I’m probably going to start highlighting examples of Senate Republicans showing their exasperation with the president because it will not be too long before they become the key jurors who will determine whether Donald Trump should be removed from office. Today, we have a lot of choice examples. I could show you some of the comments related to the president’s decision to pull our troops out of Syria, but I will instead focus on the reaction to Trump’s decision not to sign a continuing resolution to avoid a holiday season government shutdown.
Susan Collins of Maine is probably the Republican senator most disposed to indict Trump for impeachable offenses, and she doesn’t sound pleased:
“Are you ruining my life?” GOP Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) joked to The Hill when told about the decision.
“No. I don’t think the votes are [there], ugh. We can’t have a government shutdown, period,” she said, when asked if there was an alternative to the Senate bill. “It’s never good. How many times do we have to learn that?”
Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has had a number of run-ins with the administration, and he’s at his wit’s end.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), asked if it looked like Congress was headed toward a partial lapse in funding, told reporters “it kind of seems we’re on the path.”
“I’m not sure what leverage the president thinks he has at this moment. I think the way you create leverage is keep this issue alive” into next year, Johnson told reporters.
Bob Corker of Tennessee is retiring but that’s helpful because he feels free to say what other Republicans senators are thinking but are afraid to say:
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who is retiring in early January, started laughing when he was told of Trump’s decision.
“Well, why not?” he quipped, asked why he was laughing, adding that he was “not really” surprised by Trump’s decision.
“On this? I don’t know. Y’all have fun. I’m getting ready to fly to Chattanooga. …[Leadership] has no guidance right now,” Corker said, asked what happened next. “I think they’re just sort of swirling around over there at the White House.”
Asked if he thought the continuing resolution (CR) could still be signed, Corker added that it’s impossible to predict what Trump will do.
“I don’t know. … Who knows. Does the person sitting behind him at the White House know? Who would know? Who would know,” Corker said. “I love it, you can’t make this stuff up.”
A government shutdown is extremely aggravating for both House and Senate Republicans but the decision on Syria actually presents a much more serious threat for Trump. That’s the kind of erratic behavior that will convince members that he should be removed from office before he breaks things that cannot be fixed.
As Nancy noted, Trump seems to care only about how his base is feeling and not have any concern about the health of the GOP. It’s not going unnoticed.
Trump is rapidly spoiling his own jury pool.
One more broken thing
Jim Mattis is retiring
Donald J. Trump | Twitter
@realDonaldTrump ·
General Jim Mattis will be retiring, with distinction, at the end of February, after having served my Administration as Secretary of Defense for the past two years. During Jim’s tenure, tremendous progress has been made, especially with respect to the purchase of new fighting….
How long before Trump starts tweeting insults about him?
Never happen.
Mattis is armed, morally upright and dangerous.
Trump is stupid in any respects, but not so stupid as to cross someone like Mattis, who once said:
Trump never crossed the mafiosi with whom he dealt for much the same reasons. They were not necessarily “morally upright,” but other than that?
No one to fuck with.
AG
I suspect if it doesn’t happen it’ll be because Trump can neither read or understand the letter.
That too.
AG
Susan Collins is so spineless she could win a limbo contest with an earthworm.
You want to know how many GOP senators will vote to impeach Trump?
0, none, bupkis.
They’ll wail and posture and preen before the cameras, but when it comes to votes, they vote with him all the time.
As long as they need the Fox News useful idiots they will vote with Trump every time. The GOP Senators are worms beneath Trump’s heels. All he has to do is twitter storm at them and they salute him like he’s Mussolini.
They all hate him already, but you’ll notice that Corker is the only one who says anything, and he’s retiring. And Corker doesn’t say what he’s really thinking, which is “Good god what a moron!” He doesn’t dare say that, and the rest of them are even more craven and spineless because as much as they hate him, Trump owns their base.
All he has to do is attack them publicly and every insane ranting loon who listens to Alex Jones and Infowars will be threatening to kill them as “traitors.”
Like in a dictatorship people learn to keep silent, to keep their opinions to themselves for fear of offending Dear Leader. Today’s Republican Party is a haven for authoritarians. Whatever their private views of Trump may be they keep their mouths shut and vie with each other to clap the longest and shout the loudest, just like at some old Soviet Party Congress where everybody feared to be the first to stop applauding because there were secret police who were watching who was not cheering and clapping long and loudly enough.
. . . keeping the Banana Republican Senators in line. National Treasure Tom Tomorrow has captured them to near perfection (h/t Chairman Mo at atrios’ place).
Nancy says,
I still have a near zero confidence level that we are anywhere close to Republicans doing anything, apart from rolling their eyes, giving the media a few exasperated expressions, and ponying right back up to rubber stamp their backing of Trump’s tantrums.
In fact, I think the chances are actually zero. Unless they are electorally defeated, and out of necessity have to fight from a position of minority weakness, they are not going to do anything. I am simply exhausted from listening to pundits do the same thing with this that they did with the breathless anticipation and constant watching for that invevitable “pivot” that they all seemed to feel Trump was obliged to provide them, simply because it was a narrative that they had created and deemed as politically necessary in order for Trump to succeed. Well guess what? There was no fucking pivot. There will be no fucking pivot. And as with that whole pundit wet dream about “the pivot”, this idea of a Republican turn against Trump simply has no supporting evidence, currently or historically. It would be absolute political death for all of them. They know that with nothing short of certainty. And they would rather wait and see if the voters render their judgment, and by that judgment, allowing them to point to those results as the reason for any change in perspective when it comes to Trump. If that doesn’t happen, they are going to keep their hands right along side Trumps’ on the yoke of this Trump political airplane, and collectively and willingly fly it right into the side of the fucking mountain.
I hope to hell that I am proven absolutely and insanely wrong on this. But I have, to date, seen no indication, beyond the media’s certainty, that Republicans will do anything other than obligingly follow the man who holds their political fate in his tiny, sweaty hands. And it is blindingly clear that their political fate is all that matters to any of them.
The question, to my mind, is ‘what will result in a better personal outcome for each individual Republican office holder?’ Unless abandoning Trump is personally better for them than clinging to him, they’ve got zero motivation. They don’t care if there’s a few wars or limited nuclear strike or heavy treason or the destruction of alliances and political norms. If they cared about that shit they’d be Democrats. They don’t care about their party, either; they care about themselves.
I guess my hope is that it somehow becomes clear that removing Trump is better for them personally. But I’m not sure how that might work, when he’s got 85% approval from their party.
Consider this: for the next two years (and I’m betting beyond that), the HOR is not going to be forwarding anything the GOP majority in the Senate is going to like. So there will be no reactionary legislation to vote on. This means they will keep the basic budget moving forward but really that’s about it. (Well confirming extremist judges, of course.)
Meanwhile, what they will be seeing from the HOR is a horror show of accountability investigations of the pig sty that makes up the Trump Administration. And then Mueller Time (o/a February when Whitaker/Barr shut down the investigation). So it’s going to be sad times for Senate GOPers and many of them are going to be increasingly mad at Trump’s antics that piss off every American except the hardcore Trumpistas. That’s the context in which Trump’s conviction decision might take place.
So, Kelly is in the WH being ignored. Mathis is leaving. The homeland lady is about to walk. Who is left to read the daily brief? Feels like we have slipped back to 2000 when no one would listen to the warning that to Osama was about to kill Americans.
.
2001
We’ve seen examples of Senate Republicans showing their exasperation, and more, with the president since the day after the inauguration. Two years on, what has it amounted to? Susan Collins will do what she’s told to do, she’s useless. Ron Johnson is at his wit’s end because he has nothing approaching wits. Bob Corker has exactly enough brains to realize that he doesn’t want to be in the Senate when things start to go pear-shaped so he’s heading back to Tennessee to spend more time with his money.
When Senate Republicans start to see it in their own personal and immediate self interest they may be willing to vote to convict in an impeachment proceeding. Not the interest of their party, they don’t give a shit about their party, they know it’s a hot mess. Not their voters, they don’t give a shit about the voters except insofar as they can use them. And certainly not the country, they’re not patriots and never have been. They need to see it in their own personal and immediate self-interest to vote to convict. Until then they will lie low, praying like crazy that the country can make it through to the next election without their having to stick their necks out too far.
Yes, this would seem to be exactly the case. Courage is non-existent and consideration of the morality and ethics of all it is nowhere to be seen. Principles are for suckers and losers.
Just as advertisers are fleeing Tucker Carlson’s show it will be interesting if Trump’s actions taint the jury pool of Rep donors?
Will Rep Senators soon face calls and pressure from their donors to do something to correct the Trump? The stock market isn’t happy with Trump’s policies which translates easily into wealthy donors seeing the gain from their tax breaks being tossed out the door daily.
wonderful thread, there’s nothing more to say.
With Mad Dog out the door, Crackpot Cabinet is spiraling out of control, with no one left to check the demented “leader”. Who will be the DefSec designee “more in alignment” with the deranged Trumper? von Bolton? Cracker Cotton?
When Trumper refuses Mitch’s lifeline for the hated gub’mint, all plausible direction of the country also collapses, as the equity markets are already doing.
Signs of Gotterdammerung are appearing, but there are no odds in expecting a paralyzed and failed system to actually spring back to life.
In all the spilled ink in the “major” print media, I can’t find a single reference to the money already allocated: $1.6 billion from last year; and $1.6 in the current C.R. The singular reference from any member of Congress was Shumer’s empty-floor “speech” today.
WTF? And WAPO’s lede was the absolute worst, quoting the twit’s Twitter verbatim.
It wouldn’t surprise me if brand new, minted Senator Martha McSally, appointed to McCain’s seat would vote for conviction. Also Sen. Toomey from PA and possibly Portman from OH a well as Burr from NC who has been supportive of the Mueller investigation as Chair of Intel Committee. Senator Lisa Murkowski is no fan of Trump. As regards Madame Graham from SC, he’s so wildly impulsive that he’s impossible to predict from one vote to another. Maybe Romney too. But that’s about it IMO.
To get the others that might be available would require truly damning evidence. Those senators might be both LA senators, Crapo (ID), Daines (MT), Cory Gardner (CO) because he’s vulnerable. I put Lisa Collins in a maybe category because she is such a disreputable weathervane but she is up for re-election and maybe already upside down in the polls.
Even that group doesn’t get anywhere close to 20. I don’t see the rest of the south and midwest breaking against Trump (well possibly Moran in KS) so it would be a big struggle to get those 20.