There has been a bit of a cottage industry over which, if any, Republicans would be the first to breach the “I” word. Rep. Justin Amash appears to be your huckleberry, posting a tweet thread about his conclusions of the Mueller Report:
Here are my principal conclusions:
1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report.
2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.
3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances.
4. Few members of Congress have read the report.— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 18, 2019
You can read the whole thread here. In the meantime:
Rep. Justin Amash, a critic of President Trump who entertained a run against him in 2020, became the first Republican congressman to say the president “engaged in impeachable conduct.”
The Michigan lawmaker, often the lone Trump dissenter on his side of the aisle, shared his conclusions in a lengthy Twitter thread after reviewing the full special counsel report.
Amash wrote that after reading the 448-page report, he’d concluded that not only did Robert S. Mueller’s team show Trump attempting to obstruct justice, but that Attorney General William Barr had “deliberately misrepresented” the findings and that few members of Congress had even read it.
“Contrary to Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment,” Amash wrote.The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The president often says the report found “no collusion, no obstruction,” though neither is true. Mueller did not establish a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, which did interfere in the 2016 election. He did not rule on the obstruction of justice question, saying it was something Congress should determine.
So, let’s back up to March right quick before processing today’s tweeting. Rep. Amash was chatting with Jake Tapper on State of the Union:
Amash, who was first elected to Congress in 2010, declined on Sunday to rule out a possible 2020 presidential run as a Libertarian candidate.
“Well, I would never rule anything out. That’s not on my radar right now,” he said of a 2020 bid to Tapper. “But I think that it is important that we have someone in there who is presenting a vision for America that is different from what these two parties are presenting.”
Amash told Tapper he believes there is a “wild amount of partisan rhetoric on both sides” and that “Congress is totally broken.”
“I think that we need to return to basic American principles, talk about what we have in common as a people — because I believe we have a lot in common as Americans — and try to move forward together, rather than fighting each other all the time,” Amash said.
Question remains, is Justin Amash going to join any Democrat effort to curtail the president, or is he using this as prelude to something else — such as his own run for the White House? Drama.
This, by the way, is why I think the, “Just ignore Twitter,” stance a lot of people take is a bit misguided.
Amash is getting a ton of attention for this from the press. He’s almost certainly going to be deluged with requests for interviews, Sunday show appearances, and the like, and I have a sense this will have a discernible effect on how the House treats Trump going forward.Report
Right, tho if – IF – Pelosi lurches begrudgingly towards impeachment it will be because a GOP congressman dragged her there. (Great work, Dem Leadership!)Report
Well sure, if you want to know what journalists, other media figures and politicians are thinking Twitter probably has a good gross section of them and is paid attention to by most of them. If you want to know what the masses of voters and ordinary people think? Twitter is massively unrepresentative and the vast masses don’t pay any attention to it except to occasionally marvel at the derangement that ferments in it.Report
This gets pretty close to the “low information voter” issue I talked about on another thread. If those folks are so “low information” that they don’t care what Amash said and how it effects the impeachment debate, then they also don’t care whether Pelosi impeaches or not. IOW, they just don’t care. “don’t support impeachment” /= “won’t vote for Dems if they impeach”.
Preet Bharara said something quite nice about Pelosi’s reticence to impeach: “Knee-jerk timidity based on 1998 jitters is not leadership.” I think he’s right.Report
There is a vast yawning chasm between “voters that don’t care about what happens or is said on twitter” and “voters that’re so low info they don’t follow politics at all.” I dare say there’re more voters in that gap than there are voters engaged on twitter or voters that pay no attention to politics routinely (but still vote).Report
That’s pretty rich coming from the guy who looked high and low for malfeasance in the mortgage crisis and found absolutely nothing.Report
While knowing what the masses of voters think is useful, it’s neither the beginning nor the end of important information about US politics.Report
Yup, but twitter thinks it represents the masses. It emphatically doesn’t. Look how scandalized and shocked they are by Joe Bidens’ numbers. I don’t like twitter personally. I don’t like the elements of liberalism it seems to hyper charge. And the last thing liberalism needs is an additional bubble element and twitter seems to provide one. But I certainly recognize that twitter has its uses.Report
Look, if I decided to ignore everyone who thinks their opinions are representative of some broader consensus or constituency, I’d probably have to move to some remote monastery where everyone has taken a vow of silence.
And I mean, I’ve been a pretty avid Twitter user for about three years and in that time I’ve been pretty consistent in arguing that it’s not representative.Report
Then we don’t have anything to disagree about. I may hate twitter but even I am keenly aware that it has an assortment of uses.Report
Any Republican who breaks ranks always becomes a media star, usually for about a week, and then he outlives his usefulness to all the breathless hosts and pundits. Amash previously got coverage for viciously denouncing Trump during the 2016 campaign and after. He supported Ron Paul in 2012, Rand Paul in 2016, and then Ted Cruz, and has remained a hard core anti-Trumper.
{Redacted by Trumwill. His ethnic lineage is not at issue here and a handful of policy positions does not make it so.} He opposed Obama’s actions against ISIS, and he was one of only six Congressmen who voted against supporting a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and one of only eight who voted against helping with Iron Dome, and he wants Islamic terrorists tried in civilian courts.
So I don’t think he’s going to pick up many GOP followers. He’s stayed hard core anti-Trump, and most probably say he can go stew with Mitt Romney and the ghost of John McCain.Report
Like, I remember when suddenly Mitt Romney was a liberal hero because he said that Trump was a bad guy. And I’m like, you guys are talking about “Binders Full Of Women” Mitt Romney? “Russia is going to be a problem” Mitt Romney? dog-on-the-car Mitt Romney? shaved some dude’s head Mitt Romney? Remember how lit up you got about all those things and now you’re talking like Mitt Romney is the adult in the room, the one we should all be listening to?Report
“Gummy vertebra” is not quite the compliment you think it is.Report
If Ben Sasse understood what integrity actually looks like, he’d pretend to be Justin Amash instead of Jefferson Smith.Report
Question remains,
is Justin Amashare any Democrats going to joinany DemocratJustin Amash’s effort to curtail the president…Fixed that for ya!Report
Justin Amash isn’t saying that he would vote to impeach Trump. He is just saying that Trump could be impeached. He is one of those GOP politicians that gets way too much credit for one or two unorthodox stances a year when he is otherwise pretty party-line.Report
So, giving him credit for saying what Democrats are unwilling to say – basically, just saying the truth – is giving him too much credit?
How much credit are we supposed to give Pelosi et al for *not* saying the truth?Report
People should get credit for saying good things and criticism for bad things. Maybe the good things from one person are rare, but that doesn’t make the good things less good. We shouldn’t be ignoring a good thing just because the person isn’t completely in line with everything we want.
Good for Amash. Two terrorist fist bumps for him from me.Report
Unless he’s course ginning up media pressure for impeachment in a tactical move to box in Nancy Pelosi and other party leaders, further expanding the gap between the centrists and progressive caucus so as to split them up for 2020.
In which case, go Amash!Report
Hulk Amash!Report
Republicans need to do a lot more to earn their credit for me especially when they continue to belong to lingusitically distorted groups like the House “Freedom”* Caucus.
*I obviously disagree with the right-wingers definition of “freedom.”Report
Who is giving R’s credit? Amash gets the credit. Romney gets an honorary Gummy Vertebra, which is par for him. Not being able to agree with a person even when they do something right because they are on the other side is not healthy.Report
Lotta mind-killers out there.Report
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Justin Amash is manthreading again:
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People who quote Trump on any subject whatsoever are resting their argument on a large number of falsehoods.Report
I quote Trump all the time, usually saying something along the lines of, “You won’t believe what that dumbfuck said this time….”Report