Vidal
Vidal's JournalOpinion: Pelosi's Impeachment strategy is working perfectly
I'm putting all my faith in Nancy Pelosi's brilliant political mind. She has a strategy to take down Trump and is working it perfectly.
I agree with the following opinion from Bill Palmer:
To anyone with a with a fairly decent political IQ whos been paying close attention, a few things have been clear from the start: 1) The midterm results dictated that Donald Trump would eventually be impeached. 2) House Democrats would have a far better chance of getting a satisfactory result from the impeachment process if they waited a bit for public sentiment to get ahead of them on it. 3) When the time came, the Democrats would begin calling for impeachment from the bottom of the food chain upward. 4) Nancy Pelosi has been banking on this all along.
Things are now falling into place by the hour. For weeks, some fringe House Democrats far enough removed from the House leadership that they could speak up without speaking for anyone else have been calling for impeachment. Yesterday things escalated when Donald Trump illegally ordered Don McGahn not to testify. That enraged large chunks of the public, giving a number of members of the influential House Judiciary Committee (where the impeachment process begins) enough cover to publicly call for impeachment. Now its reached the committee chair stage, and thats playing out in real time.
Last night the Washington Post reported that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler privately told Nancy Pelosi that hes on board with an impeachment inquiry, before Nadler then publicly stated hes deferring to Pelosi. Today, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told the television cameras that the case gets stronger for impeachment, and House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings announced that Im getting there on impeachment. Its clear theyre all preparing to soon publicly call for an impeachment inquiry.
So do you really think these three key committee chairs, who are all intensely loyal to Nancy Pelosi, would be publicly committing themselves to this if she werent on board with it? This process of public calls for impeachment coming from the bottom-up has helped to stoke the general publics desire for it. This means Pelosi and the Democrats can move forward with impeachment and be seen by the public as doing it at the behest of the people, as opposed to doing it for partisan reasons. That takes away Trumps only real counterargument.
Link: https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/nancy-pelosi-brilliant-out-strategy-trump-working/18126/
Joy Behar Suggests the Entire Republican Party 'Should Be Thrown in Jail' Over Trump
Seems like a good idea to me. The entire GOP has become lawless. They are trying to destroy the U.S. Constitution.
Lock em up! Thats what The Views Joy Behar suggested was the due course of action regarding all Republicans with perhaps an exception for Rep. Justin Amash over the Mueller report and the failure to impeach and the administrations refusal to comply with congressional subpoenas.
After some back-and-forth with Meghan McCain, Behar characterized the comment as hyperbole, though from context it was clear that it was only hyperbolic in the sense of action that can be taken, but that the sentiment behind it was genuine, especially with her reference to Nixon.
Host Whoopi Goldberg posed the question of whether the refusal of Don McGahn to comply with a subpoena constitutes its own instance of obstruction of justice. Co-host Sonny Hostin answered first, saying that she thinks he is at least in contempt of the subpoena and that there should or will be repercussions. I think he can be fined and hauled into jail for it, she said.
Behar then added her list of lack of cooperation, which included Steve Mnuchin, Sen. Lindsey Graham, and McGahn.
Read More: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/joy-behar-wryly-suggests-the-entire-republican-party-should-be-thrown-in-jail-over-trump-lock-em-up/
If Democrats Start an Impeachment Inquiry Will It Help or Hurt Trump? (Poll)
There seems to be a lot of debate on this topic, so I'd like to know your thoughts and your opinion. Most House Democrats seem ready and willing to start impeachment proceedings. Nancy Pelosi seems to think it's better not to do it, at least right now.
What do you think?
"Welcome to the impeachment show"
I think this is a good summary of where we are and where we are going with respect to Trump impeachment.
This should be an interesting day!
Donald Trumps illegal demand that Don McGahn not show up for todays House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Mueller report, followed by McGahns announcement that he would indeed fail to show up, set off a chain of events that resulted in multiple members of the committee publicly calling for an impeachment inquiry against Trump to begin, and multiple more members including Chairman Jerry Nadler to privately make the impeachment case to Nancy Pelosi. Shes not quite ready to go there, but the events of today could change things fast.
Well see what legal consequences the House Judiciary Committee will fire off at Don McGahn once todays hearing begins at 10am and hes not there. Will they fine him? Arrest him? The committee clearly wants to take a big swing, so well see one. The question is what Donald Trump will do once the committee begins ripping apart McGahns life for siding with Trump instead of siding with the law. Trump hates McGahn, but he really hates the idea of anyone interfering with his illegal orders, so his response later today could be outsized.
In any case, welcome to the impeachment show. Unless Donald Trump changes course and begins trying to deescalate things (which he wont), were now all but locked into a path to impeachment. Trump forced the House Democrats hand, and now hes going to get to find out what its like to be on the wrong side of a legally sound, highly popular, and investigating devastating impeachment process. It wont be long now.
Link: https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/welcome-impeachment-the-show/18121/
Facts of 2016 Democratic Primaries (History Lesson)
Here are the official results of the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries:
Hillary Clinton Popular vote: 16,914,722 Percentage 55.2%
Bernie Sanders Popular vote: 13,206,428 Percentage 43.1%
Hillary Clinton won the delegate count 2,842 to 1,865
Superdelegates never came into play.
The point is that it was not very close. Bernie lost fair and square by over 12 percentage points and over 3.7 million votes.
There was no conspiracy against Sanders.
He did not lose because of "the Democratic Party Establishment."
He lost because more Democrats voted for Hillary in the primaries.
It's important to keep this in mind, in light of Bernie's recent comments on Meet the Press.
House Freedom Caucus votes to condemn Amash
Amash is very lonely tonight, but courageous.
The conservative House Freedom Caucus took an official position condemning Rep. Justin Amashs (R-Mich.) call for impeachment on Monday evening, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told reporters.
We had a good discussion and every single member, I think now based on who was there and our board meeting was probably over 30 members, every single member disagrees and strongly with the position Justin took over the week, and we're focused on the now, he said.
I mean, look, we're focused on the fact that what the FBI did was wrong. We think that [Attorney General William] Barrs handled himself exactly the way the American people want the Attorney General to handle themselves, and he's going to get to bottom of all this.
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/444691-house-freedom-caucus-votes-to-condemn-amashs-impeachment-comments
Amash Calls Kevin McCarthy a Liar
"Amash Fires Back at House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy: Everyone Knows Hes Lying
Typical Kevin
"Congressman Justin Amash, the lone Republican in Congress arguing that President Donald Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct, fired back at the top Republican in the House for criticizing his remarks."
Read More: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/amash-fires-back-at-house-gop-leader-kevin-mccarthy-everyone-knows-hes-lying-typical-kevin/
This could kill Trump's chances of being reelected
"Why Trump should be worried about Rep. Justin Amash"
By Aaron Blake
The Republican congressman from Michigan, who called for Trump's impeachment this weekend, has threatened a Libertarian Party bid for president.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/20/why-trump-should-be-worried-about-justin-amash/
Apparently this could really happen. If it does, Trump's chances of reelection go way down.
Here is the Simple Thing that Bernie Sanders and His Supporters Don't Understand
I have lots of Bernie fans as friends. And they all take the same approach. They all seem to think that Bernie has the best ideas and the best proposals for what he would do as president.
But here is what they don't understand: Most Democrats don't agree with Bernie's ideas.
* Most Democrats aren't socialists
* Most Democrats don't want the federal government (with Bernie in charge) to take over everything
* Most Democrats don't want Bernie and the federal government to take over the entire healthcare system
* Most Democrats don't want Bernie and the federal government to impose rules like a national minimum wage
* Most Democrats don't want Bernie and the federal government to tell them they have to give up fossil fuels
* Most Democrats don't want Bernie and the federal government to rule their lives.
What I'm saying is that Bernie seems to say that the federal government should pass a whole bunch of new laws that tell Americans what to do.
But most Democrats -- and certainly most Americans -- don't want the government taking over things and passing a bunch of new restrictive laws.
I am a liberal Democrat and I wouldn't trust Bernie Sanders to be in charge of anything, let alone the entire federal government and the U.S. economy.
By carving out a huge new role for the federal government Bernie Sanders is out of touch with what most people really want.
Most Democrats don't want a revolution.
Justin Amash fires back at GOP critics -- and makes a forceful case for impeaching Trump
This guy is smart -- and has destroyed all GOP arguments against impeachment. Nancy Pelosi, the pressure is on!
Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) is firing back at critics within his own party who slammed him for arguing over the weekend that President Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses. In a tweet storm posted on Monday afternoon, Amash issued a point-by-point take down of all the arguments Republicans have made to shield Trump from impeachment.
People who say there were no underlying crimes and therefore the president could not have intended to illegally obstruct the investigation and therefore cannot be impeached are resting their argument on several falsehoods, Amash began. In fact, there were many crimes revealed by the investigation, some of which were charged, and some of which were not but are nonetheless described in Muellers report.
Amash then ripped apart the argument that you can only obstruct justice if you are implicated in an underlying crime and he showed how the entire legal system could fall apart if suspects could get away with obstructing justice to thwart prosecutors from determining whether crimes had been committed.
Prosecutors might not charge a crime precisely *because* obstruction of justice denied them timely access to evidence that could lead to a prosecution, he wrote. If an underlying crime were required, then prosecutors could charge obstruction of justice only if it were unsuccessful in completely obstructing the investigation. This would make no sense.
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