Or, Impeached Again! Way to go, Donnie!
Yesterday I asked whether the Republican establishment would cut the Don loose or double down on the crazy. The answer appears to be the former. Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei write at Axios that Top Republicans want Trump done — forevermore. “Top Republicans want to bury President Trump, for good,” they write. “But they are divided whether to do it with one quick kill via impeachment, or let him slowly fade away.”
There are stories from multiple sources that Mitch McConnell more than likely will vote to convict. Other Republicans are fine with doing Trump in, but they don’t want to leave their fingerprints on the knife.
For the record, these House Repblicans voted to impeach: John Katko, NY; Liz Cheney, WY; Adam Kizinger, IL; Fred Upton, MI; Jaime Hettera Beutler, WA; Dan Newhouse, WA; Peter Meijer, MI; Anthony Gonzalez, OH; Tom Rice, SC; David Valadao, CA.
I’m not finding any news stories listing Democrats voting against impeachment. We still don’t know what the Senate will do.
But here’s an interesting bit, from Kaitlan Collins and Kevin Liptak, CNN:
Two sources told CNN Trump has said he is bringing Alan Dershowitz back after his stint defending Trump during the first impeachment proceedings. Trump has told people that Dershowitz’s defense of him on the Senate floor saved him during his last trial. Rudy Giuliani is also expected to be involved, though no concrete legal strategy had been cobbled together as of Wednesday morning, even though Trump was slated to be impeached within hours.
Several prominent figures from Trump’s last impeachment — including Jay Sekulow and Kenneth Starr — have declined to get involved. The White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, is also not expected to play a role, and considered resigning in the wake of last week’s insurrection. Trump has been dismissive of Cipollone for months now.
See also NBC News:
Stripped of the ability to fire off real-time responses, Trump must rely on a White House staff that has largely been replaced with moving boxes as aides head for the exits and allies fail to offer a defense of him in public.
Are you tired of winning yet, Donnie?
There were ZERO democrats who did not vote for impeachment. There were 4 rePukes who did not vote.
Over time, we will learn many of the names of the cowardly rePukes who voted against impeachment out of fear for their lives and their families lives when they wanted to vote to impeach.
I suspect Dershowitz has advised Trump to try to cover his ass after the fact with emphatic denunciations. What we've seen are the most tepid requests for nonviolence that can be composed in the English language. IMO, Trump expects and wants a revolution that will keep him in power. The problem is – if it fails and he has endorsed it, not only will he be convicted by the Senate, no pardon would then protect Trump from federal prosecution.
Suppose the FBI has specific inside information about Proud Boys and domestic terrorism. (Not unlikely.) Suppose they brief the president, or include it in the daily briefing and/or contact Jared to inform him that POTUS needs to demand the Proud Boys NOT do it – Trump won't. He will make every effort to not see it, not admit it, not denounce it. And this will happen before the Senate trial phase and the FBI will document every step of the process.
Trump has to make a decision soon – like now. Either he abandons all ambitions to survive as POTUS and concentrates on a vocal denunciation of anything and everything that questions the election from now til hell freezes over – or he's wide open to conviction and federal prosecution. Dershowitz knows it and whether or not he has the integrity (as a lawyer) to explain the risk… I am not sure.
I love the name/title…It's in the finest New York tradition. Move over Vinny the chin! Seeing how the Teflon Don has already been taken I was afraid he was going to be labeled as The Eel. And a name like that kind of detracts from the majesty that was Trump.
Trump must have steam coming out of his ears. He played his cards wrong and now Congress has shown him, to borrow a phrase from Kim Jong-un, he dreamed the wrong dream.
I watched the proceeding in their entirety. It was quite an educational experience. I bet a lot of you people didn't know that it was 44 years from the time the Wright brothers launched the first flight until Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier. I'm not sure what that has to do with Trump being impeached for incitement of insurrection, but Gym Jordan evidently felt it was important that we be aware of that fact. Maybe he was being cryptic…what kind of bird doesn't fly?….a jail bird!
I don't believe Donnie's first two wives or his present one, Melanoma, know him as "Donnie Two Times," maha.
"Donnie Done Fast" is more likely.
I suspect that pretty soon we'll see a few RepubliKKKLAN House members arrested for aiding and abetting in last week's monstrous act of sedition/insurrection. Most likely, they'll be newbies.
I've read that one House member gave a tour of our Capitol Building to a few of the seditious traitors. I believe that tour guide was CO's Lauren Boebert – also, she was one of the members bitching about not being allowed to walk around loaded for bear in the Capitol. She's also the evil dipstick who texted Pelosi's location on January 6th.
One good laugh today: GA's new House member, Q-Anon's own Marjorie Taylor Greene, got up to speak in defense of Benedict Donald wearing a face-mask (finally!) that said "CENSORED" across her lying lips.
And nothing, NOTHING, proves the extent to whuch you're being truly "censored" than by wearing that word across your ugly face WHILE SPEAKING AT A NATIONALLY AND INTERNATIONALLY TELEVISED IMPEACHMENT HEARING AT THE US CAPITOL BUILDING!!!!!
Please, Dog, give us smarter stupid people!!!!!!!!!!
You're missing the part where Republicans would like to vote for impeachment but are fearful for their lives. There is some really dark stuff going on.
It's nothing short of amazing that there wasn't a massacre on Jan 6, given the stories coming out from the Dems who were there.
Ain't over yet, folks. It may come down to who the dumb kids with guns and uniforms feel like backing, led by middle management, as it so often does.
What did the mob want? Why didn't they have guns if they really wanted to take over?
Were they trying to shock scare intimidate? They were allowed to go in and allowed to leave unmolested. Without guns and being white they assumed rightly that they were allowed to throw this tantrum.
YES, the fact that Trump's Mob was not carrying guns is anomalous & interesting, and it had to have been intentional. These are people who strap on pistols to go swimming, fer cryin' out loud; what got them to go "naked" this time? If they really believed they were some Army Of God, exempt from all mere human laws, sent to eliminate the Demoncrats from Congress, why not take their guns to do it the way they've always imagined?
IMO, the most likely explanation is that they were told to leave the guns at home, but by whom? Who had enough control over that Mob to get (almost?) ALL of them to do that?
All guns in DC must be registered with the police. Concealed carry permits can be issued. There is NO open carry. They were ostensibly going to DC to show support for the preznit. The riot/mob was ginned up by the turnip. Anyone with a gun would have been arrested and removed long before the insurrection. They don't open carry ar his rallies, either. Even at that, there were some guns. Just not as many as they needed/wanted.
At this point even Alan Dershowitz plays with such a weak hand his only option is to bluff. In my experience, bluffs don't work against strong hands. The mob was invited and incited by Trump and Giuliani, and no one is going to allow cherry picking of the facts. The House republicans already tried that in their anti impeachment rhetoric. One brief mention of peaceful does little to blunt the whole of the message, and a mob that erects a gallows with a noose is not displaying peaceful intent. Just for the record, if you are in charge of security, and you see a crowd building a gallows, that is your clue to send for backup. OK?
AJ asks some good questions and yes the crowd/mob was given permission to "throw a tantrum". Pence and McConnell were participating in a typically ceremonial function of counting electoral votes, and the crowd turned mob disrupted it. The mob did not leave until forced out by police in riot gear, and it was a number of hours before the building was secured and the electoral votes counted. This is, of course, a description from an outside view and a bit of an objective reality in brief.
A more subjective view is probably quite varied. I would speculate that some saw themselves as in an army fighting for a cause and following orders. Many felt assured that privilege of some form gave them justification for crude, crazy, and/or outright criminal behavior. Who knows how many truly believed the big lie, but we should know by now that this crowd has been targeted, collected, and manipulated for it's gullibility. In general they probably are more susceptible to conspiracy theories than most people but probably do not share a common conspiracy theory. I would also speculate that almost none of them saw themselves as part of a mob. Some expressed excitement as being part of history and took selfies and collected mementos. This left many of us watching the spectacle to ask the big question. What in the hell were these people thinking? or probably better asked Why weren't these people thinking?
Sometimes there is just no explanation for stupidity.