The Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump

For the politically-biased reading impaired: I said I hope it wouldn't happen. Hoping for the best does not preclude believing in being prepared.
But as I've said, the armed burglar is a more real possibility to me than any armed revolution.

An armed burglar is a more real possibility for you than it is for me. Cause y'know, tyrannical government and all that

Everything else aside, the fact that someone can keep power for the better part of three months after being voted out of office is absolutely insane in the modern age.

Not really given that a newly elected president has something like 5,000 government positions to fill. It used to be a lot longer you know.

Oh shit your government has people in positions? Well I take it all back, you clearly have something different to the AI computer systems running governments in the rest of the democratic world.

I agree he will never be removed.
Nevertheless, impeachment itself is not only worth it but vital to the future (whatever is left of it) of this country, IMO.

Left to their own devices, however, I don't think they "why can't we just work together?" powers-that-be among the Democrats have the stomach for it, but Trump is so stupid and arrogant that he may well push them into it against there will. Which is a good thing.

Since no one has addressed this point, allow me. No matter who might be President, nor what party they might belong to, this is a Really Fucking Bad Idea, if it ever happens. And I don't mean the cops dragging the fuckstick out, I mean the fact that we've gotten to such a point.

Let's look at a variety of scenarios, shall we? Again, I don't care what political party such a person belongs to, it's a Very Bad Thing.

Scenario 1: Fuckstick President decides he's not going to step down after his term is up (maybe he/she lost an election, maybe they've been term-limited, doesn't matter), and they're yanked out of office by the police/Secret Service/somebody else who has easy physical access to the President. There's no law (AFAIK), which says this is legal, not that any rational person would reject such a thing. I mean, you're supposed to leave, so fuck you. Problem is, what happens when there's a hugely unpopular President and those same folks (or people holding the same positions in the government) decide that they should kick his ass out? Ideally, if there's no law saying that they can do this, everyone would protest and force them to allow the fuckstick to keep being President. How many people would be willing to do that, though? I mean, let's go back to when Obama was President if the military claimed they were throwing him out because he was a space alien, how many birthers would protest? Or say they threw W out because they thought he was an alien, would the people who claimed he stole the elections in '00 and '04 protest? Some might, but others certainly wouldn't.

Scenario 2: President refuses to leave, and the SS, along with the military, agree that he should be gone, but state that they lack the authority to remove him. Absolutely a reasonable position to take. So the next step is for lawsuits to be filed to force the removal of the fuckstick. We'll assume that the various courts involved agree that said fuckstick to be removed. Okay, well, the next fuckstick (and there always is one) who decides he wants to be a dictator of the US now knows which judges he needs to replace once he gets into office. (I mean, does a judge in Assrape, Kansas have jurisdiction over who gets to be President? Maybe, or maybe they think that this is only something that the Supreme Court can decide.) What then?

Scenario 3: The courts, the SS, and the military, all agree that fuckstick should be gone, but because there's nothing in any law spelling out how it should be done, Congress needs to pass laws on the process, so shithead can be tossed out. Now, maybe such a law cannot be passed with a veto-proof majority. This would suck ass. Or, suppose that various leaders in either house of Congress refuse to allow such laws to come to a vote. What then?

In any of those scenarios (and the likelihood of them happening is purely opinionated), we either wind up with a blueprint for some other wannabe despot to figure out what they need to do to prevent being removed from office (and maybe the first despot doesn't figure it out, but later ones certainly will) or we end up with an actual despot. None of which is good.

by the way, the whole "Impeaching him will just fire up his base and he'll win again!" trope is so insanely out of sync with reality that there are not words to fully describe it.

Will impeachment drive Cult45 into spasams of rage which will drive them to vote as one in the next election? Oh hell yeah!
Guess what? That's less than 40% of the electorate.

The rest will look at the long long long long long list of impeachable offenses and be horrified - not motivated to defend him. It's a complete delusion to compare this to Clinton who's offense in the worst possible construction was a parking ticket compared to Trumps offenses done right out in the daylight. And still, even despite the GOP bringing a patently ridiculous case against Clinton and failing, they suffered a slight set-back in the '98 house election (which came literally right on the heels of their stunt) and not at all in the '00 election. Individuals like Newt took a beating but not the party as a whole.

Basically the Dems lack conviction and the GOP knows it which is why they have been openly abusing longstanding norms for years now and will continue to. You can't "get along" and "achieve bipartisan consensus" with people who are bad faith actors will to cross any line in order to gain advantage.

Let's see ...

Something for which there was no evidence whatsoever, and a lot of evidence to the contrary, on the one hand ...

and something for which lots of pieces of evidence have been laid out in an official report by an independent investigator, on the other hand.

Are you really dumb enough, or blindly partisan enough, to believe that these are equivalent?

All those scenarios are stupid.

Look on Jan 20, 2021, or if he wins a second term on Jan 20, 2025, Trump will cease to be President.

If he doesn't leave the new President will just trespass him and they will arrest him and take him out of the White House. Once he's no longer President as per the Constitution he's just a "civilian" and will have no say in anything.

Friendly reminder that we're just a beta democracy.

The InfoWars brain rot is really setting in at this point, ain't it?

I'm not worried about President Pence because I'm confident that there are not 20 GOP senators with an ounce of integrity.

However, on the off chance that there was something so devastating that they felt safe to betray him (if such a thing is possible) said horrible thing would also tarnish the sycophant who's spent three years pretending Trump was God's anointed and he'd be out of office after the next election anyway.

At this point, Trump is pandering so very hard to the Dominionists that there remains no aspect of a President Pence administration that would be worse than this one anyway.

A. It will NOT backfire on the Dems for reasons previously stated.
B. Removal is not necessary (although it would be more ideal) for impeachment to be an imperative. If Congress looks at the incredibly long list of things he's done and says, collectively, "nothing we can do" then both impeachment and congressional oversight as a whole is a dead letter and every subsequent President has been informed that he or she can do whatever the god-damn well please without fear of any interference. Frankly, Trump already thinks this is the case and absent any correction of that assumption it will become the "norm" and we'll have, at last, the Imperial Presidency Fox always warned you about Obama wanting.

To quote Picard: "The line must be drawn here!"

Hey you forgot the guy between Bush Jr and Trump.

In 2012, Obama asserted executive privilege over documents regarding Operation Fast & Furious. (He ultimally lost in court over this one)

In 2012, Obama also asserted executive privilege over documents regarding implementation of the "Net Worth Sweep" against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

I would have to agree with this. Trump could barricade himself in the white house and never leave and a new president could be sworn in and be president from anywhere. You don't need trump to swear in the new president and have the military and everything else be referred to that person. Maybe there is a conflict with a few of trump's personal secret service protectors where they might protect his life, but I don't even see that happening.

The reason why people like little kim have power is because they have people and processes that back them personally as leader. The US has a presidential switching process established by the system and not reliant upon the leader.

I guess maybe things like the nuclear football might be in his possession at the time of the switch, but I would hope that there is a way to divert those technologies to the new presidential location without the old president giving up possession. It is not like we have a magical leader stick which endows the possessor with all the power of the president that trump can refuse to give up. Trump can tantrum all he wants, but the wheels of our country spin independent of him, and they need to in case he fell ill or died suddenly.

Obama, whatever his faults, was not insane (arguably many of his critics were/are)

"Maybe there is a conflict with a few of trump's personal secret service protectors where they might protect his life, but I don't even see that happening."

There would be no conflict here. He would still receive protection even as a former president but ultimately they would answer to the new president.

"I guess maybe things like the nuclear football might be in his possession at the time of the switch,"

It's not in his possession. It's near him but it's in possession of the military officer designated to carry it. As soon as a new POTUS shows up that officer will be with the new POTUS.

Yeah, well the reasons previously stated amount to "because I say so", so you'll have to forgive me for taking that for what it's worth.

The reason is the worst part. Pelosi and company say it would be really hard and it would rip the country in half. The first part of that should be the case. We don't want impeachment becoming too easy as it would disrupt our country's operations. But even if it is hard it should be done when a president has broken a law or else the president is above the law. It might rip this country apart means the trump supporters are going to bitch a lot, but if he is really committing crimes that is no reason to not remove him. A mom may be saddened her child goes to jail for a crime, but we do not spare her those tears because she pitches a fit. There is always going to be very angry people if the president gets impeached. That is not a reason to not attempt it.

If Obama had jaywalked during his presidency they would have tried to impeach him. Bill Clinton got an irrelevant blowjob and did not want to admit it, and they impeached him for saying no to a completely off topic question that should have never been asked. Trump has obstructed justice and that is a real problem, especially considering he did it to protect his staff's collusion with Russia. Maybe there is not enough evidence to prove he knew about it, but there is evidence he tried to obstruct justice. You cannot let any president do that.

on the "What if Trump refuses to leave? stuff...
I wouldn't put it past him, he pretty clearly wants to be an autocrat for life. He would only do it insofar as he'd convinced himself he could get away with it, or that Cult45 would take up arms on his behalf - but it's a whole new order of magnitude beyond what he's tried so far (which, admittedly, has been completely insane). One potential decision-maker for him is if he knows full well he will be criminally indicted the day after he leaves office. That might push him past the last ragged edges of his remaining sanity.

All that said, I'm not predicting such an outcome....BUT....

Even if the Dem clears 400 EV, he will spend the entire transition time doing the following:
1. rage-tweeting to his base that he was cheated by millions of illegal votes
2. re-tweeting every nutbar talking up armed revolution that crosses his radar
3. signing every insane EO that anyone can put on his desk to make it harder for the next president to clean up his disaster
4. having destroyed every single document or record that has any chance of being incriminating despite Records preservation laws.
5. having all loyal staff do everything possible to blockade the transition.
6, abandon the White House for Mar-a-lago altogether and find every possible way to grift as many taxpayer dollars during that period as possible.
7. label the next president illegitimate and refuse to show up for the Inauguration.
8. Spend the rest of his days (assuming he's not in custody) spreading dangerous nonsense on Twitter trying to destroy the country in revenge for not letting him be King.

Thank you, I did not know that and figured it was probably the case, but I was just trying to imagine some way trump could somehow grasp onto the presidential powers. I admit even that did not sound like something the American military would do.

well one is at least as credible an analysis as the other. At least i explained my reasoning instead of just declaring an opinion as if it were self-evident.

She's wrong.
That already happened.
November, 2016.

What we're wanting to do not is address the wound before we bleed out.

I respect Pelosi as a political operator within the normal functioning of Congress, Schmer less so but Pelosi is a hall-of-Fame talent on that field.

But these are NOT normal times, and the problem with the Democratic Party is not where any part of it is on the moderate-progressive scale and how to balance that, the problem is that too many of those with power have what Sarah Kendzior describes as "normalcy bias" - they want to continue to think that we're having normal problems which arise from the normal interplay of two opposing parties and they should be addressed in the normal regular order of government business just like always.

that is not REMOTELY what is actually going on. To quote Kenzior again, this is a kleptocratic international crime syndicate masquerading as a government.

I agree, I am not a fan of the president using executive privilege to avoid investigation. Did Obama ever have his staff refuse to testify like little bush, or did he just refuse documents? I figure you would remember better.

This woman didn't hold political office, yet Teddy Roosevelt described her as the "most dangerous person in America."

Buchanon turned a blind eye to a number of things which allowed the Civil War to happen, but most people don't think about him when they think of US Presidents because Lincoln so overshadows him. But suppose that in 2000 Bill Clinton had decided that Al Gore had won the election, not W. How many Democrats do you think would have protested this idea? If the Secret Service or the military had barred Gore from entering the White House, do you think that the Democrats would have agreed with this, or do you think that they would have protested and done whatever they could to ensure that Gore was allowed to enter? Or suppose that the Secret Service agreed that Gore should be President, what then? Who removes him? How do they do it?

Not at all saying that something similar would happen if Trump refused to leave office. I don't know what would happen. But I have read Coup d'etat: A Practical Handbook, and what I described comes from that. Again, I'm not trying to play politics here. Pick a President, any President, don't care who they are, don't care what party they belong to, if they refuse to leave office at the end of their term, the scenarios I described still apply.

That is always being done by the republicans despite them being the ones who have been caught most of the recent times doing voter fraud.

I do wonder if after he is no longer POTUS if twitter will ban his attempt to promote violence. They have placed him above their other users supposedly because of his position, but will that last when he is no longer president. I would guess they will not ban him because of greed.

It seems like the courts could delay the EOs if challenged and the next president could simply overturn them. Yes, it is a process, but so is cleaning up a shitstorm.

Considering his people are recording him out of CYA fears that might not work so well for him.

I am sure they will leave some nasty surprises in the shitter.

Well, we are going to be on the hook for him and his family for SS protection for a while.

I am sure of this one, but who wants him there anyway?

After he is out of office he is open to indictments again. That might shut his mouth.

Yep.

If you believed Clinton deserved to be removed from office for lying about his personal life, Trump deserves to be outed for everything that he's all but waved in our faces.

Even if there aren't enough Senators to remove him from office, it would be a mockery of Justice not to go through after all this. And as others pointed out, the impeachment was the least of the factors leading to W winning the election (arguably, the bad blood behind the Elian Gonzales case did more to poison the well in Florida but I digress).

About the only use in not impeaching at this point is to make a point that we need to elect more dems in the next election to impeach. You keep trump in as the battle flag, don't worry about the mess he makes when he goes out, and rise the wave of hate into a decent majority in congress and that is your insurance in case trump gets re-elected in which case you have two houses to deal with him and pence. I will admit that maybe over all that is a better play in a very manipulative back end sort of way. Trump is certainly going to be a huge moron in the next election, and taking him out runs the risk of a reasonable and good looking presidential candidate coming in. But we know how the dems worked that angle during Bush's second election. In the anyone but bush election he won. Trump is much worse than Bush, but he has the stupid state tie up. I won't call them red anymore. They need to be the stupid states because that is what sort of laws they make.

This, Clinton died on the sword of his lies and deservedly so.

However Trump openly gloats about far worse behaviour yet the simple fact of honesty is his best defense, he just doesn't care. We know perfectly well he has done awful things, because he makes no secret of them, he stands there beating his chest and grunting proudly about what a beast he is but all his supporters can see is "well he didn't pretend to be a saint, look how commanding he is".

He's a monster

Whether anything can or cannot stick in court is another matter, we still know that one simple fact. All of us, every one of us.

Deep down I believe every single person who posts here declaring the man to be a great politician and leader knows the reason they are having to do that at all is because they have to make a positive case to take the focus of the blatant, celebrated, fact he is a monstrous human being. He is a gangster and a bully who very clearly doesn't care about anyone other than himself and his ego. All politicians lie at some point, but he does so very very differently. He gets away with his lies not by keeping them quiet but by making them so obvious and contrary to even the most publicly overwhelming evidence to the contrary that people just roll over.

He declares the sky to be green and dares people to contradict him and that arrogance, that bullying is seen as strength. He relies on the perception that he is strong and can squash anyone who stands against him, much like a gang boss or the alpha male in a prison environment. "Things is the way it is because I say so, what the fuck are you going to do about it?"

No, there may be nothing yet which will stick, that may even become the job of future historians, but no one doubts the many crimes of Al Capone even if they could only ever get him on tax evasion.