like him” was one GOP refrain), as well as a battery of distraction techniques, one has wonder what’s keeping every last GOP lawmaker in such a lock step of loyalty to Trump and falsehood.
Following Trump’s impeachment in the House, the two articles will be sent to the Senate, who will hold a trial for Trump’s possible removal from office. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has already openly stated that he would not be impartial. As a result, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will delay sending the articles to the Senate until the Senate will promise a fair trial.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, spoke out in support of Trump and criticized the Democrats for their acts of impeachment. “This is just the continuation of the internal political battle, one party that lost the elections, the Democrats, and are now trying to find new ways by accusing Trump of collusion with Russia. But then it turned out there was no collusion, this can’t be the basis for impeachment.”
Perhaps the Republican lawmakers in the House got their instructions and speaker notes from Putin.
Impeachment dominated the week, but this week also brought the final Democratic presidential debate of 2019. The list of candidates has been whittled down from the original 24 in the first debate to just seven who qualified for this one. Candidates who were onstage Thursday evening were Vice President Joe Biden; Senator Elizabeth Warren; Senator Bernie Sanders; South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar; and businessmen Andrew Yang and Tom Steyer.
Assuming the Senate does not remove him from office, Donald Trump plans to run for re-election. With each demonstration of how deep Trump’s lack of integrity goes, his base seems to dig in their heels a little more in support of him. The rest of the world, however (except, perhaps, for Vladimir Putin), holds out hope that one of the Democratic presidential candidates will claim presidential victory in 2020. Trump impeached in historic House vote | CBS This Morning [2019-12-19]
White House ready for ‘fair shot’ on impeachment in Senate: ‘We will prevail’ | Fox News [2019-12-19]
