Congresswoman Says Bad Word, Conservatives Feign Outrage
Rashida Tlaib said, “We’re gonna go in there and impeach the motherfucker!” She said it at a rally celebrating her having taken her seat in the House of Representatives. There is no denying that she said it, nor nuancing her intended meaning.
Raucous reception for @RashidaTlaib at MoveOn reception near the Hill. Her closing remarks: “We’re gonna impeach the motherfucker.”
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) January 4, 2019
Conservatives have, predictably, demanded smelling salts and are running screaming for their fainting couches. They are claiming to be deeply offended at such offensive language infecting our otherwise pristine discourse. All of this should be ignored, of course, but right on cue, here are former governors, former candidates, and current media members absolutely losing it that somebody, somewhere, said a swear about Donald Trump.
Disturbing. Anti-Semitic "Palestinian" Rashida Tlaib (there has NEVER been a nation called Palestine) erases Israel from map in her office & on 1st day as Congresswoman screams obscenities about @realDonaldTrump Do Dems support this bigotry and hate? https://t.co/AzapKAHquT
— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) January 4, 2019
Lowlife https://t.co/Q821eqX6su
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) January 4, 2019
Breaking news: New Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib Goes off on Trump: ‘We’re Going to Impeach the Motherf*cker!’ This is the trash Detroit elected on her first day. Unprofessional, hateful. America Wake up! @realDonaldTrump #KAG2020 #Veterans #PatriotsUnited #MAGA
— Rick Saccone (@RickSaccone4PA) January 4, 2019
DC UGLY: New Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib Goes off on Trump: We're Going to 'Impeach the Motherf*cker!' https://t.co/Zm14vsMi0q
— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) January 4, 2019
Perhaps all of those are easily dismissed as the very online rantings of various conservatives of unequal import. But here’s Kevin McCarthy – the Minority Leader of the House – responding to Tlaib, insisting that his Republicans were the kind of upstanding representatives that Americans could believe in.
MCCARTHY: "You know what our freshman class did? They put together a resolution to not use foul language. This is the difference & it's wrong."
REPORTER: But Trump recently called a woman 'horseface.' Who within your caucus called him out? 🔥🔥🔥
M: "I think a lot of them did" pic.twitter.com/axHOjBOMau
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 4, 2019
Folks like McCarthy have a very real problem. They have voluntarily hitched themselves to Donald Trump. To claim that they are offended by foul language while embracing a president who openly bragged about assaulting women is ludicrous. A reporter recognized what McCarthy was trying to do almost immediately, and although he did not reach for the most obvious example, asked McCarthy to name the members of his caucus who had publicly blanched at Trump’s description of Stormy Daniels, his former paramour, as a “horseface.” McCarthy, not having a good answer, decided instead to simply lie, claiming that a lot of his caucus had objected, which is a bold play in that it is not even remotely true. (Several Republicans did briefly tut-tut the president, but because conservatism is Trumpism, there was nothing consequential behind their criticism, nor any followup.)
Still, McCarthy wants everybody to believe that Tlaib’s description of the president as a “motherfucker” is an outrageous injustice that must be addressed. McCarthy has since demanded that Nancy Pelosi do something about Tlaib’s comment. It is unclear what exactly McCarthy wants, beyond a different set of rules for his side than what exists for the other one. That is, of course, the conservative playbook, one on ever fuller and clearer display during these past three years.
There was a time when conservatism at least made an effort to conceal the demand for separate playing fields. Trump has ended all that. There is nothing left but hoping like hell that nobody follows up ridiculous proclamations like McCarthy’s with, “Why were you okay when Trump did a much worse thing?”
Tlaib, to her infinite credit, is not backing down, nor apologizing, nor making any attempt to soothe the delicate feelings of aggrieved conservatives whose outrage is quite obviously performative nonsense.
I will always speak truth to power. #unapologeticallyMe
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) January 4, 2019
I find it interesting that any suggestion that there’s a campaign of genocide toward Palestinians is shocking, absolutely shockingly antisemitic.
And also Mike Huckabee won’t write the word Palestinian without scare quotes and an attached denial of the existence of Palestinian people (if a genus doesn’t exist, then there can’t possibly be a genocide against them can there? It would be like trying to exterminate unicorns. Just ignore all those horse corpses out back. They probably died of skull deformity.)Report
Fine, I’ll shoot. Any suggestion that there is a campaign of genocide towards the Palestinians is anti-Semitic because there is no basis in reality. The Palestinian population is increasing and the people who argue that the Israelis are going to kill the Palestinians have never shown any evidence that this is happening. It is all based on blood libel demonology. Meanwhile, numerous factions in the Palestinian and larger Muslim world have demonstrated again and again that they consider a Jew-free Middle East to be the only just solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict from their point of view. Accusations of alleged Israeli genocide towards the Palestinians falls under “every accusation is a confession.” They are confessing what they want to do with the Jews.Report
Well, when you put it like that, you don’t sound like Trump talking about MS-13 at all.Report
MS-13 will be demanding turf in less than 50 years.Report
How many times do people need to say “No Jews” before people believe that they really mean “No Jews.”Report
Remember the #KillAllMen hashtag? #KillAllWhiteMen?
You need to understand that these are not statements to be taken literally, but statements made out of frustration by people who want to improve the situations of Women and People of Color and treating them as if they’re statements made to be read at face value doesn’t do anybody any favors, especially the person reading them literally.Report
I’d argue that Jewish history makes these sorts of statements very different than it does for white men. We were subject to actual persecution and the most infamous genocide of them all for thousands of years.Report
So that makes ethnostates, border walls, and xenophobia okay?
I submit to you that it does not.
Especially when Israel is still exercising political power over the people they’re claiming are making them so afraid (while hiring them hand over fist as cheap labor).Report
I don’t really see why you’ve got to drag the Danes into this.Report
No, Lee is telling the truth unlike the liar in chief.Report
Quid est veritas?Report
Que?Report
We’re post-truth. We’ve been for a while.Report
OK, so stipulated that no genocide is occurring.
What is gained by denying the existence of Palestinian people? Can you tell me why he’s gotta put “Palestinian” in scare quotes and immediately follow up the word by denying their present or historical existence, as though to cleanse his mouth of the taste of the word?Report
From Hucakbee’s perspective notion. From a Jewish perspective, its sort of payback for Arab and Muslim intellectuals arguing that Jews don’t deserve self-determination because we are only a religious group rather than a national group while at the same time calling for rallying around Muslim self-determination or Islam as at least semi-national identity. If they are going to deny the existence of the Jewish people, why should we recognize them?Report
He doesn’t speak for Huckabee. Why are you asking him?Report
He replied to my original post about Huckabee’s statement. Why wouldn’t I continue the conversation?Report
Dragonfrog,
My apologies. I saw Lee’s response as soon as my response went up and I should have deleted mine. I was chatting with Lee in real time so I must have forgotten.
It was a bit of a defensive move on my part and apparently unnecessary. All good.Report
I’m sure he’s not denying the existence of Tlaib and people who share her genetic or cultural background. He’s denying the accuracy of labeling such people “Palestinians”. You can tell because he says right there that there’s never been a country with that name. Now, I don’t consider that a good argument, because there are many groups of people who have a common background but no historical state. But this strikes me as a proxy war for something else. I think on the one hand that using the term “Palestinian” implies that there is something that historically has existed called Palestine, and thus gives the impression that such an entity should be restored. On the other hand, when you use the term “genocide” and refer to denying the existence of a people, it seems to me that you’re implying a connection between a failure to use that specific term and a willingness to wipe out those of Tlaib’s ancestry.
Personally, I don’t find the term “Palestinian” to be a problem, even though it’s a relatively new term. I’m generally ok with people using whatever identifier they prefer, as long as it doesn’t cause confusion.Report
For the record, the term “Palestine” and its various cognates date back to antiquity.Report
Interesting link. Thanks.Report
“any suggestion that there’s a campaign of genocide toward Palestinians”
Is that the basis of Huckabee’s accusation?Report
Huckabee’s accusing her of two things, as I near as I can tell:
– being Palestinian (which simultaneously counts as an accusation because coming out and using “Muslim” as a bogeyman would be a bit too obvious, but is also a nonexistent category apparently)
– Asserting that Palestine exists by putting a sticky note on her office wall map (that showed only Israel and no particular indication that the West Bank or Gaza Strip are any different from Israel) with the word “Palestine” and an arrow pointing vaguely in the direction of the Mediterranean Middle East.Report
To clarify: I wasn’t thinking that Huckabee was accusing her of being Palestinian, or of asserting that Palestine exists. I was referring to his claim that she’s anti-Semitic as an accusation.
I guess I misunderstood your first sentence: “I find it interesting that any suggestion that there’s a campaign of genocide toward Palestinians is shocking, absolutely shockingly antisemitic.” To me, that indicates that you’re assuming that the basis of Huckabee’s calling her an anti-Semite is that she suggested there’s a campaign of genocide toward Palestinians. I don’t know that she has, or that that’s the basis of Huckabee’s label. What is making you reach those conclusions (or am I mistaken that those are your conclusions)?Report
That was unclear of me, sorry.
The accusation of antisemitism, as I understand it, stems from her “erasing Israel from the map in her office” (actually she or someone on her staff put a post-it note with the word Palestine and an arrow, indicating that Palestine does exist somewhere in there – maybe it was meant to indicate the entire territory of Israel/Palestine is properly Palestine, or maybe just that the map makers neglected to show that some of it is. I’d bet good money Huckabee didn’t have a quiet conversation with her first to clarify what her intent was, lest he commit the grievous error of throwing around accusations of antisemitism where none exists).
It’s just that, as @lee-esq rightly points out, saying “No Jews” in the Middle East is antisemitic and an indicator of at least a readiness to accept genocide, if not an outright enthusiasm for it. But then Huckabee has to insist that there have ALWAYS been “No Palestinians” in the Middle East.
Things that make you go “hmmm”.Report
“McCarthy, not having a good answer, decided instead to simply lie, claiming that a lot of his caucus had objected, which is a bold play in that it is not even remotely true. (Several Republicans did briefly tut-tut the president, but because conservatism is Trumpism, there was nothing consequential behind their criticism, nor any followup.)”
Claim A: A lot of the Republican caucus called out Trump.
Claim B: Several of the Republican caucus briefly tut-tutted inconsequentially without followup.
Do you see how Claim B doesn’t contradict Claim A? In fact, other than a dispute over whether it was “a lot” or “several” members, they’re practically the same claims.
For my part, I consider insulting a woman’s looks about equal to saying mf. There could be contexts in which a statement insulting a woman’s looks are reasonable (this wasn’t one), but there are no contexts where saying mf could be excused.Report
@pinky Yes, “a lot” is different than “several.” I understand that rabid conservatives like McCarthy (and everybody else pretending that this is a deal) want to have it both ways, being able to simultaneously excuse away whatever the President has said while insisting that liberals owe everybody else respectful discourse, but that’s bullshit and should be considered as such.Report
@pinky And, worth noting, from what I can tell, “several” might be generous as well. Paul Ryan briefly said that the comments were inappropriate, before immediately pivoting away from the topic. Neither he nor McCarthy ever proposed to do “something” about them having been made.Report
So, you don’t know how many people called Trump out? How does that make “I think a lot of them did” a lie? Or is it that they never proposed to do something about it, or that Ryan didn’t complain long enough before pivoting to a different topic? Because neither of those things are implied in “I think a lot of them did”.Report
@pinky Because McCarthy knows a lot of them did not call Trump out, nor did they do anything meaningful in response.Report
Dick Cheney said, on the floor of the Senate, to Patrick Leahy: “Go f*ck yourself”
Was he called out for it by his fellow GOP congresspeople? Upbraided by Mike Huckabee? Scolded by anyone in the rightwing or even centrist media?
One of the more amusing things to come of this incident was Liz Cheney being shocked – shocked, I tell you! – to think such language would be used by a member of congress.Report
I’ve heard about the Cheney incident, but I haven’t seen footage of it. I don’t know if it was an outburst or a prepared comment. That matters to me.Report
I admire your willingness to acknowledge that you’re going to treat similar things differently, depending upon who did it. That’s honest at least.
Also, here’s Martha McSally calling for Republicans to get this “fucking thing” done, which was her way of describing stealing healthcare from millions of Americans. I don’t remember Republicans needing their inhalers afterward.Report
OK, we’re reaching Seussian levels of absurdity here. When you accuse someone without evidence of knowing something you’re not sure of, that’s basically the same thing as what you say is true, then make it sound like I’m saying that I consider people differently when I said I consider situations differently, it’s called a flippily-floppable super-distortaful hypocry-happocry hooble.Report
@pinky I accused McCarthy of lying because he was lying.
Meanwhile, you admitted, one whole comment ago, that you’re willing to excuse swearing Republicans, but not swearing Democrats, just so long as you can find some sort of ludicrous justification making it okay.Report
Do you not consider an outburst different from a prepared statement? I shouldn’t be phrasing that as a question; of course you do. Everyone does. Outbursts are not as well thought-out; they can be more truthful than a deliberate shield of words, but they can be a lot coarser. You know that. Anyone who’s read Twitter and Ordinary Times comments knows the difference. I’m also inclined to excuse Democrats’ foul language off-the-cuff, and hold Republicans to a high standard for prepared statements.Report
How about the F*ck Your Feelings shirts that were all over Trump rallies and the GOP convention? (see link to pics in Sam’s comment below)
Those seem pretty prepared and deliberate. And repeated.
Who on the right decried those and demanded they go away ?Report
It doesn’t seem footage exists.
What does exist is footage after the fact of Cheney in a TV news interview, confirming that he did tell Leahy to go fuck himself, that he still felt it was an appropriate thing to say, did not regret it, did not apologize nor feel that any apology was warranted.Report
Here is a very quick visual summation of the entirety of the conservative argument on this, which is that they are owed considerably more than they are (or have ever) been willing to return.Report
“We’re gonna go in there and impeach the fuck outa’ Trump!”
Vernacular.
“We’re gonna go in there and impeach the motherfucker!”
Hey now, there are kids watching.Report
Yep, Yep, her and Ocasio-Cortez are the new popular kids.Report
But is there a dance video?Report
What is driving the outrage is that a woman-a brown woman- dared to disrespect a powerful white man.Report
Maybe someday we can all live without the powerful-white-man-a-phobia that plagues congress critters.Report
That’s your white fragility talking.Report
I will have you know I’m 0.000000023% more Native-American than Elizabeth Warren.Report
As Osita Nwanevu pointed out, remember how people protesting the evil chuds who make up the modern GOP was supposed to doom the Democrats as well?
Also, as he said, “Imagine living through the Obama administration and coming away still thinking that the way Republicans frame Democrats has any correlation whatsoever with the way Democrats actually conduct themselves.”
The thing is, you’re going to see a lot more of this, because if you’re a Democrat under…I’ll say 40, all you’ve ever seen in your lifetime is the Republican’s being rewarded for breaking norms and acting like terrible people, all while Democrat’s get treated like they’re crapping on a table during a wedding if they dare to point out all the terrible things the GOP is doing.Report
It seems like conservatives have had this problem for a while of both bemoaning the coarsening of culture and benefiting from it- you might call it the Limbaugh paradox.Report
So, is “We’re gonna impeach the m*****f*****.” worth one “you grab them by the p****?” Or two?
Can I get a ruling over here?Report
I don’t like the “impeach the mf’r” stuff. It’s counterproductive. It leads otherwise smart people to draw silly false comparisons like vulgarity = bragging about sexual assault in a vulgar manner. So the ruling is vulgarity is bad but Trump’s was far worse. He has been accused of actual assault by at least one ex wife, walked in on naked women while they were changing and boasted about he could get away with sexually assaulting women.Report
I don’t see any bit of difference between the two. Trumps very vulgar comment is in no way any bit of sexual assault, no matter how hard the left tries to make it so. And in much the same way, I rather doubt that she is going to go out and erase Isreal. This just makes the right look every bit as stupid.
Just two bunches of idiots trying to make political hay.Report
@aaron-david Nobody said the comment was assault. What he was bragging about doing is assault.Report
Trump: Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.
Bush: Whatever you want.
Trump: Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.
That is exactly talking about forcing himself on women, ie sexual assaultReport
Then where are these women? Remember during the ’16 campaign there were all these allegations from women (ten I believe, could be wrong) and after the election, they all disappeared. Considering what has transpired since then, the Dems would be parading at least one of them around, 24/7, reminding us of how awful he is. But no, we got Stormy Daniels.
It was fiction. Gross, vulgar and pretty pathetic fiction, but still fiction. There is no Paula Jones here.Report
No, there was. Here’s what I told Kazzy back in 2017.
Anyway, the argument fell apart after that.Report
That was my point. Two years, a massive investigation, a similar incident with a SCOTUS appointee… And bubkis. I waited for this two years ago, and am still waiting.
If there was a there, then we would be seeing it.Report
We could be in the “gradually” phase.
Unfortunately for everybody, “not really” presents pretty closely to “gradually”.Report
They’re all right here.
As for why they wouldn’t want to endure the nonstop abuse of the folks who both dismissed the Access Hollywood tape and savaged Christine Ford, I can’t imagine.Report
And no one is going to be a hero of the resistance? Sorry, at this point it is all talk. Paula Jones has more credibility at this point. But we don’t see the D’s working on that, now do we.
The credibility is shit at this point. Jaybird could be right, and it could all happen at once, but after two years of this, I doubt it. With that many loose ends, someone would be coming forth with a bit more damning evidence, some corroboration, than what was put in the Guardian article.
Again, Show, don’t Tell.Report
So, what are you saying, that Trump brags about assaulting women, but doesn’t actually do it?
OK, that makes it so much better.Report
Trump says whatever it takes to put himself in the news. The opposite of publicity is dead-career.Report
“He doesn’t rape goats! He just does it ironically to own the libs!”Report
@aaron-david You know as well as I do that you evidentiary demand is complete bullshit, particularly if you’re unwilling to acknowledge Trump’s own acknowledgement of his willingness to assault women. That this alone is not enough evidence for you suggests that what you’re looking for is a scene straight out of Death Wish or Death Wish 2 and if you don’t get it, you’re not gonna believe it. And, since you know that very few people have that much evidence, you get to go on disbelieving for as long as you’d like, which happens to be precisely the outcome that you were seeking. Funny how that works!Report
No. And not just no but hell no. This is not a mobocracy, we have the rule of law. I firmly discard anything arising from a mob and am frankly disgusted by the idea of throwing out evidentiary law and procedure.
The outcome I am seeking is better treatment of women and men of all colors. Civil rights are not a zero-sum game. We need to gain more rights for everyone, not just the people you like.
I refuse to go down the road to Emmett Till in any way, shape or form. Even if a dozen guilty go free.Report
@aaron-david Emmett Till’s killers were excused by a jury, who dismissed the accusations against them. That’s the same thing you’re doing with accusations made against men you apparently admire. You get that, right? You’re not defending the rule of law. You’re insisting that the law ought to protect men you like from accusations you don’t care about.
You should at least be honest about that.Report
Mueller isn’t investigating sexual assault so why would he find it. One of his ex’s, Ivanka i believe, said he raped her years ago, well before the election. The problem is no one seems to care or they have weak sauce reasons why to ignore it.Report
Hmmm, maybe we should look at what she actually said:
Source: Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J Trump [emph. added]
Divorce… Not criminal… Weak sauce indeed.
And that is the problem with all of these claims. Are they contingent on interpretation? Are they hard and factual? We don’t know. And if there is no corroboration, then they are just words. Our penance is to judge them.
As for Meuller, I am of the opinion that anything hinky like this would have come up in the last two years, Russiagazi or not. Apparently, you are not. And that is fine, this is only the court of public opinion. But the lefts attempt to change my opinion on this has failed.Report
She accused him of rape, but after he paid her a lot of money conditioned on withdrawing the accusation, she withdrew it.
Well, I’m convinced.Report
Careful there, if you start looking at ulterior motives, then the Kavanaugh accusations might have something to do with the Supreme Court.Report
How do you figure? If Kavanaugh withdraws, it’s still a Trump appointment.Report
The dark & cynical answer is that at the time all this was played out, flipping the Senate was within the realm of possibility.
The even darker and more cynical answer is neither the hysterical mob nor those pandering to it had much interest in logic.
On a side note, wiki says the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th accusations against K have clearly fallen apart (not the way they phrase it). The first remains some combo of non-falsifiable, changing, wrong, and emotionally convincing.Report
For the same reason Stormy and campaign contributions are in play, because Mueller views it as his job to unseat Trump.Report
That’s SDNY, Mueller’s not involved there.Report
Which if memory serves, didn’t force the Dems to walk away from Bill.
Similarly we also had a Presidential Candidate accused of illegal campaign contributions because he paid off his mistress during the campaign, and eventually he was found not guilty because he could claim he paid her off for other reasons.
These are settled issues.Report
And his campaign ended and he is out of politics.Report
And your point is?
Politically it blew up on Edwards because he’d presented his relationship/loyalty with his ill wife as a reason to vote for him. No one voted for Trump because of his sexual ethics. He let his first wife know he was divorcing her by telling the media and figuring she’d hear about it.
Legally what Edwards did was multiple steps further than what Trump is accused of, and we’ve already figured out it wasn’t a crime (although it certainly was poor politics).Report
@dark-matter Most conservatives are a bunch of hypocrites when confronted with objectionable behavior by the men they admire. So noted.Report
I was going to respond BSDI but I’d say it’s more of a human thing than anything. And after we get enough women in power we’ll see it works for them too.Report
@dark-matter You’re claiming women will ignore other women bragging about sexual assault?Report
I’m saying when our leaders are women, your team will ignore bad behavior from them too. Sort of like how various women’s movements rushed to defend Bill when his sex scandals threatened his Presidency.
So in other words, yes, in the current environment if we ever have a female President get caught sexually harassing her subordinates then the usual power dynamics will have various members of team [blue/red] defend her.
Ideally #metoo would change that… but I was not impressed at how the Ford situation was handled. As far as I can tell NO ONE cared about the truth of the matter.Report
@dark-matter Liberals chased Al Franken for doing far less than Trump bragged about doing. One side takes this stuff seriously. The other side is yours. I would be shocked if that changes, as it would require substantive cultural changes on both sides of the aisle that show no sign of actually occurring.Report
Franken was punished… but the Dem party as a whole paid no price for this because his was a safe seat and his replacement was picked by a Dem governor. Similarly, that Black congressman from Detroit who was also “forced” to step down was replaced by his son (can you smell a deal? I smell a deal).
And none of these actions came from anything like an impartial due process. Similarly Kavanaugh/Ford was handled such that the Dems appeared concerned about Kennedy’s seat first, foremost, and only with the Truth not a consideration at all.
One way to interpret all this is the Dems are appeasing a mob, which is the opposite of serious reform. When the mob goes away so will the appeasement.
You’ll notice we’re not even slightly concerned about Kavanaugh now that he’s on the court, much less who knew what about Harvey and when did they know it. This is politics, it’s not reform, it’s not even the Dems cleaning house.Report
There’s nothing to be dome about Kavanaugh. Whatever her did, he got away with, exactly like Clarence Thomas.Report
I think that’s fair and if that were the argument, agree or disagree on the merits, it would be principled. But the context here is otherwise. By any objective measure the Mueller investigation and the media have consistently over promised and under delivered. Maybe the big bombshells is coming but like aaron I’m skeptical. In other circumstances I’d be baffled so many aren’t at this point, except that we have people now taking the position that evidence doesn’t matter (and that’s putting it charitably). You see that sentiment in this thread.
I’m no fan of Trump or the Republican party. I think the administration is doing great damage from a boring ol’ policy perspective and is pushing us further towards a post truth society. But you can’t it this way. It’s just another vision of the same fundamentally wrong way to govern a society.Report
@INMD How many convictions and guilty pleas will convince you otherwise? What’s the exact number?Report
I will answer but I need you to specify what it is you want me to be convinced of, given the myriad of accusations.Report
@inmd Convinced of anything. You seem to be claiming that you haven’t gotten enough to believe anything. Mueller has provided vastly more than conservatives ever did about the myriad of investigations they launched against Barack Obama’s administration and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Again, this is what Mueller has gotten in less than two years.Report
I’m convinced of the following:
-Trump probably violated campaign finance laws by improperly using funds to pay hush money to at least two women with whom he had consensual affairs. I think it’s the kind of thing top tier political operators would never allow to happen. But when you’re relying on GOP 5th and 6th stringers and a bunch of sketchy real estate people totally out of their depth you get regulatory violations of this nature.
-Similarly, many of these people ended up under a level of scrutiny they never were prepared for, and were therefore caught doing things they probably never would have been caught doing, and few would have given a damn about, had they stayed out of the limelight. Manafort, Gates, and Cohan specifically come to mind.
-Some people have lied to the FBI in the course of this investigation, but mostly just in the sense that virtually everyone the FBI has ever spoken to could be charged with lying to the FBI under current law.
-The Russian state probably preferred a Trump victory. Various actors of unclear origin, maybe Russian, maybe not, distributed a bunch of content online with roughly the sophistication of a Nigerian prince scam. Russia also still has clownish quasi-operatives poking around but who don’t seem to be accomplishing much. I have seen no evidence that any of this is more sophisticated than the whole Anna Chapman thing from 10 years ago.
None of it is good, but neither is it IMO justification for the kind of round the clock hysteria, dire warnings, and conspiracy theories. The Trumpites mostly are who we thought they were, which is a lot more stupid than sinister.
I am not convinced of the following:
-that Donald Trump has ever committed rape or sexual battery. To be convinced of that I’d need to know of an accuser with the who, what, where, etc. substantiated by witnesses, physical evidence, or something along those lines.
-that Donald Trump is ‘Putin’s man,’ accepted any kind of quid pro quo to do the bidding of the Russian government, or that the connections to foreign nationals are anything outside of the frustratingly common connections we have at our highest level of politics. Again, to be convinced, I’d need to know the details of the deal and be presented with evidence that it happened.
-that the Steele dossier is a credible document.
-that the above referenced online content or any of these individuals with Russian connections had any impact on the outcome of the election, whatever their sources and intent. This and the quid pro quo are what I’m waiting for, and what I am skeptical will be delivered.Report
@inmd Paul Manafort has now been shown to have been coordinating with at least one Russian with ties to Russian intelligence.Report
Mueller hasn’t promised anything because he keeps his trap shut. The media has done what it does about everything; yammer endlessly. But there have been far more guilty pleas or convictions so far then any recent investigation. And those are of high figures in the Trump campaign. The current investigation has gone on for 2 years. Iran contra was 6-7 and whitewater 8 and they got fewer guilty pleas/convictions. And all that w/o even having the actual Mueller report. From what is already known the Trump campaign was compromised by the Russians through multiple people.Report
“Over promised and under delivered” would only apply if his charter were, rather than to investigate criminality in the Trump campaign and administration, specifically to get Trump. He’s not Ken Starr.Report
It’s absurd to talk about impeachment in the absence of evidence. You know what they should do to Tlaib? Lock her up!Report
Politics is a blood sport and pretending that we need to be nice and the other has stepped over the line is a constant thing.
And yes, this President doesn’t act above the fray very often so it’s fine to assume he’s not above the fray (although lowering yourself to his level is probably unwise, but that’s a different issue). Nor am I shocked that he is dissing his lover who has betrayed him at least twice (once by threatening stuff that required her to be paid off, the second by not staying paid off).
Having said that, rolling out the impeachment proceedings before there’s proof of guilt is something we don’t want to be the new normal.Report
You know impeachment is itself a trial, requiring nothing more than allegation?Report
With Trump you really shouldn’t need to lower the bar, much less make it so low that all future Presidents can/will be impeached if Congress is in the wrong hands.Report
I should probably expand on the “why” of that.
The Dems are coming close to doing to impeachment what they did to accusations of racism. They can’t say anything about Trump that they didn’t already say about Romney, so it sounds a lot less believable now that you really mean it.
If you call “his sex life” “high crimes” then you’ve dumbed down the process to the point where it won’t mean anything.Report
@dark-matter “Too much racism has been identified for it to be real so I don’t have to take it seriously,” is certainly ONE take.Report
Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.
-Lavrentiy BeriaReport
Then how about this, the general public will never put up with Congress spending 6 months on impeaching Trump on his sex life and then the next 6 months impeaching Trump on emoluments and then the next 6 months impeaching him on bribery and then the next 6 on something else.
You have one bullet. After you do the first impeachment you’re done, every impeachment after that is screaming “wolf”. If you screw this up then he stays in office until he loses an election or has a heart attack.Report
I’m sure the lawyers round here could add much more, and may deserve a post of its own, but courtesy the Constitutional Rights Foundation, some background on “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”:
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In other words, impeachment isn’t a criminal trial, requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
It is deliberately a political act, intended to provide the people with a means of removing an executive who can no longer be entrusted to carry out his office.Report
“an executive who can no longer be entrusted to carry out his office”
I think you mean “can no longer be trusted”. Impeachment, conviction, and removal is the process of dis-entrusting an officeholder. I guess you could also mean “should no longer be entrusted”. But the bigger issue is that impeachment is carried out against the executive who has demonstrated through abuse of office that he can no longer be trusted.Report
Have we ascertained the whereabouts of all of Trump’s ships?
I agree that impeachment is a political act; but we don’t want it to be solely a political act. Hence the moral and political ambiguity of High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Set the bar too high, and only Treason is grounds for impeachment; too low, and budgeting against the preferences of the Legislature becomes grounds.
Like all of us, I’m wondering what Mueller’s findings look like so far. I’m also wondering what calculations are ongoing on what might be categorized the pros/cons of mid-term vs. end-term summation. The rumors are we’re going to get a mid-term report from Mueller, but are those anything more substantial than rumors?Report
Here’s my take: everyone, even his supporters, know Trump is a MFer. So the “you can’t call him that” outrage feels awfully similar to the “you can’t say the Iraq war was the biggest mistake in US history” outrage during the Republican primary.Report
What do you expect from Tlaib? She’s from one of those shithole states.Report
Our Congresswoman is in the news again: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/freshman-democrat-rashida-tlaib-unleashes-anti-semitic-dual-loyalty-smearReport
@dark-matter Which loops back precisely to the original point of the post. Tlaib can’t criticize a plainly un-American law, lest she be called anti-Semitic by the party lead by the man who thinks that white supremacists are “very fine people.” One set of rules for conservatives. One set of rules for everybody else.Report
First, Tlaib was criticizing some of her fellow Congressmen for serving Israel rather than the United States.
2nd, How much of the divestment movement is based in anti-Semitism? Speaking as someone without a dog in the race, it looks like a lot. If I had to list the five nastiest governments in the world, Israel wouldn’t come close to making the list. I’m not even sure they’d make the list if we listed the five nastiest govs in the middle East.
Trump is accused of racism on a daily basis by far more than one guy in one newspaper.Report