Impeachment on the Horizon as Trump Tantrum Highlights Infrastructure Week
"If the president does it, that means it is not illegal." --Richard M. Nixon
“L’etat, c’est moi” (the state is me) --Louis XIV
"I pray for the President of the United States. I wish that his family or his administration or his staff would have an intervention for the good of the country." --Nancy Pelosi
Wednesday, May 22, may have been the turning point in the sordid saga of the Trump administration.
A high level sit down was turned on its head as the President used it as the opening ploy in an effort to blackmail Democrats using infrastructure projects to end all Congressional investigations into him.
Democrats walked into a meeting about infrastructure with a with a 35 page concrete plan on how to fund it. The President walked out.
Here’s Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer, quoted in the Guardian:
“To watch what happened in the White House would make your jaw drop,” Schumer said.
Brandishing a 35-page plan, Schumer dismissed Trump’s complaint that investigations into his administration and infrastructure cannot run in parallel, suggesting that Trump was hiding from the fact he cannot find funding for the latter.
The President then walked over to the Rose Garden, and had a temper tantrum live on international television for the world to see. It was pathetic, sad and weak.
From the Washington Post:
The mounting inquiries have angered the president for weeks, but those investigations had not stopped the White House from scheduling Wednesday’s meeting. The meeting was still on, with the original agenda, as of midmorning, White House and other officials said.
But that was before news coverage of Pelosi’s meeting with other Democrats on Wednesday morning. Pelosi said Trump had “engaged in a coverup,” harsh criticism that came moments after she had tamped down talk of impeachment in her caucus in a closed-door meeting — at least for now. Trump was “livid,” said one person familiar with his mood, although some of his own aides have argued that a dead-end impeachment effort would be politically helpful to the president, since it would further his reelection narrative that Democrats are out to get him at any cost.
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https://twitter.com/mattmfm/status/1131608690145058816
Earlier in the day during their weekly closed door strategy meeting, House Democrats spoke about impeachment. Twenty-five Democratic (and one Republican) members of Congress have taken the plunge to say the time has come to begin hearings.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has been upfront about trying to tamp down such efforts, led an effort to create messaging for media consumption that Democrats were moving closer to starting impeachment hearings.
There now appears to be consensus about a “red-line” triggering further moves, namely Trump disobeying a direct court order. House Democrats who were previously not on board the impeachment bandwagon generally agreed with new standard.
“It’s important to follow the facts. We believe that no one is above the law, including the President of the United States and we believe that the President of the United States is engaged in a cover-up.” - Speaker Nancy Pelosi
House Democrats are moving to hold a floor vote on a contempt package involving administration officials and other witnesses the week of June 4th.
Rep, Jerry Nadler, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told colleagues he is looking at passing a package authorizing committee chairs to hold people in contempt without having to go back for floor vote.
Here’s Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, the former judge that Trump now considers to be the enemy:
We know that Mueller's obstruction allegations -- which have not been effectively contradicted by the White House -- constitute not only crimes but also impeachable offenses. We know that because when Nixon asked John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman, his principal aides, to lie to a grand jury, and when President Bill Clinton asked Betty Currie, his White House personal secretary, to lie to FBI agents, the House of Representatives -- either through the House Judiciary Committee by direct vote -- approved articles of impeachment against both of them for obstruction of justice.
While it’s easy to get frustrated at the pace Democratic leaders are moving at, this is the Congress, after all. Being up on Capitol Hill removes them from the front line struggles going on in communities around the country. If you aren’t already, keep calling and writing; the pressure for bringing on hearings is working.
As the President fumes--and the media largely repeats--about Democrats doing nothing of substance, the reality is the House of Representatives has passed more than 100 bills -- including health care, electoral reform, gun safety -- that are sitting in the Senate, awaiting action.
This morning the nation got to witness Trump furiously defending his calm demeanor with an angry tweet screaming Rage and the Fake News Media.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1131563848992006144
Update: Republican Ratf*ckery at work
When facts don't work, GOP dirty tricksters get busy. From the Washington Post:
Distorted videos of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), altered to make her sound as if she’s drunkenly slurring her words, are spreading rapidly across social media, highlighting how political disinformation that clouds public understanding can now spread at the speed of the Web.
The video of Pelosi’s onstage speech Wednesday at a Center for American Progress event, in which she said President Trump’s refusal to cooperate with congressional investigations was tantamount to a “coverup," was subtly edited to make her voice sound garbled and warped. It was then circulated widely across Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.
One version, posted by the conservative Facebook page Politics WatchDog, has been viewed more than 1.4 million times, been shared more than 32,000 times, and garnered 16,000 comments with users calling her “drunk” and “a babbling mess.”
The Wapo article makes it clear this current campaign is not a singular event. In fact, there's even a site dedicated to fakes videos of Democrats who happen to be women. If you happen to see one of these fakes on your crazy uncle's timeline, be sure to complain to the social media platform involved.
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Senator Elizabeth Warren is among my favorite Democratic candidates for President, and the video below shows why:
https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1131534446044352513
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Email me at DougPorter@WordsAndDeedsBlog.com