This thread is intended for a civil, focused discussion on the various impeachment proceedings of President Trump and others in the administration.
Keep in mind that this is a narrowly focused thread, created to more closely manage this topic of discussion. The pros and cons of said impeachment were soft-banned in the General US Politics thread
for a few months, due to incessant arguing. However, there is a high desire to discuss said events and it is of such high prominence that we are willing to give this devoted thread a try.'
Things to keep in mind:
- This is about impeachment, votes on, investigations on, inquiries in, articles on, etc. Other American political discussions should go into the General Politics thread.
- Standard rules apply. Civility and appropriate forum conduct are paramount.
- Circular arguments about pros/cons are what got the topic banned in the first place. If we feel it's going circular, we will intervene. Multiple intercessions will not be looked on kindly.
- As for that intervention, mods will be monitoring and moderating this thread more closely due to the nature of the topic, and its history in the General Politics thread. We will warn and thump in an effort to keep this thread on-topic and civil, but we are more than willing to lock it if people aren't willing to course-correct.
This thread doesn't have to be a case of Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things, but it will be, if necessary.
Edited by nombretomado on Sep 26th 2019 at 5:19:24 AM
Breaking: It is confirmed, by the first whistleblower's lawyer, that a second complainant is coming forward. The subject in question claims to have first hand knowledge of Trump's interactions with Kiev.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/06/politics/second-whistleblower-trump-ukraine/index.html
Heh heh heh heh. <rubs hands in anticipation>
Looks like an exterior bulkhead may be busting wide open. I invite any aspiring terrier or rat wishing to debark to do it quickly; leave it too long, and anything you know becomes less valuable.
Edited by Euodiachloris on Oct 6th 2019 at 4:49:09 PM
Can't wait.
(Frog-smile)
The house of cards are collapsing down on Trump at increased pace day by day... (and yes, I did notice the "multiple" added before "whistle-blowers"...)
This is going to get good.
Just wait until they subpoena that top secret server the White was using. Lots of secrets in there.
Here's the Washington Post's article on it so far.
“Nobody wants to be the zebra that strays from the pack and gets gobbled up by the lion,” a former senior administration official said in assessing the current consensus among Senate Republicans. “They have to hold hands and jump simultaneously … Then Trump is immediately no longer president and the power he can exert over them and the punishment he can inflict is, in the snap of a finger, almost completely erased.”
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Oct 6th 2019 at 9:24:58 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
The problem with that logic is that it wouldn't be erased in the slightest, Trump has power over them not because of any characteristic of the office but because the base loves him. So for Republicans, Trump out of office is exactly as dangerous to them as Trump in office.
Hence why I really don't think that the Republicans are going to turn on Trump, they're just too afraid of the base and the media ecosystem that feeds their fervor.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Oct 6th 2019 at 11:40:37 AM
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
Queen of Good Things, Honest
Note that taking names of people who vote against him and using them for retaliation is a tried-and-true Trump tactic. Loyalty to Trump is the first and most important factor in his eyes, and he has pushed primary challengers on the basis of certain people not being loyal enough before.
That said, note also that most of those primary challenges have failed. Given the 2018 midterm, a Trump endorsement has, historically, not been worth shit and might actually reduce a given candidate's chances for election in certain parts of the country.
His base may love him, but outside the cult of personality, "Trump-like" has become an insult.
Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 6th 2019 at 1:15:51 PM
My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.
He’s still got 40% of the population approving of him, which is a lot considering everything he’s done.
Not really, that 40% will always support him in that they're mostly card-carrying Republicans. The fact that 60% of the population dislikes him despite a strong economy, lack of foreign entanglement, or other major issues really is a testament to Trump's ability to alienate people beyond his cultists.
Frankly, if Trump's approval were to go as low as 30% then I would consider that to be practically 0% percent in that it would represent literally every who can be convinced to go against him doing so.
"Sandwiches are probably easier to fix than the actual problems" -Hylarn
What I meant is, it indicates that he does still have the Republican base on-side, which means there’s no political upside to Republicans in Congress voting to impeach him.
Unless he really does manage to alienate his base - which, as you’ve said, seems impossible at this point - he’s staying in office until voted out.
The Democrats are still right to try to impeach just to make it clear how serious his current crimes against the democratic system are. He’s committing them in broad daylight now to normalize them - that has to be fought.
Figure of Hourai
The Republican base is necessary but not sufficient for the Republicans to gain and hold power. Ergo, if it's a choice between alienating the base and alienating everyone else, go for losing the people who you just need to get turnout from, not persuade to back you at all.
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Jupiterian Local
The problem for GOP senators is that the Trump base alone cannot get all of them elected. Some of them are in deep red states where that's enough, sure, but most of them are not. A 40% approval rating is politically survivable if you're also looking at a 40% disapproval rating and a 20% "meh". But a 40% approval rating against a 60% disapproval rating is a much different beast, and that's the sort of situation that a lot of GOP senators are going to be facing.
The safest bet for individual GOP members is to stick with the party orthodoxy, because then the entire propaganda machine is backing you up. If the party line says "Trump did nothing wrong", and you're saying that as well, then you have the support of the entire political machine behind you. As soon as you go out on a limb, you expose yourself — now you're swimming against the current, Democratic voters are going to dislike you for being Republican, and Republican voters are going to dislike you for "betraying" the party and/or Trump.
Which means that if the GOP flips on Trump, it's going to happen all at once. The moment the political calculus decides that Trump is more of a liability to the average GOP member than an asset, the official stance is going to turn against him and then the safest thing becomes to oppose Trump because that's the new party line. We've always been at war with Eastasia.
What remains to be seen is whether we'll hit that tipping point or not. That's unclear and honestly probably impossible to predict, but it's looking more likely now than it has since his election. Even Fox News has been saying that Trump's conduct with Ukraine was inappropriate (though not to the level of being an impeachable offense, according to them). With more whistleblowers coming forward, it's possible that it will open the floodgates and everyone in the administration who's wanted to speak out but been too afraid to will speak out now. The House will likely get their hands on Trump's tax returns in the next month or two, and that will lead to god only knows what new information.
It's worth mentioning that the Nixon impeachment was not popular when it began either. The country only started to support impeaching Nixon as the investigation went on and the depths of his wrongdoing became public. The same will happen here — you don't need support to launch the investigation, the investigation will drive support as more people learn more facts about Trump's behavior.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.
Trump’s not Nixon, and it’s not the 1979s; party polarization was far less extreme back then.
His open and public behaviour has consistently abominable, idiotic, immature, and immoral, and it hasn't shifted his supporters. The Nixon tapes had an effect on people because they wrren’t used to hearing a president behave like that, but Trump’s Twitter account is the Nixon Tapes 24/7 in that regard - we already know what he is.
He’s just openly - at a press conference! - called for China to intervene against a political rival on his behalf. The Russia inquiry showed that he only avoided being a criminal because staff repeatedly disobeyed his orders on the basis that carrying them out would have been grossly wrong, and the public dismissed it as nothing. He has backed white supremacists, and still has 40% of the population (most of whom would insist they’re “not racists”) behind him.
In that climate, how much could people be shifted be any new revelations?
Edited by Galadriel on Oct 6th 2019 at 7:44:00 AM
Figure of Hourai
The 8-10% (depending on poll) of people who neither approve of Trump nor disapprove of Trump.
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My feeling is that we only really need a single party-line Republican to come out against Trump; I'm sure that on personal level, they dislike him and would like to see him gone, because by all accounts he's not a likeable person and has been pretty terrible for the party's public perception. So what we need is to make them be able to frame it as stand by of their own instead of striking out on their own- and then they can collectively change what the party line is. A partisanship is hella of a drug, so a position that is strongly opposed by both major parties is a position that nobody will vote in favour of.
Man, more of the Republican side want to doxx the unnamed witnesses.
Republicans who break ranks aren't party-line anymore. If Mitt Romney, for example, defects (along with Murkowski and Collins, who can be reasonably expected to go for conviction), it doesn't mean that there'll be a rush of others breaking. In fact, any such defector will probably touch base with McConnell and ask for a hall pass on the impeachment vote, and he can afford to hand those out.
If we're to win the impeachment, we'll need either each defector to defect on their own merits, or we'll need Mitch to decide "okay, we can't defend this position, let's dump Trump and try to minimize the damage."
Edited by Ramidel on Oct 6th 2019 at 10:25:28 AM
The Spectre Monk
I wouldn't expect ANYTHING from Collins at this point. Woman is a liar and a hypocrite who voted a rapist onto the Supreme Court.
Maine needs to get her sorry ass out
I guess, after a night of pillaging and raping, a Viking wants a little something to go with his cocoa.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I phrased that the way I did to in order exclude people like Collins, Murkowsky, and indeed Romney- they've all had a history of breaking with Trump, it doesn't mean much of anything if they do it again now. And they're in unique situations where they can do so safely in a way that most Republicans don't feel they can.
What will cause a rush, I'm arguing, will be if a Republican who doesn't fall into that category breaks with Trump. Because they're not gonna do anything they see as an electoral risk for a purely symbolic vote. If they do turn on him, it'll be because they either feel it's reached the point where supporting Trump has become the riskier option, or that enough of their colleagues will follow that getting rid of Trump and controlling the subsequent narrative is a serious possibility.
Solving the prisoner's dilemma becomes significantly easily if you're confident that your partner won't backstab you, y'see.
Moving from General US Politics:
Trump says he worries about the stain impeachment will leave on his legacy – Sources say he doesn't want the history books recording Donald Trump as an impeached president.
https://www.axios.com/trump-impeachment-legacy-history-9573ee72-5b3d-4a8f-a2cb-47cde705990b.html
Driving the news: In a phone call with House Republicans on Friday, Trump articulated why he really doesn't want this. Impeachment, Trump said, is a "bad thing to have on your resume," according to a source on the call. Two other sources on the call confirmed the substance of the comment, but one said they recalled Trump phrasing it as "you don't want it [impeachment] on your resume."
After making the resume remark, Trump added, "But it's going to make Kevin speaker," these sources said, a reference to House Minority Leader Kevin Mc Carthy's upside.
Why it matters: These two Trump quotes might seem like throwaways on what was a lengthy and discursive call with allies. But sources who have discussed impeachment candidly with the president say these comments perfectly encapsulate how Trump feels about it: He believes it could help him get re-elected and win back the House. But he doesn't want the history books recording Donald Trump as an impeached president.
I think it speaks to his levels of detachment that he thinks, even without Impeachment, that his legacy will be considered 'good'.
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.
Jupiterian Local
I want to know the age range of that 40% hardcore fanbase.
Never trust anyone who uses "degenerate" as an insult.
It may be enough to avoid being removed from office, but it wont be enough to get him reelected.
Perhaps, but I have hard time seeing how Trump's fall would cause much outside of angry pro-Trumpers making violent mobs that eventually die down. Absolute worse I can see is that this will motivate an assassin to shoot Trump's successor, like the guy who shot President Garfield because he didn't get the job he wanted for "helping him" become president