Impeachment

The third presidential impeachment in US history has now reached the Senate. Like the first two, this one is almost certainly going to lead to presidential acquittal. An old saying given definitive expression by Ralph Waldo Emerson (and recently adapted by The Wire) warns that you should 'never strike a king unless you are sure that you shall kill him'. Congress may not be risking royal reprisal here, but it is teaching all Americans — including all future presidents — a fateful lesson in institutional impotence. After this, who is ever again going to take the threat of impeachment seriously? Congress has called its own bluff.

Yet another dubious figure whom Donald Trump barely knows. This time it’s Lev Parnas, the Michael Cohen of 2020. 'I don’t believe I’ve ever spoken to him,' Trump said on Thursday. He added, 'I don't know him at all. Don't know what he's about. Don't know where he comes form. Know nothing about him. I can only tell you this thing is a big hoax.' Whether Parnas spoke directly with Trump about the Ukraine caper, remains a matter of dispute.But it was commencement day for the impeachment trial as 100 senators swore an oath to carry out impartial justice, an act that was somewhat vitiated by Martha McSally’s petulant outburst at CNN reporter Manu Raju.

So Lev Parnas is now swanning about with Rachel Maddow? It seems that Maddow scored an exclusive interview with Parnas that will air this evening. She’s going to #letlevspeak, as he seeks to complete his transformation from Trump accomplice to aggrieved accuser. Is this finally the bombshell that Trump detractors have been waiting for lo these many years, the interview of interviews, the revelation that can prompt even the recalcitrant see-no-evil, hear-no-evil Republican senators to blanch?For all its claims that the Senate impeachment trial is supposed to vindicate Trump, the administration seems to be practicing an oath of omerta at the moment. The State Department canceled two scheduled appearances on Capitol Hill today, one featuring Brian Hook, its point man on Iran.

This article is in The Spectator’s January 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. If we can’t be governed, we may as well be entertained. That’s become the ethos behind the Donald Trump presidency. The national debt might continue to bulge, our military might remain pointlessly overextended, our healthcare system might stay ablaze, but at least politics has become funny in a nothing-matters, Rick and Morty kind of way. Americans upvoted a man who’d spent hours on the Howard Stern show boasting about his sexual prowess, and we expect to be amused, dammit. So why has the news lately been so dreadfully boring? The fault certainly doesn’t lie with Trump.

What are the four things that can go blooey for President Trump in the next year? First, he can get mired in a new Middle East war — the very thing he promised to avoid. The much-ballyhooed pullout from Syria turned out to be none at all. Now turmoil in Iraq, not a North Korean nuclear launch, turns out to be the Christmas present Trump didn’t want to receive. American strikes against the Kataib Hezbollah militia have got Iraq and, by extension, Iran, in a hugger-mugger. Trump could be on a slope toward further escalation with Iran that is as slippery as an oil slick. The hawks in Trump’s administration will exult; his nationalist followers, blanch. Second, there’s the economy. So far it’s humming along on a sugar high of tax cuts and deficit spending.

Did we just witness an historic event, the impeachment of only the third president in the entire history of the Republic? Or was this a case of accusatio interrupta: impeachment interrupted by an untimely withdrawal from Nancy Pelosi? The speaker of the House, unhappy at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s obvious contempt for the House proceedings, has suggested that she might not file the charges with the Senate. In which case, the Senate could not hold a trial. In which case, Donald Trump could neither be exonerated nor convicted. In which case, he would not have been impeached by the House, but only 'impeached'. It’s amazing what semantic potency can reside in a pair of quotation marks.

‘Dear Ellie and James,’ said Rep. Joe Kennedy in his remarks to the House of Representatives as he voted to impeach Donald Trump, ‘this is a moment you'll read about in your history books.’ Kennedy's children will leave school in less than 20 years. Is 9/11 in the ‘history’ books? The young Kennedy — a handsome but slightly goofy looking man — was struggling and straining to convey gravitas. He closed his eyes. He paaaaaaaused. His pitch rose up at the beginning of a sentence and went down as he finished it. Frankly, it was a farcical display of posturing; a botched performance that made Nicolas Cage in The Wicker Man look like Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood.

President Trump paraded his latest acquisition, Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a defector from the Democratic to the Republican party, at a meeting in the Oval Office this afternoon. Van Drew, who wore a dark blue three-button suit, crimson red tie and white shirt with gold cufflinks, not only dressed in Trump regalia but pretty much sat by mutely — other than to proclaim his 'undying loyalty' — as his new master bragged about poll numbers that he claimed showed him clobbering his Democratic rivals. Kellyanne Conway and Vice President Mike Pence were on hand as witnesses for the induction ceremony.Though he may be simmering about impeachment, Trump continues to make an outward show of bravado. All he needs, if a Washington Post report is accurate, is a 7 percent solution.

Donald Trump just got another spot of good news. The Supreme Court has cut him a break by taking up three cases directly relating to his financial records and will not resolve them until June 2020. So much for the prospect of his congressional invigilators quickly obtaining his records and embarrassing Trump or worse over his past financial transactions, including with Russia.The Court’s decision offers a reminder that Trump, for all his shenanigans, has a well-oiled machine behind him that is determined, in one way or another, to ensure that he ends his term as he began it — unchallenged, unmolested and unbowed. In two weeks, when he kicks up his heels at Mar-a-Lago, his Southern White House, he should be able to golf and chill to his heart’s content.

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.

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.

‘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.

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.