Editorial

Snap Out of It, Dems!

After Republican senators “acquitted” Donald Trump on the impeachment charges that he abused his power in seeking political favors from the president of Ukraine and that he obstructed Congress’ attempts to investigate his actions, the ImPOTUS embarked on a revenge tour that got many Democrats panicking that the impeachment effort had backfired.

The panic increased when Gallup reported that a poll found Trump’s job approval at 49%, a personal best.

Our advice channels Cher, slapping the face of her addled suitor in the movie “Moonstruck” and demanding, “Snap out of it!”

Trump and his Republican enablers rely on bluff and bluster, and the the Gallup poll is likely an outlier, even as the 42% approval it showed among independents is closer to other polls. Trump has not had net approval in the average of public opinion polls at FiveThirtyEight.com since a month after his election. The average on Feb. 11 stood at 43.8% approval and 51.9% disapproval. And polls are in the Democrats’ favor in a dozen potential swing states … if the Dems can get their act together.

So Trump will remain in the White House at least through the election. This shouldn’t be a surprise to observers of the impeachment process, whether you’re on the left, the right or the middle. Now there is second-guessing of the House leadership’s decision to limit the impeachment articles to articles pertaining to Trump’s abuse of power in his attempt to coerce Ukraine’s new president to order an investigation of Hunter Biden, in order to damage Joe Biden’s chances of challenging Trump’s re-election, and Trump’s obstruction of the House’s attempts to investigate that abuse of power.

Personally, we wish the House had thrown in impeachment articles pertaining to Trump’s obstruction of Robert Mueller’s investigation into the involvement of the Russian government and Eastern European oligarchs in Trump’s campaign for president and Trump’s violation of federal campaign law in ordering Michael Cohen to pay porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep her quiet about her affair with Trump in 2006 while Melania was caring for their infant son, Barron. (That made Melania the third wife Trump has cheated on.)

But House leaders wanted to keep the impeachment simple, and they had solid evidence with the partial transcript of Trump’s phone call to Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky, during which Trump asked him for the political favor in exchange for freeing $400 million Congress had appropriated to the Ukraine to combat Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Bill Taylor, the Trump administration’s top diplomat to Ukraine, also testified he was told US military aid to Ukraine and a Trump-Zelensky White House meeting were conditioned on Zelensky publicly announcing investigations into the Bidens and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 US elections. Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the European Union, also testified he worked with Rudy Giuliani at Trump’s “express direction” to arrange a “quid pro quo” with the Ukraine government.

House managers did a good job laying out the facts for the Senate, but the jury was fixed from the word go. The House managers needed to convince at least 20 Republican senators that Trump’s abuses warranted his removal from office — but they couldn’t get four Republican senators they needed to join with the Dems to call witnesses the White House had forbidden to testify to House investigators. With Majority Leader “Moscow Mitch” McConnell admitting he was coordinating with Trump’s defense team, Republicans voted in lockstep to deny subpoenas for new witnesses, ignoring the 75% of Americans who wanted the Senate to call witnesses. On the last day of debate, only Mitt Romney and Susan Collins voted for a final motion to subpoena John Bolton, some other witnesses and documents.

One of the senators who appeared to have nothing to lose was Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who is not seeking re-election. But he became a profile in discourage when he acknowledged Trump’s behavior was “inappropriate,” but not enough to remove him from office. Instead, he said, voters should decide whether Trump should remain in office. And he didn’t need to hear any witnesses. “There is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense,” Alexander said. Mind closed.

On Feb. 4, even before his acquittal, Trump arrived for his State of the Union speech in the House Chamber, snubbed an attempted handshake from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and delivered a dog-and-pony show containing at least 31 false or misleading statements. At the end, as he basked in applause from the GOP half of the chamber, Pelosi pointedly tore her copy of the speech in half, later saying, “I tore up a manifesto of mistruths.” She added, “It was necessary to get the attention of the American people to say, ‘This is not true. And this is how it affects you’. And I don’t need any lessons from anyone, especially the President of the US, about dignity.”

Later, Trump said Pelosi might be prosecuted for destroying a government document, but legal experts noted that was nonsense, since it was merely a photocopy of a speech. And, if it really was a document, couldn’t Trump be impeached for making false statements in a federal document? That’s yet another felony Attorney Bill Barr will keep a lid on.

The next day, when the Senate actually voted 52-48 to keep Trump in his office, with only Romney voting to remove Trump, many of the Republican senators said they believed Trump had learned his lesson. But the next day he kicked aside that pretense, taking the opportunity at the National Prayer Breakfast to repudiate keynote speaker Arthur Brooks’ call for forgiveness and humility. Instead, he told attendees his political opponents are “dishonest and corrupt people” and that God is on the side of his supporters. He made implicit references to Romney and to Pelosi, who has said in the past that she prays for the president — and was on the dais. “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong,” Trump said. “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that that’s not so. So many people have been hurt, and we can’t let that go on.”

Later that day, Trump not only fired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman from his National Security Council job, in apparent retaliation for Vindman’s testimony, but to add insult to injury, Vindman and his twin brother, Yevgeny, who also worked for the NSC and was fired, were escorted off the White House grounds. Trump also fired Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland. Because who’s going to stop him?

Despite being acquitted by Republicans in the Senate’s sham trial, Trump has not been cleared of wrongdoing in the eyes of Americans. A Quinnipiac poll released Feb. 10 found 55% of respondents said Trump has not been exonerated, and independents agreed, with 54% saying Trump has not been cleared, though 40% said, yeah, Trump is innocent of wrongdoing.

Voters must pass their own judgment, not only on Trump, but also on Republican senators who have made themselves accomplices to the Great Misleader’s abuse of power. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2020

Populist.com