A few days ago the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States. Was it just? I believe that it was. I support both articles of impeachment.
What did President Trump do to deserve impeachment? He put intense pressure on President Zelensky, of Ukraine, to announce an investigation of corruption into what seemed like at the time to be Trump’s most likely political rival, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter Biden. Trump not only asked for this on an official telephone call between the two presidents, which in itself seems like a violation of the emoluments clause because help in a campaign is a thing of value, he also withheld $391 million in military aid that Congress had appropriated on a bipartisan basis for Ukraine to defend itself against Russia.
Why is it a problem that he withheld the military aid? Doesn’t he have the right to do that if he chooses to? Actually, no, he does not. Imagine what would happen if presidents were allowed to withhold money that Congress had appropriated. If presidents could do that they would have far more power than they currently have because they could then defund any cause that they did not agree with, or simply refuse to give the money to any state or foreign country that they did not consider an ally to their administration. It is Congress that has been given the power of the purse by the Constitution. If the President of the United States had that authority as well it would endanger the concept of having a separation of powers.
Republicans argue that the Trump administration held up aid in other instances as well, but that is not really a good defense because they should not have been doing it in those cases either. They also argue that other administrations, particularly the Obama administration that Joe Biden was part of, have withheld aid in the past as well, when there were legitimate concerns about corruption in that country and the worry was that the aid would be misused. The difference, though, is that the aid was not withheld by Obama so that he or Joe Biden could obtain some kind of personal benefit. Trump believed that a Biden investigation in Ukraine would help his own reelection chances and that was the real reason that he was doing it. He does not actually care about corruption; he himself is one of the most corrupt businessmen on earth. When the Obama administration temporarily withheld the aid it was done openly with the blessing of Congress on a bipartisan level, and it is unlikely that the aid would have been permanently withheld without the Obama administration going back to Congress and asking for it to be reconsidered. Everybody was on the same page, and Obama was not doing it to benefit himself.
Listen, if Trump wants to make the case that Biden did something wrong here, that Biden’s son getting a plush board position with a Ukrainian energy company making somewhere between $50,000 to $80,000 per month (I have heard both figures) while Joe Biden was serving as the Vice President of the United States and shaping U.S. policy toward Ukraine is inappropriate, then Trump can do that. It did not violate any laws, but it does seem like it could be a conflict of interest. I find it quite interesting that Republicans do not bring up other instances of arrangements like this, though, which in my view are even more questionable. Wendy Gramm, the wife of longtime Republican Senator Phil Gramm from Texas, was appointed to Enron’s board soon after she left the first Bush administration. Phil Gramm was a member of the Senate Banking, Finance, and Budget Committee. The cozy relationship between Phil Gramm and Enron is disconcerting. In addition to Enron making over $100,000 in campaign contributions to him for his last two campaigns, they also appointed his wife to this very lucrative board position. Legally, a married couple has joint finances, so if you pay Wendy Gramm a boatload of money to sit on the board and do very little then that is basically like giving a bribe or a kickback to Phil Gramm for influence in government. Now I suppose that he would have argued that it did not influence his decisions about Enron one bit, and maybe it didn’t, but it sure does make one wonder whether that is really the case. To me that is even more serious than Biden’s adult son taking a similar position, but in either case it is concerning. If a judge was involved with a trial in which one of his or her close family members was a prominent member of the board for a company that was involved in the litigation you can bet that the judge would recuse himself/herself, as they should. Maybe the judge would be able to set personal relationships aside and be entirely unbiased in his or her judgment, but there would always be a suspicion, especially from those on the other side, that that was not really the case. Part of avoiding a conflict of interest is avoiding even the appearance of a conflict of interest, and politicians should do that as well. Now, I guess if it really came down to it, Phil Gramm could not have prevented his wife from taking the position if she still wanted it even over his objections, and Joe Biden could not have forced his son to not take the position, but they should try to convince the family member not to, and if all else fails, recuse themselves from any legislation or decisions affecting that company.
I don’t like it that this is legal. I don’t think that Joe Biden or Hunter Biden did anything that was illegal, but it should not be allowed. It is extremely hypocritical of Republicans to only bring something like this up when it involves a Democrat, even though many of them participate in all sorts of sleazy underhanded arrangements that are just like it, probably far more than the Democrats do, but Trump has the right to try and make the case to voters that Biden is corrupt if he wants to do that. What he cannot do is use taxpayer money that Congress has appropriated for military aid to Ukraine as leverage to basically extort the President of Ukraine into doing an investigation, or at least announcing an investigation of Joe Biden, his political rival. The Ukraine is in a battle right now with Russian-backed separatists; they really needed that money and a show of strong support from the White House, such as a White House meeting with President Trump, to keep Russia at bay. That meeting still has not happened.
To me, this is even worse than Watergate. President Nixon just had his cronies spying on the Democrats, Trump is trying to get other countries to help him smear his political rival. Trump knows that the media would have taken it more seriously if the allegations came from Ukraine rather than from him, and he was trying to exploit that. It puts leaders in Ukraine in an impossible situation. They do not want to be put in the middle of it. What if the candidate that they tried to help lost? Then they would have alienated one of the parties and they would be in a lot of trouble when the other party was in power. There is no way that they would want to risk losing bipartisan support in Washington.
Do we really want other countries getting involved in our elections? Trump sees Vladimir Putin and the Russians as his allies and the Democrats as his enemies. He does not think that the U.S. media is sufficiently supportive of his efforts so he goes to the Russians and the Chinese and anybody else that he can find for help to win the election. According to what we have learned from the trial of one of Trump’s cronies, Roger Stone, the campaign also coordinated with Russia on the release of hacked e-mails from the Democratic Party so that they could be put out at the most politically damaging time for the Democrats. He teamed up with Russia to cheat in a U.S. election. That is treason. Trump loves to accuse other people of it, but in reality he is the one that committed treason.
That brings us to the other thing that Trump wanted from Zelensky: he has this weird idea that it was not Russia that meddled in the 2016 election to help him, it was actually Ukraine that meddled in order to help Hillary Clinton, and he wanted President Zelensky to admit to that. I guess Trump thinks that the talk of Russian meddling delegitimizes his victory in 2016, so he is trying desperately to change that narrative, but it is a completely ridiculous claim. According to the news, White House staff think that it was Vladimir Putin himself that told Trump this, and for some reason Trump believes it. He seems to believe whatever Vladimir Putin tells him.
I am sure that there were people in Ukraine who were hoping that Hillary Clinton would win because they thought that it would be better for them if she did (they were definitely not wrong were they), just as there were people in other European countries that hoped Clinton would win. But there is a huge difference between speaking negatively about Trump and meddling in the U.S. election to try to change the outcome.
There is no way that Ukraine actually did that because it would be far too risky for them. What if they tried and it did not work? Ukraine could not afford to alienate one of the political parties. Russia, on the other hand, does not give a damn. The Russians still have 9,000 nukes, they know that the U.S. cannot fight a war with them, so they can do whatever they want without much real risk. (To be fair, our CIA has meddled in the elections of other countries, particularly communist countries, but it was never right. It was not right when we did it, and it is not right that the Russians are now doing it back to us.)
The idea that Ukraine meddled in our election is completely ridiculous. Yet because Trump believes it, now it seems that many in the Republican party also believe it. Several members of Congress have defended it. They are willing to sell out Ukraine and repeat what they have to know is a Russian lie, all to save Trump.
Even if you think that the mainstream media has a liberal bias, do you really believe the Russians over them? Even if you don’t fully trust the FBI and the CIA, do you really think that Russia is a more credible source of information? Really?
Some say that the Republican members of Congress are afraid of Trump, but I think it is actually egoism. They like the Republican agenda, and they know that it will be bad for them politically if they go against him, and it would also be bad for them if he goes down, so they double down on the lie just like he does and continue to support him no matter what.
I guess I am an idealist, but I expected more out of them. They always praise members of the military for making the ultimate sacrifice, yet members of Congress won’t even sacrifice their Congressional seat to stand on principle, let alone die to put the nation’s interests ahead of their own.
Trump is dangerous because his supporters will keep supporting him no matter what he does. He infamously bragged during his campaign in 2016 that he could murder someone on Fifth Avenue in New York and his supporters would still be behind him. He even seemed somewhat surprised by their devotion. It is so weird. It is like a political cult following. I don’t understand the appeal myself. To me he is a complete fool who is an embarrassment to the United States, but he has some kind of charisma to certain people. He is pretty good at getting them riled up at a rally. I think Trump is right. Some of his most ardent supporters would kill for him if he asked them to, I really believe that. I also think that a lot of his supporters would have his back if he killed someone, especially if it was a well-known Democrat. Members of Congress would remain devoted as well. Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes would help him bury the body and then each give an impassioned speech in Congress about how there was no body, the Democrats just have an irrational hatred of Trump and they are making things up. All the Republicans in the House would storm out of the chamber in protest, feeling like they were the ones who had been victimized because the Democrats had dared to question the Dear Leader.
Republican Senators are just as bad. Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham both said that they were not impartial and they wouldn’t even consider the evidence in the Senate trial. That is not doing your duty. I believe that Nancy Pelosi is doing the right thing holding on to the articles of impeachment for now, because McConnell already said that he would be coordinating with the White House and that it is just going to be a kangaroo court. They won’t even take it seriously, even though the evidence is overwhelming. Rand Paul has said that he cannot wait to make a motion to dismiss. I used to think he was a pretty good guy, and I had a lot of respect for his father Ron Paul, even though I did not agree with him on a lot of the issues, because he could not be bought. But I don’t think I could ever have respect for Rand Paul again after all of this. How could you not even be willing to have a fair trial when there is so much credible evidence?
It is hard to imagine a case in which it is so blatantly obvious that there was a quid pro quo, he was soliciting assistance from a foreign government, and it is very much an impeachable offense. I don’t know how the evidence could be any more clear. If they won’t convict him now they probably never will.
I was extremely worried when Trump first took office, but then it did not seem like it was as bad as I thought it would be. I came to think that Trump was too incompetent to be a genuine threat to our Republic and the Constitution. But now I am worried again. It is not just him that I worry about it is the people that support him. It concerns me that he jokes about doing away with term limits for the Presidency of the United States, even though there is a specific constitutional amendment that prohibits that. He started doing that after the President of China decided to stay in office for life. Trump thought that sounded pretty good. He thinks that he should be able to serve four terms. He claims to only be joking, but he brings it up a lot. I think he is testing the waters to see if it might be possible and then if people react negatively to it then he says that he was only joking. It gets big cheers at his rallies. You can bet that if he gets reelected (ugh) he will start talking about that even more in his second term. Why aren’t Conservatives horrified by that? Would you wake up, dammit, the man is trying to become a dictator! Republicans just brush it off and act like it is no big deal, but you can imagine how they would react if Obama had said that, even as a joke. The people at Fox ‘News’, a.k.a the Republican propaganda network, or Trump TV, would have lost their minds if Obama or Clinton had ever said anything like that. But when it is their guy they just cheer him on. It is incredibly dangerous when 42% of the country wants to ignore the Constitution.
On another front, President Trump’s lawyers argue that you can’t even investigate the president for committing a crime while he/she is in office, and you would have a hard time impeaching him/her for it either because other lawyers of his say that they won’t cooperate with Congress’s subpoenas and won’t provide documents or allow anyone from the administration to testify. You can bet they would be doing the same thing if he had shot someone on Fifth Avenue. How would you get evidence that he had committed an impeachable offense if you cannot even investigate, let alone convict? Now he is pushing to stay in office forever, which of course would mean that you could never investigate him for any crimes that he has committed. If that actually held up in court because of all of the damn conservative justices they have been stacking the courts with, and if those judges are as radical as the Republicans in Congress then we are in real trouble. I am not joking.
Even though these are ridiculous arguments, Trump’s lawyers are making them anyway because they have to come up with some kind of argument to shield him from criminal prosecution. Isn’t it concerning that the President needs that kind of criminal defense? But Republicans don’t care, they think it is all just made up by the Democrats. What has happened to this party? What has happened to our country?
What about the corruption that Rick Perry, the Secretary of Energy was involved in? It is absurd to think that Trump was really trying to clean up the corruption in Ukraine when what he was asking for was corrupt and the members of his administration were involved in a corrupt energy deal themselves.
I hate Trump because he has reinvigorated white nationalism and the Neo-Nazi movement. I hate it that he forces everyone to choose a side. I hate him because he is creating a toxic culture that will be very hard to fix. It is ironic that he ran for office with the promise to fight corruption, to ‘drain the swamp’, the swamp being Washington D.C., but in reality Trump is one of the people that corrupts Washington. If they are a swamp he is ‘Swamp Thing’. Which is worse, a politician who takes money from rich people to help their campaign or the rich person handing out the money in return for political influence? That is what Trump did for decades. He has not cleaned up anything, he has made it much worse. I hate what a con man he is, and how easily so many of these people have been duped by him.
Even though Trump is usually the instigator of conflict he is great at then pretending like he is the victim. He is a bully and is incredibly rude and mean-spirited in how he treats people, and then he and the Republicans genuinely wonder why so many people don’t like him. They don’t like him because he is an asshole. You know that he is, but usually he is an asshole to people that you don’t like, so you are fine with it. If he treated you and the people that you identify with that way, you would hate him too, dear Trump supporter. He reminds me of a villain in professional sports who takes cheap shots on people and then throws his hands up in mock surprise when the other guy responds to it, claiming to the referee that he does not even understand why the other guy is angry. Unsurprisingly, that type of player is beloved by the home crowd and hated by everyone else. But the problem is that these are real issues. This is far more serious than a sports rivalry. The stakes are very high here.
He is normalizing corruption. He won’t let the military punish what they believe to be corrupt Navy SEALs. He doesn’t care if they murdered captives and civilians, according to other SEALs who claim to have witnessed it and blew the whistle. He has to get in the middle of it and protect what could be some very bad guys. It is unprecedented for a president to do that, and he seems to really not care whether they are guilty of what they have been accused of.
He is all for torture. The CIA is probably doing it again, committing human rights abuses all with Trump’s blessing.
He cheats at everything from golf to elections to taxes. (According to his fixer lawyer Michael Cohen, who is currently serving a 3 year prison sentence for trying to hide Trump’s affairs during the campaign, resulting in campaign finance law violations; Trump should be in jail as well, he did the same thing.) But they don’t care. His supporters know that he is corrupt and they don’t give a damn. Integrity, honor, civility, respect, fair play, honesty, none of it matters. They don’t care what he does as long as he gives them the judges that vote how they want them to on abortion. Yeah, sure, they will cheat to win. Isn’t that what Jesus would do?
I could go on and on about everything that I hate about Trump, from the ridiculous, when he used a sharpie to draw in the hurricane’s path into Alabama rather than admit that he was wrong, to very serious mistakes, such as moving the troops out so that Erdogan could attack the Kurds, but I guess there is little point in it. No matter how you feel about what else he has done, the bottom line is whether he committed an impeachable offense. I believe that he did, and I would encourage everyone to read the actual documents such as the whistleblower complaint, the call notes that Trump himself released from the January 25th call, the public testimony, etc. Do this rather than only hearing it filtered through biased commentators. I think the evidence is very clear to anyone who is open to it.
David Johnson
Dec. 23rd, 2019