Can the Democrats impeach Trump again starting next week?

by philg

Donald Trump has demonstrated his criminal mastermind capabilities by beating the impeachment rap. In the entirely non-partisan process, out of 535 members of Congress there were 4 people whose vote could not have been predicted by party affiliation?

The failure to remove Trump has occasioned despair among my Facebook friends:

The Day Democracy Died

Tombstone: American Democracy 1776-2020, killed by Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans who refused to call witnesses in the impeachment trial of a criminal president

An American flag morphing into a Nazi flag

Today the US Senate has validated the most dangerous precedent in its history. … This principle could be used to literally make a US president a dictator. Republicans will come to deeply regret this sad day. [more dangerous a precedent than court-approved Japanese-American internment?]

We now have a Russian-style government [if true, where is the U.S. metro system that runs a train on every line every 60 seconds?]

[From January 28] People who aren’t following the impeachment story are missing one as fascinating as any cliffhanger Game of Thrones story. It looks like the senators might not want to be caught letting Trump murder the Constitution. Surprise.

Today is going to be one of the darkest days in the history of the United States. Maybe, just maybe we did not deserve Democracy and all the efforts of the Framers who dedicate their energy, time and vision to set up the architecture of the Constitution… [In the good old days we had the Framers holding slaves, stealing land from the Native Americans, and speculating in real estate west of the Proclamation Line]

My fear grows that Donald Trump will win in 2020. … Badly constructed polls, and definitely national polls should be denounced. Anybody who cites a national poll should be criticized as distracting from the actual task at hand. Anybody who funds one should be questioned as being under the spell of Putin, because they can only mislead from the real answer. … Yes, under the spell of Putin. We are highly confident he is trying to manipulate the left in this election, to make them self-destruct. The question is not whether he is doing this, but to what extent he is succeeding. Any time you see the Democrats doing self-destructive things, you should be suspicious.

[me, responding to the rich Bay Area dweller above] How will you survive if the next five years are anything like the last three?

[him] it will be a challenge. More down the road, as Trump hastens the decline of not just the USA but the West, in the world.

For the above-quoted folks, impeachment of Trump is serious and/or entertaining. Why let it end with acquittal? Removing a Hitler-style dictator would be worth more than one try, right? Maybe in the second try more than one Republican will see that Trump actually is the new Hitler.

Most of us do stuff every day, right? From the point of view of politicians in the party to which he no longer belongs, isn’t almost anything that Donald Trump does conceivably impeachable? If so, why not start a new impeachment process next week? (or tomorrow!) Surely it can’t be too early to begin an investigation at least?

33 thoughts on “Can the Democrats impeach Trump again starting next week?”

  1. Sounds great to me – i’m not from the usa but his ignorance, stupidity and narcissism effects the whole world. I love the usa but i’m bamboozled by the fact that this crazy person is president!!

  2. Can the Democrats impeach Trump again starting next week? – Yes. They are will most likely do this. Double jeopardy does not apply to impeachment. The house has already said they will subpoena John Bolton. Remember Obama always said if you like your impeachment you can keep your impeachment!

  3. Liberals always double down. Expect 4 articles of impeachment before summer. They just have to media up some hysteria first. Even a poorly run second hoax impeachment is better optics than the Dem’s primary ‘management.’

    • Conservatives always flip the narrative and accuse you of doing what they’ve already done…only it’s unamerican when you do it.

  5. Since this will become more frequent going forward, maybe they need to form an Impeachment Committee in the House to handle this important and routine business?

    If a party controls both House and Senate with sufficient majority in future they may be able to simply remove a President because they don’t like them without trying to find any crimes (similar to vote of “no-confidence” in parliamentary systems). And immediately afterwards, remove the Vice President who becomes the President. I believe the Speaker of the House is next in line, so the party/leader initiating this in the House can then become the President.

    • It has ALWAYS been the case that a party which controls the House and Senate with a sufficient majority could simply remove a President they don’t like. The reason it’s never happened is that no party has ever had a large enough Senate majority without also having a member of their party as President. And very rarely has a single party held a 2/3 majority of the Senate at all.

      But if you think no crimes were found in the impeachment of Trump, you’re probably one of Trump’s gullible cult.

    • @Cal: There can be disagreement about severity of crime and appropriate punishment. Driving over speed limit even by couple of miles per hour is technically a crime, but millions commit that crime every day, because most people don’t think it is serious at all.

  6. Impeachment 2.0 is a brilliant idea. Whenever you see Game Over!, reboot and carry on.
    It’s good for the country and it’s good for the media stocks: imagine how much money they may save on their summer TV line-up.
    If the Congress decides to hold public readings of the upcoming Bolton’s book I will finally get C-Span.

  7. Not going to happen. They’ll never risk a second bite at the apple.

    On another note, I’m watching his noon speech and for the first time, really, I understand what Trump’s strength is: He remembers the people who are important to him with a lot of detail. He has a story associated with everyone in the room and he remembers little, telling details about the people around him. That’s it, that’s the thing that keeps him going.

    • He’s talked for almost an hour now, and the majority of it has been to recognize every person in the room who stuck with him through the impeachment, and he personalizes almost every one of them with a story. One thing is for sure: he keeps score and it’s personal.

      Whatever happens from here, he just galvanized the team. It’s probably the best he’s ever done at that.

  8. Calif* entered its next major drought in the last 3 months. There once again won’t be enough water to grow any food, but all its politicians focused on was litigating themselves into office through impeachment. Forget about any politicians caring about the fire season or everyone being homeless.

  9. Can the Democrats impeach Trump again? Yes.
    Should they impeach Trump again? Yes.
    Will they impeach Trump again? No.

  10. I think it would expedite matters if future State Of The Union addresses had to be delivered under oath. That way, a pathological liar of XLV’s caliber could be interrupted five minutes into his spiel, impeached for lying to Congress, and removed from office forthwith.

  11. Gentlemen: Can I beg for a bit more civility? Accusing a politician for whom one did not vote of “lying” is as old as the United States and probably much older. See https://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/08/20/the-dirtiest-presidential-campaign-ever-not-even-close/#7579dca23d84 for the Jefferson-Adams election.

    Callender wrote that Adams was a rageful, lying, warmongering fellow; a “repulsive pedant” and “gross hypocrite” who “behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.”

    And then, of course, there are the actual lies! (see https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/24/politics/presidents-lie/index.html )

    When someone complains that a politician lies, the only thing we’ve learned is that the complainer voted for some other politician.

    • > Gentlemen: Can I beg for a bit more civility?

      Assume our genders? How dare you! Your linguistic microaggression makes you are worse than Hitler (but not as bad Emperor Trump).

    • I am truly sorry, Phil.
      I never intended to attack anyone on this site (or elsewhere) but it’s certainly possible that what I wrote offended someone. That was not intentional and may be due to my poor writing skills or my (silly?) preference for passive-aggressive remarks. Which is, one way or another, my fault.
      I had neither ill intent nor disrespect for the community overall or for anyone in particular.
      I understand that we are here to exchange ideas and opinions, and I that a lively banter should never deteriorate into name-calling and stone-throwing.
      If anyone feels upset by my replies, I sincerely apologize.

    • GentlePeoplez: Of course you are right! I fall on my sword (but, actually, my Facebook friends said that the best way to resist a dictator was unilateral citizen surrender of arms so I don’t have a sword anymore).

      M: I wasn’t talking about anyone in particular! Just pointing out that it isn’t surprising that people who vote differently will disagree on the merits of a politician. And the most likely reason for different votes is different personal situations (e.g., medical doctors love politicians who promise to increase Medicare funding!). So it doesn’t make sense for anyone to say “That other politician lies” or “The people who voted for that politician are stupid”. We already know that Hillary voters think Trump voters are Deplorable, stupid, sexist, and racist. And we already know that Trump voters think that AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Elizabeth Warren voters are fools to believe an expanded government will make most Americans better off.

    • I see your point, Phil. But in the case of Trump you have visual, audio and printed proof that he lies pretty much on a daily basis. It doesn’t matter whether you voted for him or not. His lies are proven, verified and undisputed (except by him)…even by members of his own party and cabinet.

  12. philg you do not see a difference in volume and seriousness? I am far more afraid of evil in intelligent people than the masses, though both are probably equally dangerous. You truly do not see any difference in quantity and quality of the lying?

    • If you look at the attempts to catalog “lies” it seems that there is a lot of subjectivity. I found https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/14/opinion/sunday/trump-lies-obama-who-is-worse.html for example.

      FEB. 24, 2017.“Obamacare covers very few people — and remember, deduct from the number all of the people that had great health care that they loved that was taken away from them — it was taken away from them.” (Obamacare increased coverage by a net of about 20 million.)

      In a country of more than 300 million, is 20 million “very few”? And what is the significance of this characterization, one way or the other? Who imagines the President to be a technocratic expert on the arcane subject of insurance (regulated separately by each of the 50 states and also by the Feds) in the world’s worst-designed health care system?

      I think this is best modeled as a way for elites to feel better about themselves. People who believe obvious lies are stupid, right? Trump lies more than any politician in history. Trump supporters believe him (the NYT editors assume, never having met one!). Therefore, Trump supporters are unusually stupid while the coastal elites sophisticated enough to see through his lies and vote for Hillary are smart.

      So… we lost the election, but we are way smarter than all of these Trump voters.

      (Similar deal with most stories on China! We have to pay them for almost every manufactured item that we want, but we are much better at the stuff that matters, such as building a free society (with 6X as many prisoners per capita as China), celebrating diversity, adherence to the Rainbow Flag Religion, etc.)

    • @Philg:

      At some appropriate point you should do a thread dedicated to politicians lying and, in particular, how their stories change for political reasons. Right now, for example, Mike Bloomberg has been 1) forced to apologize for his stop and frisk policies while he was Mayor of New York 2) has just requested that the Aspen Institute pull the video of him speaking there on February 5 about gun control, stop-and-frisk, etc.

      https://www.aspentimes.com/news/michael-bloomberg-blocks-footage-of-aspen-institute-appearance/

      The kicker is that I think a lot of what he said at Aspen was factually correct.

      “Appearing before nearly 400 people in Aspen on Feb. 5, the billionaire founder of Bloomberg L.P. argued that in order to save lives, police should seize guns from male minorities between ages 15 and 25.

      “These kids think they’re going to get killed anyway because all their friends are getting killed,” Bloomberg said during the speech. “So they just don’t have any longterm focus or anything. It’s a joke to have a gun. It’s a joke to pull a trigger.” …

      “Furthering his point in Aspen, Bloomberg said city governments need to fund law enforcement judiciously, dispatch more police and get them into minority neighborhoods. About 95 percent of murders are credited to young, male minorities, he claimed, adding that motives are usually associated with drugs or domestic disputes.”

      And is that incorrect? After his tenure as the most data-driven Mayor New York has ever seen (preemptive policing, extensive ramping up of surveillance, etc., etc.) it’s probably pretty close to accurate. If Bloomberg can “cut the crap” and tell it like it is in a room full of 400 luminaries in Aspen, Colorado, how come he can’t let those statements stand before the general public?

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