TALKIN' LOUD AND SAYIN' NOTHING
It didn’t take long for the gaslighting to start. Republicans are lying their asses off, secure in the knowledge that their talking points will be faithfully regurgitated by their propaganda outlets and absorbed uncritically by their credulous base.
They know that the facts about Ukraine are devastating for Trump. They know that their only chance is to blow massive amounts of smoke, producing enough confusion to create a stalemate. So they’ll wave their arms, bluster, and lie. Sadly, at least 30% of the population will probably believe them.
In the normal course of events, I don’t interact with Trump fans. Oh, I check some right wing websites to see what they’re saying, but I don’t engage with them. But it’s that time of year when old friends and family get together for the holidays, and I know that I’ll be mingling with some Republicans at Thanksgiving time.
Personally, I’m conflict averse. I do my best to avoid contentious situations. I never bring up politics, and if someone else does, my instinctive response is to bite my tongue, drift to the perimeter, and look for a more congenial conversation in another room.
But in case that doesn’t work, I’m developing a few talking points to use – strictly in self-defense, of course. Who knows what revelations the next two weeks will bring, but as of now, this is what I’ve come up with.
Impeachment is unconstitutional: This is an incredibly stupid argument. Impeachment is in the Constitution. It was put there – Article I, Section 2 – by our Founding Fathers as a safeguard against people exactly like Donald Trump. Arguing that impeachment is unconstitutional amounts to saying that the Constitution is unconstitutional. (On the other hand, if parts of the Constitution are unconstitutional, I nominate the 2nd Amendment.)
This is an attempted coup, with the goal of overturning the results of the 2016 presidential election: False, unless the outcome of this impeachment effort somehow makes Hillary Clinton president. But if Trump is impeached, convicted, and removed from office, his successor would be Mike Pence. As Jim “Stonekettle” Wright put it: “When Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment, we got President Ford, not President McGovern. If Trump is removed from office, we get President Pence, not Hillary Clinton. Democrats don't get the Oval Office. So, how is this a coup exactly? I mean, if it IS a coup, well, then the primary suspect behind it wouldn't be Nancy Pelosi or Adam Schiff. It would the guy who ends up in power. That's how coups work. You want to call it a coup? Maybe wonder where the fuck Mike Pence has gotten to lately.”
Donald Trump is being denied his Sixth Amendment right to confront and cross-examine his accusers: Another incredibly stupid argument. The Sixth Amendment applies to criminal proceedings. Impeachment is not a criminal proceeding. It’s the responsibility of the House of Representatives to investigate, and to bring charges if they’re warranted. The trial phase takes place in the Senate, where Trump (or more likely, his representatives) will have plenty of opportunities to lay out his side of the case.
Impeachment is a witch hunt because there was no quid pro quo: We don’t have a full answer to who knew what, when, about the attempt to extort Ukraine’s President Zelensky. But the more we learn, the worse it looks for Trump and his inner circle. Republicans who argue that because Ukraine eventually got its money, Trump deserves a mulligan. Bullshit. Trump released the money because his scheme came unraveled, not because he thought better of committing an impeachable offense.
Beyond that, attempting to commit a crime is a crime. If you try to kill someone and fail, it’s still attempted murder. Failed criminals are still criminals.
The Whistleblower complaint was merely hearsay: If your kid told you he’d overheard some classmates plotting to shoot up their high school, you’d report it to the police, right? And you’d expect them to stop the attack before it happened. You’d be outraged if the cops said, “hey, that’s only hearsay, nothing we can do unless we hear it from an eyewitness.”
But in this particular case, eyewitnesses stepped up. Lots of them. And they’ve corroborated the Ukraine Whistleblower’s story. No credible evidence contradicting the report has surfaced. Republicans want to out the Whistleblower as punishment for telling the truth, and to discourage potential future truth-tellers from calling out criminal behavior by one of their own.
Read the transcript: First of all, it’s not a transcript. It’s a summary, with some key parts missing. The phone call lasted at least a half an hour. You can read the summary aloud in 10 minutes. OK, translation accounts for some of the missing time, but not all of it. We know this because eyewitnesses have testified under oath about the missing elements. Nevertheless, by all means, read the damn summary. Even in sanitized form, it demonstrates that Trump intended to withhold military aid until Zelensky promised to investigate Hunter Biden. That’s extortion.
The President has a right to insist that foreign governments root out corruption in return for our support: It is to laugh. In his beautiful, perfect conversation with Ukraine President Zelensky, Trump never used the word “corruption.” He made it clear that the “favor” he wanted was an investigation of the Bidens. The notion that Donald Trump hates corruption is risible. His favorite foreign leaders are corrupt dictators. Donald Trump loves corruption.
Why impeach in the House when we know the Senate won’t vote to convict? In the first place, we don’t know that the Senate won’t vote to impeach. Whatever their public protestations on his behalf, most Republican senators just want Trump to go away. Not that they object to the substance of his policies, or even to his graft. But they’re embarrassed by his oafish behavior, and because he doesn’t have the sense to be discreet about his crimes. Right now, Republican senators who are up for re-election in 2020 are afraid of being primaried. Some of them say privately that they’ll pivot once the filing deadline for a primary challenge has passed. We’ll see.
But there are two more important reasons for proceeding with the impeachment hearings. First, public testimony – under oath – makes things transparent. Getting the facts on the record is a good thing. And so is forcing every senator to take a stand, one way or the other. If Republicans want to stand before history and say, “nah, we’re OK with extortion and bribery and all the other stuff, as long as it’s our guy who’s doing it,” then make them do that.
Why not wait until the election next year and let voters decide? This is a bad faith argument. The logical implication is that we should suspend all political activity in the year before a presidential election. Why not tell ICE to stand down until election day and see what voters think about immigration policy? Why not let ISIS have their caliphate back until the election? (Oh, wait, Trump already did that.) Hold off on appointing more judges, etc.
But of course, that’s not what Republicans want. They want Democrats to suspend all political activity until after the election, so that they can go about their dirty business unimpeded.
Why not give Donald Trump another twelve months of high crimes and misdemeanors? Because justice delayed is justice denied. The good guys have to at least try.