Everyone says that the president smashes norms and breaks the law in plain sight. He just did it again while talking to George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview for ABC News. When asked if he’d accept opposition research from a foreign country in the 2020 election, he said he would. When asked if he’d let the FBI know about the exchange, he hemmed and hawed a bit, first saying maybe he would and then that maybe he wouldn’t, but he ultimately came down firmly on the side of not notifying the FBI: “But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, ‘oh let’s call the FBI.’ The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it.”
Stephanopoulos swatted that nonsense away:
“I’ll tell you what, I’ve seen a lot of things over my life. I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI. You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you do,” Trump continued. “Oh, give me a break – life doesn’t work that way.”
“The FBI director said that is what should happen,” Stephanopoulos replied, referring to comments FBI Director Christopher Wray made during congressional testimony last month, when he told lawmakers “the FBI would want to know about” any foreign election meddling.
But on Wednesday, the president refuted Wray’s sentiment.
“The FBI director is wrong, because frankly it doesn’t happen like that in life,” Trump said. “Now maybe it will start happening, maybe today you’d think differently.”
Here we have the president stating his intention to break the law by accepting campaign assistance from foreign countries. We have him on the record saying that he won’t tell the FBI about any assistance he is offered or accepts. We have him saying that the FBI director is wrong to want to be informed about this.
This is a criminal who is justifying his prior crimes and the crimes he intends to commit in the future. But he’s doing it on national network television, just like when he admitted to NBC News’ Lester Holt that he fired FBI director James Comey because he was investigating his connections to Russia.
This feature of Trump’s- freely advertising his criminality- seems to flummox almost everyone. The media don’t know how to handle it. Robert Mueller seemed to think the openness of his crimes raised some doubt about his criminal intent, at least in a couple of the instances he examined.
But people should stop being confused about this. If someone credibly tells you that they’re going to rob a bank, you should take them seriously. If, after robbing the bank, they go on television and explain why they were entitled to the money, you don’t wonder about their criminal intent. You prosecute them.
That Trump often admits and even brags about his crimes does not in any way mitigate their seriousness. It makes them several orders of magnitude more serious.
We either figure this out as a nation and a people, or we are going to pay a very painful price.
Pelosi and Jeffries refuse to impeach, man. They’re not going to do it. It’s over. I’ll still call them and yell about it, and luckily my representative already backs impeachment, as does my Senator/presidential candidate. But it’s really dispiriting to see endless failures of leadership by poll-testing cowards.
Impeachment would feel great, until the senate votes not to convict. Which is guaranteed. That would be incredibly counterproductive to the cause of getting rid of this maroon. We wouldn’t just be shooting ourselves in the foot, we’d be sawing our leg off and beating ourselves to death with it.
Just keep on investigating, keep on calling witnesses, and pursuing him in the courts. On the first wednesday in November, 2020, perp walk the bastard out the front door of the white house.
Pelosi knows just what she’s doing, and I would not want to try to second-guess her. She’s probably a little better at this politics stuff than anyone posting on this blog.
You’re arguing for doing nothing as far as I’m concerned, and making an argument from authority to trust Pelosi when she clearly does not have the faith of many of her generals, particularly Chairman Nadler. You argue that it would be counterproductive to have the Senate vote to not convict, as if that’s politically advantageous for either the Senators or Trump. You know what would be very counterproductive? Running out the clock, losing in court on executive privilege grounds because the lawsuit is not taking place under the purview of an impeachment inquiry (a distinct possibility), and have Trump crow about having the courts backing his corrupt actions. The courts will not accept executive privilege arguments under an impeachment inquiry; if they do, we’re in an elected dictatorship. However, attorneys who know their shit think it would not be that out of bounds to side with Trump on many of this executive privilege stuff. And that would be disastrous. Pelosi and her excuses change every day, she doesn’t have a legitimate argument. Her argument is “the consultants say this polls poorly so I won’t do it no matter what.” She’s wrong, the self-serving consultants are telling her to focus on health care when the actual fucking issue is the corrupt president.
“You argue that it would be counterproductive to have the Senate vote to not convict, as if that’s politically advantageous for either the Senators or Trump.”
Of course it would be politically advantageous for Trump to not be convicted in an impeachment trial. It would be a huge win for him politically and another blow to our democratic institutions, what’s left of them. Our system would again be shown up as broken and useless. There would be no justice. Meanwhile Trump would probably ride that verdict into a second term; it would certainly give him a boost in the polls. It’s what soccer players call an own goal. That would be far worse than what Pelosi is doing now.
It is possible, I’ll grant you, that information that comes out in the impeachment trial would damage him. Maybe even change some minds. I think that damage would be far outweighed by the senate verdict.
“… losing in court on executive privilege grounds because the lawsuit… ”
You speak as if there’s only one lawsuit. There are many and while some might be held up on the issues you speak of, some will not. The southern district of new york , among others, is as we speak pursuing Trump over hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. It’s an open and shut case. Michael Cohen will be a cooperating witness. This alone will probably put Trump in the next cell to Cohen. If he somehow slides on that, there are so many other cases involving emoluments, his business corruption, on and on. We can litigate the grander issues of high crimes in the courts for a few years while Trump rots in prison for the “misdemeanors”.
This is a plan that gets him out of office in the shortest *possible* time frame, and puts him where he belongs. If you want to get him reelected, impeach him and fail to convict. Now, sure, if we learn something new that even the senate R.’s can’t stomach (I have no idea what that could be) then impeach him. But do it only if we have a good chance of winning the case.
By the way, I could well be completely wrong about all of this. I certainly got 2016 wrong. The fact that Pelosi seems to see things this way does give me a bit of confidence though. (Yeah, I like her. To me she is and always will be Nancy Smash, the speaker who pushed the ACA through a balky congress.)
But Trump already played that card. “ Russia if you’re listening…” and instantly the Russians were hacking. No conspiracy there right? And what about the payoffs to the ladies? No crimes there either.
We a re already paying a very painful price. Every day.
And all our tomorrows.
The pain could get much, much worse. With this man, there is no bottom.