The Trump GOP is Embracing Socialism

The defense I hear most often from Republicans who aren’t necessarily big Trump fans but believe he’s better than the alternative is this: “It’s Trump or socialism.” Unfortunately, they’re wrong. Trump is already introducing socialism to the US.

It started with his trade war. The President promised to correct our “unfair” trade relationship with China by imposing tariffs on Chinese goods. To this day, he believes those tariffs are paid by China, proving he does not understand how tariffs work, and won’t listen to anyone who does. Tariffs are taxes on imported goods, meaning Americans are paying the Chinese tariffs.

But the Chinese know the tariffs are meant to discourage us from buying their goods, so they, predictably, retaliated. Chinese purchases of American products, especially farm products like pork, beef, and soybeans, have plummeted. Trump’s trade war has been a disaster for American farmers.

So, to make it up to them, Trump has spent $28 billion (so far) bailing them out. That’s more than double Obama’s auto bailout that so angered Republicans. The main difference, besides the cost, is the fact that the auto companies had to pay it back. Taxpayers won’t see Trump’s $28 billion again. It’s gone.

As a side note, another point I often hear in support of the President is the tax cuts (which had little to do with the President; tax reform was always Paul Ryan’s baby.) And yes, Americans have benefitted from tax cuts. I’m a big fan of tax cuts. But guess what? The increased costs Americans are paying due to Trump’s trade war have already wiped out the savings we’ve seen from the tax cuts. More tariffs are scheduled to begin late this year, and he’s already threatened to impose more in the future.

So, what do his trade war and bailout for farmers have to do with socialism? It’s simple: direct state intervention in the economy.

The Mises Institute, an organization which “seeks a free-market capitalist economy,” explains in their article Trump’s Road to Socialism:

“…Trump’s tariffs are not only a new tax for Americans, but a policy of directly picking winners and losers in the economy…Government interventionism doesn’t simply stop there. The natural result of these new government barriers is for businesses to seek ways around them, such as Harley’s decision to move some manufacturing to Europe. This, of course, sparked backlash from President Trump, threatening further retaliation for such a move. As we’ve seen time and time again, the more Trump digs in to his support for protectionism, the more he will seek to interfere with the actions of individual companies.”

As indeed, he seems to think he has the right to do. In a tweet on August 23 of this year, he said, “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China…” American companies are hereby ordered? And for anyone who thinks he was just mindlessly mouthing off again, he doubled down later that day: “For all of the Fake News Reporters that don’t have a clue as to what the law is relative to Presidential powers, China, etc., try looking at the Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. Case closed!” So yes, that’s the President of the United States, claiming he has the power to force American companies out of China, one of our biggest trading partners.

His authoritarian streak is no surprise; we’ve all seen it from the beginning. But Republican complacency in the face of outrageous threats like these is shocking. Crippling free trade, making threats and issuing demands to private companies, using taxpayer money to band-aid the fallout of his own lousy decisions: These are all actions that any self-respecting free-market Republican would have loudly denounced a short time ago.

The Institute goes on: “The result is an economy that increasingly replaces the market with state control. This is precisely why Mises wrote extensively about how escalating economic interventionism led to socialism.”

Economist Ludwig von Mises wrote of state interference in markets: “…one must go farther and farther until the market economy has been entirely destroyed and socialism has been substituted for it.”

In his announcements about the farm bailouts, Trump even keeps referring to American farmers as “our Great Patriot Farmers.” Those tweets could have been written by Chairman Mao.

President Trump has different motives and goals than the Democrats and Democratic Socialists running against him. But socialism isn’t defined by motives.

Conservatives have always believed in free markets and limited government. Republicans used to believe in them. But now, being a Republican means supporting everything this President does, even when his actions are antithetical to everything you ever believed about the economy.

I am fundamentally opposed to socialism, and that is one of the many reasons I’m not a Republican anymore.

Republican Rebuttals

I’ve heard from a few readers about yesterday’s post, asking why I didn’t include the parts of Ambassador Sondland’s testimony that help the Republican case, rather than only the damaging parts. The two main reasons were: 1. Space and time constraints, and 2. I don’t believe any of his testimony actually helped the Republican case.

But Republicans believe it did; I appreciate my readers’ feedback, and I do want this blog to be fair to both sides. So today I’ll summarize the GOP arguments from yesterday, and give you my take on them.

If you don’t have time to watch this clip (it’s 3.5 minutes) I’ll summarize: Rep. Jim Jordan (R) asks Ambassador Sondland when the public announcement Trump had requested of Zelensky took place. Sondland answers that it never did happen. Jordan lays out the quid pro quo claims Sondland made earlier in his testimony: that Ukraine was told they had to make that public announcement in order to get a White House call, a White House meeting, and the military aid they were promised. Jordan says that since Ukraine did end up getting the call, the meeting (not at the White House, but in New York) and aid was released, but Zelensky never made the public announcement, that there was no quid pro quo.

Again, this is like if the white nationalist who tried to blow up a temple in Colorado recently were to claim he’s innocent because the bomb never went off.

Trump suspended aid to Ukraine. This isn’t in dispute. He made clear to Ukraine that he wanted a public announcement. Multiple witnesses have testified to this under oath. The release of the aid, the call with VP Pence, and the meeting in New York did not happen until after the whistleblower report was filed and three Congressional committees announced a joint probe into the matter.

He got caught. The bomb he planted didn’t go off.

Jordan also gets Sondland to admit that Trump never explicitly told him that the aid was tied to an announcement.

This is like a mugger pointing a gun at you, saying “Give me all your money,” then later in court saying, “I never said anything about shooting him!”

The President made it clear what he wanted, both in direct communication with Sondland and others, and through Rudy Giuliani. That he never said aloud, “I am extorting Ukraine,” is hardly exonerating.

Jordan makes a point of saying that in fact, not only did the President not link the aid to an announcement, he explicitly told Sondland the opposite. He read this exchange from Sondland’s own testimony about his September 9 phone call with Trump twice:

[Sondland:] “What do you want from Ukraine?”

The President: “I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. I want Zelensky to do the right thing.”

Yes, on September 9th, President Trump said to Ambassador Sondland, “I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo.”

September 9th was the day the Inspector General informed the House Intelligence Committee Chair and Ranking Member (Adam Schiff and Devin Nunes) of the whistleblower complaint. The complaint that raised concerns about Trump pressuring Ukraine for a quid pro quo to benefit himself politically.

Friends, this does not make him look more innocent. It looks shady as all get out.

That phone conversation with Sondland took place because of a text Sondland received from Ukraine Ambassador Bill Taylor. Taylor wrote, “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

Four and a half hours later, after his phone call with the President (during which Sondland testified that Trump was in a bad mood—now we know why), Sondland responded with the text that included the words, “The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s [sic] of any kind.”

Everything the President did and said up until September 9th screamed quid pro quo. Then Congress found out about the whistleblower report. Since then, he’s been shouting “NO QUID PRO QUO!” at the top of his lungs, as though the act of saying it makes it real. He’s Michael Scott, bellowing “I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY!”

Now I’ll try to quickly address a few other process complaints I’ve heard:

“This testimony is hearsay; it wouldn’t hold up in a court of law.” This isn’t a court of law; it’s a Congressional hearing. Congress can question witnesses however it likes—and can ruin their lives if they commit perjury.

“Gordon Sondland committed perjury.” Debatable. I haven’t taken the time to try to fact check everything in his testimony. But his testimony yesterday lines up with what we’ve heard from other witnesses.

“The witnesses have no firsthand evidence.” This is just false. We’ve already heard from Lt. Col. Vindman, who was on the July 25 call which prompted the whistleblower report. Sondland was in direct communicaton with the President.

“There’s no clear statement of what the crime is. Quid pro quo? Extortion? Bribery?” I agree that Democrats are flubbing this. The clear crimes are abuse of power, extortion, and obstruction of justice. They need to drop bribery.

“This is totally partisan! A real crime would get bipartisan support for investigation.” In an ideal world, yes. But Republicans have proven that they will defend anything this man does. They’re terrified of a mean tweet.

“Republicans can’t call their own witnesses.” Mostly false. They can subpoena witnesses, but Schiff gets to approve or deny them. He’s the Committee Chair. Them’s the breaks. Two years after Trump won, Americans gave the House back to the Democrats. We’re all learning that elections have consequences.

“Where’s the whistleblower? Trump has the right to face his accuser. Bill of Rights! The Sixth Amendment!” *Sad sigh.* “What do they teach them at these schools?” Fine. Here, the Sixth Amendment: “In all criminal prosecutions—” There. That’s as far as we need to go. This isn’t a criminal prosecution so the Sixth Amendment doesn’t apply.

“This is nothing but a kangaroo court.” *More sad sighs.* Here’s the definition of that term: “An unofficial court held by a group of people in order to try someone regarded, especially without good evidence, as guilty of a crime or misdemeanor.” Yes, this is not a court. But it’s the Congress of the United States. It’s anything but unofficial. And there is good evidence. There is a growing mountain of evidence.

My Republican friends can take heart, though: while Trump will almost certainly be impeached by the House, Republicans control the Senate. They’ll be calling the shots in the trial. And it takes a 2/3 vote in the Senate to remove an impeached President. It will take a miracle (i.e. internal polling that indicates Mitch McConnell’s seat is in jeopardy if he doesn’t convict) to get this Senate to remove him.

A dear friend asked me recently, “Are you not even open to the possibility that those bringing the charges have political motives?”

Yes, of course they have political motives. But their motives are irrelevant if the charges are true.

I’d like to paraphrase his question to all my Republican friends: Are you not even open to the possibility that those defending him from these charges have political motives?

House Republicans Just Ran out of Cliff

At this point, Republicans who are still defending the President are basically Wile E. Coyote barreling full speed ahead through thin air, not yet realizing they’ve run out of cliff.

Gordon Sondland, Ambassador to the European Union, who was appointed to his plum assignment by Trump after donating $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, and cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered Deep State or Never Trump, testified before Congress today. Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican member of the Intelligence Committee, greeted Sondland, saying, “Ambassador Sondland, you are here today to be smeared.” Nunes assumed that Sondland’s testimony would be beneficial for Trump, and therefore that Democrats would smear Sondland. (Project much, Devin?)

Unfortunately for Rep. Nunes, we all know what happens when we assume.

Just last month, Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the President’s most ardent supporters, said, “If you could show me that Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo, outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing.”

Today, Ambassador Sondland said this under oath in his opening statement: “I know that members of this Committee have frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: ‘Was there a ‘quid pro quo?’ As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes.”

Ambassador Sondland also had this to say in his opening statement: “Mr. Giuliani’s requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky. Mr. Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing the investigations of the 2016 election, DNC server, and Burisma. Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the President of the United States, and we knew these investigations were important to the President.”

That was, to put it mildly, not what Republicans wanted to hear.

“But,” Republicans have claimed, panting a little from dragging those heavy goalposts, “this doesn’t prove corrupt intent. President Trump cares passionately about rooting out corruption in Ukraine.”

First of all, if you believe that, I have a Trump University degree to sell you. Second, Sondland said this under oath today: “He [Zelensky] had to announce the investigations. He didn’t actually have to do them, as I understood it.”

Read that last sentence again. These investigations could go on for a year, and it would be difficult to unearth a more damning statement. Trump didn’t care about corruption in Ukraine. He tried to extort a foreign government into damaging an American citizen—his political opponent. Actual investigations weren’t expected or necessary. Only a public statement that would cast doubt over Joe Biden’s candidacy, and help Trump’s reelection prospects.

It doesn’t get more corrupt. There’s not a better example of abuse of power.

If you don’t believe me that Sondland’s testimony today was terrible for Republicans, just look at this reaction shot of Devin Nunes afterward:

https://twitter.com/neverfindapen/status/1197186395028127745

I especially enjoy the helpless hand gesture from Stephen Castor, the GOP’s attorney.

The Articles of Impeachment haven’t been put to a vote yet. There’s still time for House Republicans to redeem themselves. I’m not holding my breath. But if I had a Republican representative, he or she would be hearing from me.

Make sure yours hears from you.

Don’t Vote for People who Think You’re Stupid

Can you BELIEVE it? Shifty Schiff is ABUSING his chairmanship and REFUSING to allow DULY ELECTED Members of Congress to ask questions, all because they are REPUBLICANS! Aren’t you OUTRAGED?!

(Again with the “duly elected.” Lord, give me patience.)

Watch the clip if you’d like to see a textbook example of a publicity stunt. If you don’t want to watch it, I’ll briefly explain: Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee, tries to yield to (give speaking time to) Elise Stefanik, a Republican Congresswoman from New York. Adam Schiff, the Democrat Committee Chairman, gavels her down and tells her she’s not recognized (doesn’t allow her to speak.) Stefanik snaps that this is the fifth time Schiff has interrupted duly elected Members of Congress, and Nunes expresses disbelief: “You’re gagging the young lady from New York?”

To the average American, and especially the average Republican, it looks like that’s what’s happening. Schiff is a big old meany. A evil, misogynistic, Demonrat meany.

Nunes and Stefanik knew that’s how it would look.

They also know the rules. The House passed the rules for how this impeachment process would be run two weeks ago. Everything Congress does is run by rules. According to the rules that were just voted on and approved, Nunes gets 45 minutes straight of questioning time. He can use those minutes himself, or he can yield them to minority staff counsel (the GOP staff attorney, Stephen Castor.) He cannot yield any of those 45 minutes to other representatives. It’s against the rules. After each side’s 45 minutes, each sitting member then gets 5 minutes of questioning time. That’s how it works.

Nunes and Stefanik know this. They’re not stupid; they’re not ignorant; they didn’t forget. They knew exactly how that little scene would play out, and that’s why they did it. So that Elise Stefanik could play victim, so she could rack up brownie points with Trump’s base, so they could make Adam Schiff out to be a villain. They know they can count on Fox News to back up their version (which it obediently did, splashing “GAGGING THE GENTLEWOMAN” across its website.) And they know they can count on the majority of Republicans to credulously believe everything they say.

And of course, Elise Stefanik knows she can turn this manufactured outrage into sweet, sweet campaign cash.

Here’s Rep. Stefanik questioning the witness at the same hearing she’s telling her constituents that Adam Schiff flat out REFUSED to allow her to ask questions in because she’s a Republican:

My Republican friends, they are lying to you. They are manipulating you. They are counting on you to be gullible and ignorant. It’s condescending and offensive.

But you don’t have to put up with it. You don’t have to allow yourself to be manipulated. We can demand better from our leaders. We can demand better leaders.

Don’t vote for people who lie to you. Don’t vote for people who think you’re stupid.

If You Can’t Defend It, Confuse Them

If you’re listening only to Republicans’ takes on the first public impeachment hearing yesterday, you’ve been left with the impression that Democrats limped home last night, battered and ashamed, having learned nothing of value and having their star witness exposed as worthless.

In fact, if you’ve listened only to Republicans’ takes on this process from the beginning, then you’ve been given the impression that the whole thing is illegal, a sham, a farce, that the President’s rights are being violated, his enemies have been plotting this against him all along.

Friends, hear me: they are lying to you.

Garry Kasparov, Russian chess grandmaster and widely regarded symbol of opposition to Vladimir Putin, explains the Republican strategy: “The GOP keeps throwing out irrelevant garbage & conspiracy theories to convince its base that the impeachment case is too complex to follow, so just listen to them and Fox News. When in fact it’s not complicated. As I documented regarding this technique pioneered in Russia, the larger goal is to cause so much doubt and hostility that people shut down their critical thinking and trust only a few ‘friendly’ sources.” (Emphasis mine.)

For weeks, Republicans denounced behind-closed-doors hearings as “Soviet-style,” insisting that the American people have a right to know what’s going on. Then, when Democrats made them public, they started calling it a “show trial,” and the President himself said there should be no public hearings.

For weeks, Republicans pointed to the fact that Democrats had not yet held an official vote to open impeachment hearings as a “gotcha,” proving they weren’t serious about impeachment and solely motivated by politics. When Congress did hold an official vote, not a single Republican voted to investigate the President’s actions regarding Ukraine. Despite the testimony of multiple concerned civil servants, not a single Republican would go on record saying “Congress should look into this.” Which conveniently allows Republicans to now call this a partisan process.

Republicans demanded to see the transcripts, then when Democrats released them, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) refused to even read them.

The President continues to tweet (somewhat hysterically, in all caps) “READ THE TRANSCRIPT!” I did read it, and you can, too. (Keep in mind that this is not a word-for-word transcript, but a memo of the conversation. Parts have been left out—worrying parts, according to Vindman, who was on the call, and who tried to make corrections to it, but was rebuffed. The full transcript would normally have been kept on one computer system, but White House lawyers ordered it to be moved to a highly secure system. Which seems odd if it was a “perfect call” as the President has repeatedly insisted.) I have to tell you, and I’m being honest here: reading the whole transcript makes Trump look worse than before I read it. I’ll try to do a whole post on it in the near future. He wants everyone to read it because he believes it proves there was no quid pro quo, but it does quite the opposite. One begins to wonder if the President actually understands what “quid pro quo” means.

The President insists that every administration witness who testifies that he did, indeed, want a quid pro quo from Ukraine is a Never Trumper (and human scum.) But Gordon Sondland, Trump’s ambassador to the EU, donated a million dollars to Trump’s presidential campaign. He’s been a reluctant witness, modifying his memory and admitting that he did indeed tell a Ukrainian official that if they wanted their military aid, they needed to make a public statement that they’d be investigating Burisma (the company Hunter Biden was involved with) after the testimony of other witnesses put him in danger of potential perjury charges. Republicans can’t “Never Trumper” their way around this one.

Republicans continue to harp on about the identity and motivations of the whistleblower long after he or she has ceased to be necessary to this investigation. The claims laid out in the whistleblower’s report have been corroborated again and again by multiple witnesses, under oath.

Jim Jordan (R) made a splashy sound bite for himself, triumphantly crowing that a quid pro quo obviously didn’t happen, because Ukraine got their military aid, and never made that public announcement. He didn’t mention that Trump only released the aid after Congress started asking questions. Saying that that proves no quid pro quo is like saying the white nationalist who tried to blow up a temple here in Colorado recently is obviously innocent because the bomb never went off.

Lindsey Graham and Ben Shapiro have even defended Trump’s actions by claiming that he is literally too stupid and incompetent to have intentionally formed a quid pro quo. These are his defenders, people.

Some are shifting from claiming there was no quid pro quo, which was all we heard at the beginning, to saying that if there was one, it wasn’t illegal unless there was corrupt intent. (Thus the “too stupid to be corrupt” defense.) Friends, they’re making this shift because the evidence he did engage in a quid pro quo is overwhelming.

Perhaps most maddening, though, were the repeated statements yesterday about “hearsay.” Republicans mocked Ambassador Bill Taylor—by all accounts a gifted and dedicated civil servant—for giving testimony about what a member of his staff witnessed, for never having met the President, for not having “firsthand” knowledge.

So who does have firsthand knowledge about all of this? Former national security advisor, John Bolton. Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney. The President’s lawyer, Rudy Guiliani. Attorney General, Bill Barr. But all of them have been forbidden to testify. By the President.

Ask yourself, if the call was so “perfect,” if the President did nothing wrong, if this is all a witch hunt, why doesn’t he want the people who know the most about it to talk to Congress?

Refusing to cooperate with a Congressional investigation and barring key witnesses from testifying is obstruction of justice.

Add it to the Articles of Impeachment.

Friends, the testimony and evidence so far are not good for the President. They’re very bad. Republicans are throwing every distraction and conspiracy theory they can think of at you, because it’s all they have.

Don’t shut down your critical thinking. Don’t let them make a simple case seem too complicated to understand. It’s not.

Please Stop Proving him Right

Have you ever wondered why the accusation of “fake news” and his attacks on media have been so well-received by Donald Trump’s supporters?

It’s because he’s got a point.

We on the right have known for years what so many on the left refuse to acknowledge: the news is biased. The most recent example still hasn’t even hit major outlets, but social media has been blowing up about it all day.

This video has just surfaced from August. It shows ABC News anchor Amy Robach apparently venting to a room of people about how she had a witness, corroborating witnesses, and photographs confirming the Jeffrey Epstein pedophile/sex abuse story three years ago, but ABC spiked it. You should watch the video:

We already know that NBC squashed the Harvey Weinstein story, and according to Ronan Farrow’s account in Catch and Kill, that decision was influenced by Hillary Clinton, who pressured Farrow to drop his investigation of her loyal (and generous) supporter.

Now we learn that ABC did the same with the Jeffrey Epstein story. In the video, Robach says the network was worried about losing access to British royals, Will and Kate, since the Epstein story implicated Prince Andrew. Robach also says, “She was in hiding for 12 years. We convinced her to come out. We convinced her to talk to us. Um, it was unbelievable what we had. Clinton—we had everything.”

Robach had this story in 2016. During the Presidential campaigns. When Bill Clinton’s wife was running for President. And ABC buried it.

ABC issued a statement, claiming that, “At the time, not all of our reporting met our standards to air.” So, the victim’s testimony, corroborating witnesses, and photographs were not enough to meet their standards.

Yet when Julie Swetnick accused Brett Kavanaugh of drugging and gang-raping young women, ABC was happy to run that story. Apparently, salacious allegations against a conservative Supreme Court nominee met their standards, even though Swetnick’s allegations were never corroborated by any other witnesses, and at least two people she named as able to support her claims in both this and a previous lawsuit both say they never even met her until after the alleged events took place. Oh, and she later recanted her entire story and claimed she barely read the statement Michael Avenatti gave her to sign.

This is only one example. A personal favorite is the oft-repeated lie that the Obama Administration was scandal-free. I guess it was scandal-free if you ignore Fast and Furious, Benghazi, “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor,” drone strikes on US citizens, using the IRS to target conservative groups, fighting nuns in court to force them to pay for contraception and abortion pills, and bombing a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan.

Republicans are used to this double standard from news media. Learning today that ABC spiked a huge story that could have harmed Hillary Clinton’s campaign is shocking, but not surprising.

You can say that Fox News is biased, that it’s nothing but state-run propaganda now, and I will agree with you. But if the rest of the news media want to stop being accused of being “fake news” by the President, they should stop proving him right so often.

Edit: After I published this post last night, I saw this from CNN’s Brian Stelter’s newsletter:

Stelter introduces the video as “obtained by a right-wing, pro-Trump activist group,” as if this somehow changes the content of the video.

And this, from the same newsletter:

So you see, a major news network intentionally buried a story in order to protect powerful men, saying nothing while a billionaire pedophile was allowed to continue raping underage girls for three more years, and the news outlets are the actual victims here. The true villains are, as always, people on the right who are angry about it.

Brian Stelter, please stop proving him right.

The Congress doth protest too much

If you’ve been paying attention to coverage of the impeachment process, you’ve heard things like this from the Republicans:

“This is a coup.”

“Democrats are trying to overthrow the duly-elected President.”

“We have to defend the Constitution from this attack.”

“Democrats are trying to undo the election, and the will of the American People.”

Either they are ignorant of basic civics, or they believe you are.

It’s a A Coup!: A coup is a sudden, violent, illegal seizure of power from a government. It is an egregious lie, especially for Congressmen, to call this a “coup.” Impeachment is a process prescribed by the Constitution. It’s every bit as constitutional as the Electoral College, which put Trump in office despite his losing the popular vote. Impeaching and/or removing a President from office is a major step, and one that ought to be taken with caution and solemnity. But there is nothing coup-like about it.

He was Duly Elected!: If I hear “duly-elected” one more time… Yes. He was duly elected. Of course he was. All Presidents are duly-elected. Otherwise they wouldn’t be President. The Founding Fathers still believed we needed a mechanism to remove one from office if necessary. This is the dumbest and most pointless argument out there. Ignore it.

The Constitution is Under Attack!: Yeah, we noticed. There are a whole bunch of Congressmen calling its instructions a coup, and saying you can’t impeach a President only a year before an election, even though the Constitution says no such thing.

Democrats are trying to undo the election!: Nope. Even if Trump is convicted by the Senate and removed from office, Hillary won’t become President. Mike Pence will. Everyone who voted for Trump voted for him, too. You might even say that he was duly elected.

We can debate what the founders meant by “high crimes and misdemeanors.” We can argue over whether or not Trump’s actions rise to that standard. But let’s not be fooled by transparently false claims about the impeachment process.

And it may be worthwhile to ask ourselves, if Congressional Republicans are willing to lie so blatantly about the process of impeachment, how can we believe a single thing they say about its substance?

All Hail the Chief (Or Else)

The American Dream can take many forms, and can mean different things to different people. But some people’s stories match the description in uniquely fitting ways. Alexander Vindman is one of those people.

Alexander was three years old when his Jewish family fled Soviet Ukraine. They came with $750 and the hope that life in America would be better than life under communism.

It was better, and Alexander (after graduating from college) as well as his two brothers all chose to serve in the US military. He was awarded the Purple Heart when he was injured in Iraq by a roadside bomb. After his active duty, he served the Army as a foreign area officer—a job he was well-suited for thanks to his master’s degree from Harvard in Russian, Eastern Europe, and Central Asian studies. He has served at our US Embassies in Ukraine and Russia. In 2018 he joined the National Security Council. (Source: New York Times.)

A Jewish refugee from communism, so committed to America that he bled for her, and devoted his career to her, rose through the ranks all the way to the White House. That’s an American Dream life. Who could argue that Alexander Vindman isn’t a patriot?

I’ll give you one guess.

Today, Vindman became the first sitting White House official to testify about Trump’s infamous Ukraine call. Appropriate, since Vindman was actually on the call.

“I was concerned by the call,” Vindman’s opening statement says. “I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine.” (source: NBC News.)

In fact, Vindman was so concerned by the call that he reported his concerns to the National Security Council’s head attorney—twice.

In normal times, under a normal administration, in a country not diseased with fevered partisanship, we would expect a man like Alexander Vindman to be taken at his word. But these are not normal times, not a normal administration, and we are leprous with fevered partisanship.

So, we get this:

Vindman’s motives are being impugned, despite a complete lack of evidence as to his political leanings.

And this, from recently-retired Republican Congressman Sean Duffy:

On Fox, Laura Ingraham and her guests suggested Vindman might even have been engaged in espionage on behalf of Ukraine.

Got that? The wounded Iraq War vet who has spent his entire adult life serving the United States is actually a traitor secretly advocating for Ukraine, because he lived there as a baby.

This slavish devotion to one man, and the reflexive (and nonsensical) attacks on anyone and everyone who offers the slightest criticism or principled concern over his actions, is not the behavior of people with a functioning value system.

It’s the behavior of a cult.

Clown show at the Capitol

I know, I know. Evergreen title.

But Rep. Matt Gaetz and his posse of House Republicans took things to a new level yesterday with their dishonest stunt. Here’s the story—from Fox News, for those who are inclined to call me biased. Gaetz led about 30 Republicans into the closed-door impeachment hearing, demanding to know what’s going on. They’ve called it a “Soviet-style” process, claimed there is no “due process,” and the President himself tweeted that the “Do Nothing Democrats allow Republicans Zero Representation.”

Let’s review the facts.

  • This is not a trial. If the President is impeached by the House, a trial will take place in the Senate, in which the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides, House members present the prosecution’s case, the President is represented by his own attorneys, and each side has the right to call and cross-examine witnesses. A two-thirds supermajority is needed for conviction and removal from office.
  • So far, what’s happening in the House are not formal impeachment proceedings; they are an impeachment inquiry. Republicans are angry about it, but it’s not unconstitutional. Congress has the right to conduct inquiries.
  • Three House committees are authorized to sit in on the closed-door hearings: Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Oversight. These committees total 108 members of Congress. Of the 108, 46 are Republicans. Despite what you’ve heard from Matt Gaetz and the President and your angry uncle on Facebook, 46 Republicans have had full, unrestricted access to every single second of the impeachment hearings.
  • Republicans have not been allowed to call witnesses, but they have had equal time to question the witnesses who have appeared.
  • House Congressional rules govern these proceedings, the ones Matt Gaetz and Friends are so loudly decrying. But who set the current rules? Republicans. Source: Fox News.

But worst, and most hypocritical, the Republicans who stormed in on the hearings went barging into a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.) A SCIF is a highly-secured room, built and operated explicitly to prevent the classified information being discussed within from falling into the wrong hands. Locking cabinets are located outside the room for electronic devices, which are strictly prohibited. But some of the Republicans walked right in with their phones.

The defense we’re hearing today is that those members aren’t accustomed to SCIF protocol because they don’t sit on those committees. In other words, they didn’t know any better. They didn’t mean to endanger national security. They didn’t mean to mishandle classified information.

Sound familiar?

If it’s wrong for one side, it’s wrong for the other.

Gaetz’s grandstanding is political theater. Schiff’s speech on the House floor was political theater.

What if both parties stopped rewarding and promoting clowns? What if we demanded that our leaders behave like rational adults and statesmen?

A girl can dream.

Greetings from No Man’s Land

I became homeless in March, 2016. Up until then, the GOP had been my political house. They could count on my support in every election, even though I was occasionally less than enthused about their candidates. I even served as a delegate for my district in the 2016 primaries. 

But Trump happened. I watched in amusement, then disbelief, then horror, as a lifelong big-government liberal with the morals of a mob boss and the personality of a middle school bully steadily climbed in the polls. I watched the debates, trying to figure out what people saw in him, but all I saw were lame insults and half-baked policy ideas, delivered with comical bravado. 

So many times, I thought he’d committed political suicide, that his campaign would surely not survive his latest offensive remark or clear exposure of his unfitness for office.

  • He doxxed a fellow candidate on live TV. 
  • He promised over and over that Mexico would pay for a wall. (How did anyone ever take him seriously after this? How?)
  • He said this about his only female fellow candidate, Carly Fiorina: “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”
  • He retweeted white supremacists when they praised him.
  • He declined to disavow David Duke, claiming he didn’t know who he was. (He did.)
  • He retweeted this image of Ted Cruz’s wife, Heidi, alongside Melania Trump: 
  • He publicly repeated a National Enquirer tabloid story insinuating that Ted Cruz’s father helped Lee Harvey Oswald assassinate JFK. 
  • He said this to Jeb Bush during a debate: “The World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign. Remember that.”
  • But even if we put all those aside, as long as I live, I will never, never understand how this was not the end of it:

And this is just the primaries, folks. I haven’t even touched on the presidential campaign, or his administration so far. 

The point is, I stopped considering myself a Republican as soon as it became clear that the party was willing to allow a man like this to become their standard-bearer. I love this country too much. I respect myself too much. 

I can already hear the outraged cries from many of you, dear readers. “But Hillary!” Bear with me. I have not forgotten her. 

The most accurate way to sum up the 2016 election is that each side nominated the only candidate who could possibly have lost to the other. All Democrats had to do was not nominate Hillary Clinton. She was the most unpopular presidential candidate since they started tracking the statistic over 30 years ago (with the sole exception of—you guessed it—Donald Trump.) Not only did they nominate her, they screwed over Bernie Sanders in the process, angering his supporters and losing part of their base. Whine about the FBI all you want. If you don’t want the FBI involved in a presidential election, don’t nominate someone under FBI investigation. Denounce Russian meddling all you want—I certainly will. It happened, and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen again. But Russians didn’t force HRC to take Wisconsin for granted, or to call half the country “deplorable.” Most Democrats I know still have not admitted that they lost this election because Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate. Embrace the truth, my friends. It will set you free—free to choose a better nominee next time. 

Many of my friends and relatives, people I love and respect, voted for Donald Trump in November of 2016. A few were enthusiastic about it. I will never understand that sentiment. Most of them, however, held their noses and cast a vote against Hillary Clinton. I can understand this. I disagreed, then and now, but I understand. 

I have Democrat friends and relatives, too, people I love and respect, who voted for Hillary Clinton. A few were enthusiastic about it. I will never understand that sentiment. Many of them weren’t enthused about her, but felt it was an easy choice to cast a vote against Donald Trump. I can understand this. I disagreed, then and now, but I understand. 

I’ve seen Democrats on social media urging NeverTrump conservatives like me to vote Democrat just until Trump is out of office. To help restore some modicum of sanity to our government. I don’t blame them for trying, and I know some Republicans are planning to do just that. But other than opposition to Trump, what does the Democratic Party have to offer me? They call me callous and greedy for disagreeing with them about how best to fix health care, even though their last sweeping health care legislation has been the worst thing my government has ever done to my family. They virtually call me a murderer every time someone else shoots up a school. They tell me that if my young son experiences gender confusion, he is definitely, literally a girl, and I if I hesitate to give him irreversible, life-altering treatments, it’s because my heart is filled with hatred and bigotry—even that I am abusive, and the government should take him away from me for his own safety. Then the same people tell me that that same son I felt growing and moving in my womb was not a human being, and that I had a sacred right to kill him if I chose. All while claiming to be the party of science. 

No. There is no place for me in that party. 

So. I’ll wander for a while, here in the political wilderness. Maybe the GOP will be salvaged someday. Maybe it will purge the xenophobes and demagogues and hypocrites and outright racists from among its ranks. I’m not holding my breath.  

I can wait. It’s lonely here, but I sleep well at night.