Politics

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How Democrats lost the Impeachment War — and probably 2020

The Democratic party is dying from its hatred of President Trump. The impeachment fiasco is just the latest symptom. After weeks of testimony, Democrats have not been able to come up with any charges more concrete than 'abuse of power' and 'obstruction of Congress.' Abuse of power is certainly a serious thing — but only if it’s real. Partisans think that almost anything a president from the opposing party does amounts to an abuse of power. For impeachment to amount to anything more than partisan harassment, an actual crime ought to be found somewhere along the line: an act of wrongdoing objectively contrary to the law.

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Sturm und Drang at the impeachment hearings

Is it time to bag impeachment? That may have been the subliminal signal that GOP counsel Steve Castor was trying to send when he showed up at the impeachment hearing with a Fresh Market reusable bag instead of a briefcase. 'Live, eat, shop, reuse,' was the message emblazoned upon his shopping bag. The North Carolina grocer has wholly embraced Castor, declaring that it is his 'official briefcase maker.'Castor may have wanted to live and let live, but it wasn’t a message that Democrats or Republicans were eager to embrace. Instead, the hearing ground on in the usual furrows, with Louie Gohmert calling the inquiry a 'kangaroo court' and threatening the impeachment of Joe Biden if he wins in 2020. Meanwhile, Democratic counsel Daniel S.

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Where did the money come from for Rudy Giuliani’s Ukraine operations?

Donald Trump is about to become only the third US president to be impeached —or charged with a crime — by Congress. The other two were Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, for firing his secretary of war in defiance of the House of Representatives; and Bill Clinton, for Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky (technically for perjury and obstruction of justice). Johnson and Clinton were acquitted in their trials in the Senate, as Trump almost certainly will be too. And, as Johnson and Clinton’s impeachments just confirmed their supporters or opponents’ opinion of them, so Trump will emerge as exactly the person we always thought he was. But there may be surprises along the way. The case against Trump is deceptively simple.

Confessions of a White House staffer: Nato and nutty professors

While it’s a bit disappointing to be back at work after a few days off for Thanksgiving, the staff definitely seems to be in a cheerier mood than normal thanks to Christmas being just a few weeks away. We were finishing up the final touches on the White House Christmas decorations over the weekend, including making some last minute edits on Melania’s video reveal. It almost seems like a waste to spend so much time on preparations, because we know the media is going to dump on them anyway.But we were able to get back at the media in a small way — scheduling the press tour of the decorations for 5 a.m. on a Monday morning. It was pretty satisfying to see them shivering out in the cold with bags under their eyes.

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Pelosi’s rush to impeachment

‘Breaking news’ sirens sounded over the Twitter webs when Nancy Pelosi announced she is instructing House Democrats to draft articles of impeachment against President Trump. I hope you’re all sitting down. I’m as shocked as you are. Shocked!Of course, no news is breaking here. Pelosi is doing what anyone with a political pulse knew was inevitable when the Democrats took the House in 2018. It was only ever going to be a question of how and when. The head-scratching part of the ‘when’ is that Pelosi’s announcement comes only a day after the House committee hearings featured a professor at Hogwarts and a woman throwing full-sized cats at Rep. Matt Gaetz.

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Impeachment really is a pathetic clown show 

First it was COLLUSION! Can you believe it? Trump was colluding with the Russians to steal the election from its rightful owner, H.R. Clinton. For a brief and shining moment, ‘collusion’ filled the airwaves and cyberspace. The president of the United States was colluding with Vladimir Putin, whose puppet he was. John Brennan, the excitable talking head who somehow became director of the CIA despite voting for Gus Hall, perpetual candidate for the US presidency on the Communist ticket, declared that Trump’s behavior was ‘nothing short of treasonous.’ Yikes.That show had a good run, almost two years.

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Impeachment doesn’t work

So, impeachment it is. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that the House will begin articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, and the vote will probably take place before the year is out. The inevitable is, it turns out, inevitable. Henry Kissinger knows something about impeachment. Not because his boss, Richard Nixon, was almost impeached, but rather because Kissinger is a realist. And the reality of impeachment is that it doesn’t work — the threshold for launching impeachment proceedings is low enough that it can be done frivolously, for merely partisan purposes. But the threshold for removing a president from office is so high that it has never been met, and it almost certainly won’t be met in the case of Donald Trump.

Secession is much closer than we think

American breakup: secession is much closer than we think

The United States is ripe for secession. Across the world, established states have divided in two or are staring down secession movements. Great Britain became a wee bit less great with Irish independence, and now the Scots seem to be rethinking the Act of Union (1707). Czechoslovakia is no more and the former Soviet Union is just that: former. Go down the list and there are secession groups in nearly every country. And are we to think that, almost alone in the world, we’re immune from this? Countries threaten to split apart when their people seem hopelessly divided. I’ve seen it already. Before moving to the United States, I lived in a country just as divided, without the kind of fellow feeling required to hold people together.

Donald Trump hates being the butt of ridicule

Donald Trump, never one to miss a slight, canceled a scheduled Nato press conference on Wednesday, going into a snit about a video showing various panjandrums, including Justin Trudeau, yukking it up over his antics at the summit, including his impromptu and lengthy press conferences. https://twitter.com/PnPCBC/status/1202008162997538817 Trump employed the term 'two-faced' and he was emphatically not referring to the DC Comics character who first battled Batman in 1942. Instead, Trump, as is his wont, sought to depict himself as a victim of the condescension of both European elites and Congress.For now, the real target of his ire appears to be the congressional lawmakers who keep stealing the headlines from him.

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Trump is saving Nato

It’s almost Nato as usual when Emmanuel Macron calls Nato ‘brain dead’. It’s Nato as usual, and Donald Trump as usual, when Trump, who not long ago called Nato ‘obsolete’, chastises his bromantic partner Macron for being ‘insulting’ and ‘disrespectful’. It is unusual for Nato when Trump calls off a press conference and calls blackface artist Justin Trudeau ‘two-faced’.

Will Michael Bloomberg break double digits?

The big news on Monday this week was that latecomer billionaire presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg had ‘surged’ past Sen. Kamala Harris in a new poll by Hill-HarrisX. By Tuesday the big news was that Harris had departed the race. Was it Bloomberg’s stellar 6 percent showing that did it? Unlikely. The Harris campaign had had issues, as documented in a recent New York Times piece detailing the deep mismanagement of her campaign. One of the death blows in the piece was this line: ‘Today, her aides are given to gallows humor about just how many slogans and one-liners she has cycled through, with one recalling how “‘speak truth’ spring” gave way to “‘3 a.m.

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Kamala Harris’s downfall has been obvious for months

The most meme-friendly and amusing explanation for Kamala Harris’s demise is that she was splattered by Tulsi Gabbard over the summer and never recovered. There’s some truth to that: Kamala had never been challenged on her record in a high-pressure national setting before, and the moment someone finally turned up the heat, she crumbled. The New York Timesarticle last week presaging the end of her campaign noted that donors were so flustered by her performance that they demanded she ‘strike back at Ms Gabbard more aggressively’, which was a tad ironic given on that same night Kamala had infamously declared herself a ‘top-tier candidate’ who need not trouble herself with the insignificant pesterings of a minor contender like Tulsi.

Trump vs the cities

Update June 2, 2020: There’s something very wrong with our cities, as the devastating riots this week show. Last year, in the the Spectator's Christmas US edition, I wrote about how in a few short years the liberal city rapidly became the progressive city under an organized insurgency of far-left activists embedding themselves in municipal governments. The results have been devastating, as our once beautiful cities marinate in dirt, disease and strife. Now, they are burning. Failed progressive policies have never been more evident than they are today. With the election five months away, Trump now has an opportunity to pitch himself as the leader who will fight against the degradation of the inner cities.

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Why are politicians so obsessed with authenticity?

Every politician who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is the height of inauthenticity. Fortunately for lovers of comedy, many politicians are too stupid and too full of themselves to notice this. Every election year, another squad marches hopelessly into the enfilade of the inauthenticity firing line. Think of Bush I visiting the National Grocers Association Convention in Florida back in 1992. Bush ambled towards an exhibit where a new type of checkout scanner was the hallowed attraction. The fancy device could read torn barcodes and weigh groceries.

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Confessions of a White House staffer: talking turkey

The Rose Garden became a makeshift petting zoo this week as POTUS played host to several animals before heading to the Winter White House for the Thanksgiving holiday. Shockingly, I am not referring to Rudy Giuliani and his comms team, which is headed up by a 20-year-old with less work experience than a McDonald’s fry cook.Instead, the press shop wranglers had to use their skills on Conan, the special forces dog from the al-Baghdadi raid, and Butter (or was it Bread?) the turkey. Realistically, it was not that different from keeping Playboy’s Brian Karem from crossing the rope line, except for when the turkey briefly escaped from his handler in upper press. Hopefully no one tells Janet why there are feathers on her desk.

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The farce of the ‘Anonymous’ Trump official

Remember 'Anonymous'? He — or, of course, she (or 'zhe' or 'they', etc.) — was the person who, back in September 2018, wrote an anonymous op-ed for our former paper of record, 'I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.' 'Anonymous' claimed to be a 'senior Trump administration official'. He took to the pages of the official fish-wrap because he didn’t approve of President Trump. He and 'like-minded colleagues...have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda'. Indeed, according to 'Anonymous', 'many of the senior officials in [Trump's] own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda.' Who knows whether 'Anonymous' is for real — I mean, just how 'senior' do you suppose he (or, again, she, etc.

Will the impeachment inquiry stuff Donald Trump?

President Trump was talking turkey today. At the White House, he performed a solemn task. He pardoned what he referred to as 'the beautiful feathered friend, the noble bird'. In all, it was two turkeys that received, from the Chosen One, as his former energy secretary Rick Perry referred to Trump yesterday, his dispensation. Bread and Butter, who hail from North Carolina, can gobble further.Trump was intent on appearing in a magnanimous mood, but he couldn’t help resist throwing in a dig at Adam Schiff during his remarks, claiming that he had spared Bread and Butter from the indignity of having to appear before Adam Schiff. Indeed, a few hours before the event, Trump made it clear that another species of animal other than turkeys was really on his mind. He stated on Twitter, 'The D.

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Trump honors hero dog Conan. Media goes barking mad

There are a few scenes from the Trump presidency which belong in the pantheon of great American political imagery. There is of course Kanye West donning Trump’s trademark red MAGA hat for an Oval Office meeting. There is President Trump posing delightfully in front of a long dining table with every kind of fast food imaginable, like a presidential Willy Wonka, as he welcomes the Clemson Tigers football team with their Golden Tickets. And today, the American public and the world were (finally) introduced to Conan, the United States special forces Belgian Malinois credited with chasing down Isis mastermind Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, outside the White House.

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MSNBC wages war on Tulsi the dove

MSNBC dropped all pretenses of neutrality at last week’s debate, not that its pretenses were ever remotely credible to begin with. Most of the time they’d at least attempt to play it straight, however perfunctorily. Of course, no one should have been under the illusion that running a debate well was within the repertoire of Rachel Maddow — one of the nation’s leading conspiracy theorists — whose very presence as lead moderator undermined the legitimacy of the entire affair from the outset. Even with the albatross of Maddow, though, it is conceivable that they could have striven for something resembling an impartial approach. Not surprisingly, that all went out the window when one particular candidate was targeted for open contempt.