You can't conspire with a foreign government for political advantage. Trump did this. Most damning, his staff so clearly realized that he did this, that they covered it up by deleting the record and moving it to a classified server. The complaint also outlines a series/pattern of behavior, which is important when establishing wrongful doing. Finally, the complaint points to numerous people that can be called under oath for their version of events.
I saw someone on Twitter pointing out that Trump's perspective has been that "the presidency" is the prize for winning "the election" and that the Republican Party has been enabling this - because he won, he gets to do whatever he wants because he's the winner. I honestly think that the career political operatives that usually surround any functional administration are crucial for maintaining a watertight legal framework for whatever skullduggery the administration uses to accomplish their political ends; Trump is hardly the first president to leverage a political relationship for personal or party gain. However, Trump has done so baldly, with massive overt involvement from cabinet-level officials, without the slightest regard for the criminal blowback he faces. There's an impression that the legality of the situation is being analyzed after the fact.
"The Democrats want to overturn the 2016 election" definitely seems to be one of the recently-circulated talking points. It's not the ideal talking point. It doesn't mean much to anyone but your base, and looks a bit desperate to everyone else. What a shitty job covering for Trump must be. His ego probably precludes asking for advice on how to navigate murky waters before diving in. On the subject, it'd be cool to have a browser extension that detected talking points, and highlighted them with info about when they were created, and links to other uses of them.
That goal is literally what made Ben Hunt at Epsilon Theory aspire to be Hari Seldon. Quid is a very expensive front end to an open-source engine, the name of which I forget but veen always remembers. I'll bet you could have fun with it in your ample spare time.On the subject, it'd be cool to have a browser extension that detected talking points, and highlighted them with info about when they were created, and links to other uses of them.
Thanks, I got the first part but didn't get the second. As I understand it, impeachment need not be predicated by criminal offenses, and does not necessarily mean Trump will be booted out. I'm curious, what odds do you give towards Trump surviving this unimpeached vs impeaced vs found guilty of wrongdoing vs losing the presidency?
Someone somewhere referred to American democracy and American parliamentarianism as basically being Amish democracy. It's permanently frozen in the past and while it has long fashioned itself to be the foremost democracy in the world, it rarely acknowledges that it's far and away the least evolved. Here's the hokey-pokey: Keep in mind that if it goes all the way to (4), this will be the second time in history we've done this. Andrew Johnson faced an impeachment trial in the late 1800s and was acquitted and Bill Clinton faced and impeachment trial in the late '90s and was acquitted. Yeah. the same people who thought banging an intern and lying about it was treason see no problem with blackmailing the Ukrainians into harassing a political competitor but whatever. Either way, as with most things in American democracy we'll pretty much see what we get when we get there. Kinda like Boris Johnson abrogating Parliament and the high court saying "nuh uh" we're in a very open probability field right now.