Category: Impeach

Ilhan Omar Says House ‘Will Impeach This Week’ If Pence Doesn’t Act On Trump

Posted on by LifeZette

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) took to Twitter on Monday to say that the House of Representatives “will impeach this week” if Vice President Mike Pence does not invoke the 25th Amendment against President Donald Trump.

Omar Discusses Impeaching Trump

“Where things stand: I just introduced my impeachment resolution,” she wrote. “The full House will now vote on a measure calling on VP Pence and the cabinet to remove Donald Trump under the 25th amendment. If Pence does not act, the House will move to impeach this week.”

This comes days after Omar said she was “drawing up Articles of Impeachment,” claiming that Trump “should be impeached by the House of Representatives & removed from office by the United States Senate.”

“We can’t allow him to remain in office, it’s a matter of preserving our Republic and we need to fulfill our oath,” she continued.

Related: AOC Calls For Trump To Be Impeached – ‘We Came Close To Half Of The House Nearly Dying’

Omar’s tweet on Monday included various bills and letters that she has pledged to support.

“Together, we will hold this president accountable and restore our democracy,” Omar concluded.

Omar Leading The Charge To Impeach Trump

Omar has been leading the charge to impeach Trump in the days since the riots at the Capitol.

“We must impeach and remove him from office immediately so he cannot threaten our democracy and the world any longer and hold public office ever again,” Omar said, according to Newsweek. “Congress should reconvene immediately to carry out this constitutional duty.”

She added that she has no confidence in Trump’s cabinet actually invoking the 25th Amendment.

“It would be really quite fascinating to have the ability to trust those individuals who have been part of his administration, who have been complacent in his activities to take the lead and invoke the 25th Amendment,” Omar said. “As we’ve just learned moments before I got on with you, Vice President Mike Pence has said he has no interest in invoking the 25th Amendment.”

Related: Maxine Waters Warns Trump May Want ‘Civil War’ – Wants Him ‘Stopped Dead In His Tracks, However We Do It’

“So we are left with figuring out what it means for us as members of Congress, how to fulfill our oath to protect our nation,” she added. She was then asked what had changed since the last time Trump was impeached that might lead to a Senate conviction.

“A lot has changed,” Omar continued. “We have just witnessed the president take part in an attempted coup and there is a clear understanding that he poses an imminent threat to not just our democracy but to our republic and to the world and having him remain in office any longer is not in the best interests of our nation.”

This piece was written by James Samson on January 11, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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New Reuters Poll Claims Most Americans Want Trump Removed From Office

Posted on by John Hanson

Reuters published a new poll in the wake of Wednesday’s chaos at the Capitol which indicates that a majority of Americans now want President Donald Trump immediately removed from office.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 57 percent of respondents said that they have had enough of the President’s recent antics and believe that Trump should leave office.

RELATED: Pelosi Calls For Trump To Be Prosecuted – Dubs Him ‘Deranged, Unhinged, Dangerous’

Trump Loses Major Support Even Among His Voters

Not surprisingly and in partisan fashion, 90 percent of Democrats believe Trump should exit immediately, while 80 percent of Republicans think the President should simply finish out his term.

President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20th.

70 percent of Trump voters said they opposed the violence on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, showing that a strong majority of the President’s supporters are against what unfolded.

Two-thirds of Trump voters also described the Capitol Hill rioters as “criminals” and “fools.”

30 percent of Americans say they would like to see Trump’s staff invoke the 25th amendment to force the President’s removal.

Some Democrats And Republicans Say Trump’s Recent Actions Are An Impeachable Offense

Politicians in both parties have said Trump’s actions are impeachable.

Far-left Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said on Sunday, “One, of course, our main priority is to ensure the removal of Donald Trump as president of the United States.”

“Every minute and every hour that he’s in office represents a clear and present danger not just to the United States Congress but frankly to the country,” she added.

RELATED: AOC Calls For Trump To Be Impeached – ‘We Came Close To Half Of The House Nearly Dying’

Then AOC went even further.

“But in addition to removal, we’re also talking about complete barring of the president, of Donald Trump from running for office ever again and in addition to that, the potential ability to prevent pardoning himself from those charges that he was impeached for,” Ocasio-Cortez insisted. 

Sen. Toomey: ‘The President Committed Impeachable Offenses’

Republican Senator Pat Toomey said on Sunday, “I do think the president committed impeachable offenses, but I don’t know what is going to land on the Senate floor, if anything.”

“I think at this point, with just a few days left, it’s the best path forward, the best way to get this person in the rearview mirror for us that could happen immediately,” Toomey added.

“I’m not optimistic it will but I think that would be the best way forward,” the senator finished.

The post New Reuters Poll Claims Most Americans Want Trump Removed From Office appeared first on The Political Insider.

‘Lies, lies, lies’: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s speech about Trump and fellow Republicans goes viral

Posted on (Updated by Marissa Higgins

In the days since a group of pro-Trump insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., sending elected officials into temporary hiding and the nation into a period of shock and horror, a number of Republicans have spoken out against Donald Trump. Whether they’ve criticized his endless insistence that he actually won the 2020 presidential election (he didn’t), called for Trump to resign, both long-standing critics and newly vocalized GOP members are speaking out against Trump.

In a moving, personal video, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger succinctly described Trump as a “failed leader” and someone who “will soon be as irrelevant as an old tweet.” Direct jabs aside, however, Schwarzenegger also dove deep into serious matters and discussed intergenerational trauma, personal examples from his youth in Austria, and directed a very important message to not only Trump but the Republicans who enabled him. He also wished “great success” to President-elect Joe Biden for when he takes office in less than a month. Let’s check out the video below.

First, in reference to Trump, Schwarzenegger states, “President Trump sought to overturn the results of an election. He sought a coup by misleading people with lies. He will go down in history as the worst president ever. The good thing is he will soon be as irrelevant as an old tweet.” Obviously, the extra layer of zing here is that Twitter (as well as a handful of other social media platforms) recently permanently suspended Trump from their platforms.

On a personal note, Schwarzenegger discussed growing up in the long-term wake of Kristallnacht (also known as the Night of Broken Glass). Schwarzenegger described Kristallnacht as “a night of rampage against the Jews carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys,” and said the insurgent’s attack on the Capitol last Wednesday was “the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States. But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. They shattered the ideas we took for granted [and] trampled the very principles on which our country was founded.”

Schwarzenegger talked about how intergenerational trauma (though he didn’t use that term) can affect an entire society. In his case, Schwarzenegger described being a child and watching his father come home drunk once or twice a week, hitting and scaring his mother. He said it felt normal because he knew it happened at neighbors' houses, too. Why? According to Schwarzenegger, this behavior tied to collective guilt and horror after World War II, saying these men were “in emotional pain for what they saw or did.” In his words, he grew up “surrounded by broken men drinking away the guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history."

“It all started with lies, lies, lies, and intolerance,” Schwarzenegger stated. “Being from Europe I’ve seen firsthand how bad things can spin out of control.”

In terms of his fellow Republicans, Schwarzenegger called out those who “enabled” Trump’s “lies and his treachery.” He also quoted former President Teddy Roosevelt to them, saying, “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.”

“To those who think they can overturn the United States constitution, know this: You will never win,” he stated, asking for the people responsible for the attack on the U.S. Capitol to be held accountable. 

Here’s the video on Twitter, which has garnered more than 6 million views at the time of writing. It’s about seven minutes long, but honestly, is worth the full watch.

My message to my fellow Americans and friends around the world following this week's attack on the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/blOy35LWJ5

— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) January 10, 2021

You can watch the full video on his YouTube channel below.

YouTube Video

There are currently 159 House members, and 24 senators who are on record supporting impeachment & removal. Regardless of where your members of Congress stand, please send them a letter.

AOC cuts to the point: ‘We came close to half of the House nearly dying on Wednesday’

Posted on by Marissa Higgins

After an incredibly chaotic, exhausting, and, frankly, terrifying week, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on ABC’s This Week and talked to host George Stephanopoulos about what we all know is true: “Every minute” that Donald Trump sits in office “represents a clear and present danger.” As many on social media have pointed out, if Trump can’t even be trusted with a Twitter account, how can he be trusted to run the country, hold nuclear codes, or guide us through a global pandemic? 

Still, some people are frustrated at the notion of removing Trump so close to the end of his term, wondering, Well, what’s the point? There’s symbolism, of course, in impeaching Trump for a second time. But there are also real, tangible benefits to removing Trump from office that can affect the country in both the short and long-term. Let’s check out how Ocasio-Cortez breaks them down in the clips below.

“Our main priority is to ensure the removal of Donald Trump as President of the United State,” Ocasio-Cortez told Stephanopoulos. “Every minute and every that he is in office represents a clear and present danger not just to the United States Congress but to the country. But in addition to removal, we’re also talking about completely barring the president—or rather, Donald Trump—from running for office ever again. And in addition to that, the potential ability to prevent pardoning himself from those charges that he was impeached for.”

Here’s that clip.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez backs impeachment, telling @GStephanopoulos “every minute" that Trump is "in office represents a clear and present danger.” “We’re also talking about complete barring of (Donald Trump) from running for office ever again.” https://t.co/k4g6uA7rAo pic.twitter.com/k5nIiWuOtx

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) January 10, 2021

Stephanopolous asked Ocasio-Cortez about the concerns of some that having an impeachment trial could slow down getting Biden’s agenda underway, including, for example, passing coronavirus relief and confirmations. Ocasio-Cortez argued that the “safety” of the president, Congress, and the “security of our country takes precedence over the timing of nominations” and potential “confirmations.”

Asked about some concerns that an impeachment trial in the Senate would delay Biden’s agenda, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she believes “safety” and the “security of our country takes precedence over the timing of nominations” and “confirmations.” https://t.co/FnD9YSf2TE pic.twitter.com/EKlvs71yj4

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) January 10, 2021

Stephanopoulos referenced a letter sent on behalf of a number of Republicans who implored President-elect Biden to forego impeachment for the sake of “unity,” arguing that it is “unnecessary” and “inflammatory.” The group of House Republicans, led by Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, wrote: “In the spirit of healing and fidelity to our Constitution, we ask that you formally request that Speaker Nancy Pelosi discontinue her efforts to impeach President Donald J. Trump a second time.”

To that, Ocasio-Cortez hammered down on the point that what happened this past week was an “insurrection against the United States.” The New York City progressive argued that “healing” requires “accountability.” She pointed out that if we allow insurrection to happen with impunity, “we are inviting it to happen again.” 

“We came close to half of the House nearly dying on Wednesday,” Ocasio-Cortez stated. “If a foreign head of state, if another head of state, came in and ordered an attack on the United States Congress, would we say that should not be prosecuted? Would we say that there should be absolutely no response to that? No. It is an act of insurrection. It is an act of hostility.” She stressed that without accountability, “it will happen again.”

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez pushes back against some GOP lawmakers suggesting a second impeachment of Pres. Trump would threaten unity: "The process of healing is separate and in fact requires accountability... because without it, it will happen again." https://t.co/eefTDFOx31 pic.twitter.com/e4ZRTszpAv

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) January 10, 2021

There are currently 159 House members, and 24 senators who are on record supporting impeachment & removal. Regardless of where your members of Congress stand, please send them a letter.

Pelosi Calls For Trump To Be Prosecuted – Dubs Him ‘Deranged, Unhinged, Dangerous’

Posted on by LifeZette

In a portion of a “60 Minutes” interview that was released on Friday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called for Donald Trump to be prosecuted as she dubbed him a “deranged, unhinged, dangerous” president of the United States.

Pelosi Attacks Trump

“Well, sadly, the person who’s running the executive branch is a deranged, unhinged, dangerous president of the United States, and only a number of days until we can be protected from him,” Pelosi said. “But he has done something so serious that there should be prosecution against him.”

She added that the 25th Amendment could still be invoked, and that “nothing is off the table.”

Related: Nancy Pelosi: After ‘Armed Insurrection’ House Could Impeach Trump Again

Pelosi Discusses Nuclear Codes 

This came after Pelosi revealed that she had talked to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley to discuss President Trump and the nuclear codes,

“This morning, I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike,” Pelosi wrote in a letter.

“The situation of this unhinged President could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy,” she added. 

Once the meeting was over, Pelosi told her caucuses that she had been given assurances there are safeguards in place in the event Trump wants to launch a nuclear weapon.

“Speaker Pelosi initiated a call with the Chairman. He answered her questions regarding the process of nuclear command authority,” Colonel Dave Butler said in a statement obtained by CNN.

Related: Pelosi Urges Military To Block ‘Unhinged’ President Trump From Nuclear Codes

Pelosi and her fellow Democrats are preparing a push to impeach Trump, should he not resign.

“It is the hope of members that the president will immediately resign,” Pelosi said in a statement, according to The New York Times. “But if he does not, I have instructed the Rules Committee to be prepared.”

This piece was written by James Samson on January 9, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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Impeach Trump IMMEDIATELY. He is a direct threat to U.S. national security and the republic itself

Posted on (Updated by Kerry Eleveld

Nearly 30 Democratic members of the House have expressed a desire to impeach Donald Trump a second time following his incitement Wednesday of an armed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers attempted to certify the results of the November presidential election. 

They are absolutely right. Trump is a direct threat to the sovereign. For more than two months, Trump has spewed a constant stream of disinformation about the election being stolen from him and his supporters being disenfranchised. On Wednesday morning, Trump spent some two hours urging his followers to storm the U.S. Capitol at a “Save America” rally. “We will never give up. We will never concede,” Trump told several thousand of his cultists who had gathered on the Ellipse to see him speak. 

His supporters, hopped up on conspiracy and grievance, then marched over to the Capitol and staged a violent insurrection—pushing back Capitol police, shooting mace at them, threatening lawmakers and journalists, breaking windows, destroying property, and ultimately overtaking the building along with several others on the Capitol complex. 

Several hours after images of the violent takeover had flooded new outlets and social media streams, Trump finally posted a video urging his cultists to go home peacefully. But even that video was riddled with more conspiracy and grievance-stoking by Trump. 

“I know your pain. I know your hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side,” Trump falsely stated before telling his followers to go home. He then went straight back at it, lamenting, “There's never been a time where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us—from me, from you, from our country.” And finally, “So go home. We love you. You're very special,” Trump concluded, offering a warm embrace to the terrorists who had stormed the Capitol to stage a coup attempt.

The unfathomable breakdown of law enforcement during this entire episode will be investigated and parsed for years to come. But what we do know is that it took hours for the D.C. National Guard to be called up to provide reinforcements, partly because it is not controlled by the D.C. mayor but rather the president. After D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi both sent a formal request to the Department of Defense to deploy the National Guard, Vice President Mike Pence finally approved the deployment, not Trump. Trump, still the commander in chief, apparently couldn’t be bothered to send in reinforcements to protect U.S. lawmakers, the Capitol complex, and all its denizens. 

To recap, Trump spent months pumping his low-information voters full of crap; he then personally directed them to storm the Capitol on the day of congressional certification; when his supporters did storm the Capitol, he posted a video justifying their ire and lavishing praise on them while also declining to deploy troops in order to protect U.S. lawmakers and federal property. Many of those protesters—who were inexplicably allowed to exit the building on Wednesday evening without suffering any consequences—told journalists and others they planned to return at a later date with their guns. 

And finally, once the worst of the occupation appeared to be over, Trump celebrated the seditious actions of his cultists. “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long,” Trump tweeted Wednesday evening. Twitter finally locked Trump’s account by day’s end, but lasting damage to the heart of our democracy had already been done.

What unfolds over the next 14 days between now and the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden remains entirely unclear. What is clear is that Trump’s cultists aren’t done yet, and Trump himself is perfectly happy to stoke their worst impulses while leaving the nation’s Capitol, along with our duly elected U.S. lawmakers, unprotected. Donald Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy, our systems of government, and the republic itself. He must be impeached immediately after Congress finishes the business of certifying the Electoral College votes. As Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona told MSNBC Wednesday evening, “Democracy's not safe right now. … I don't trust this president.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota announced Wednesday afternoon that she was drafting articles of impeachment. Omar was among the first of several lawmakers to express support for impeaching Trump following his direct involvement in one of the most shameful episodes in our nation’s history. The effort has quickly attracted the backing of a diverse group of Democratic lawmakers, from progressive representatives like Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Pramila Jayapal of Washington to more moderate members like Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Jim Cooper of Tennessee. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must take up the matter immediately following congressional certification. Few if any instances in American history have ever posed such an obvious and urgent existential threat to the United States of America. 

Maxine Waters Whines About The ‘Missed Opportunity’ Congress Had To Impeach Trump ‘For Treason’

Posted on by LifeZette

Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) had yet another meltdown against President Donald Trump on Sunday, this time complaining about the “missed opportunity” she claims that Congress had to impeach him “for treason.”

Waters Thinks Trump Should Have Been Impeached ‘For Treason’

“On my 3/2017 pinned tweet one can see [Paul] Manafort, [Michael] Flynn, [Roger] Stone, all of whom have been pardoned [and] more of them to come. They know the criminal [and] illegal relationship [between] Trump [and] Putin! They’re part of it! We missed our opportunity to impeach him for treason. [New York] can make up for it!” Waters tweeted.

Waters Has Previously Called For Trump’s Arrest And Impeachment

Waters has long been one of Trump’s harshest critics, frequently calling for him to be impeached and even to be arrested.

“I’m calling on the GOP to stop Trump’s filthy talk of whistleblowers being spies & using mob language implying they should be killed,” she tweeted back in October. “Impeachment is not good enough for Trump. He needs to be imprisoned & placed in solitary confinement. But for now, impeachment is the imperative.”

Related: Maxine Waters Says She’ll ‘Never, Ever Forgive’ Black Voters Who Chose Trump

Immediately after last month’s presidential election, Waters was quick to say that the “door is closed” on Trump’s presidency as she also called for him to be investigated.

“So let him keep going as far as he wants to go even though the door is closed on him now,” she said. “There’s nowhere for him to go. If he wants to try and keep going to the Supreme Court, let him try. It’s over.”

Waters Wants Trump To Be Investigated

Waters also said that she would “certainly would be in support of investigating the president of the United States.”

“What he has done in the four years that he has served as president is simply unconscionable, I think criminal in some cases,” Waters said of Trump. 

“He’s placed this country in danger,” she said. “And the president of the United States is supposed to be about making sure that the country is safe and secure, and he has done everything possible to undermine our democracy. I don’t think that can be overlooked.”

Related: Maxine Waters Declares That Trump’s Presidency Is ‘Over’ – Calls For Him To Be Investigated

“We should send a message across the world that we will not tolerate the undermining of our democracy in the way this president has done,” Waters added. “So again, I don’t know what President-elect Biden would do, but I certainly would support investigating the president.”

This piece was written by James Samson on December 23, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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House Democrat Submits Resolution To Impeach Attorney General Barr

Posted on by Rusty Weiss

House Democrat Steve Cohen (TN) on Tuesday submitted a resolution calling for the impeachment of Attorney General William Barr.

Cohen has been calling for Barr’s impeachment for over a week saying “he is reigning terror on the rule of law.”

Now, he’s formally submitted a resolution.

“Today, I introduced #HRes1032, which would authorize an impeachment inquiry into Attorney General Barr,” Cohen tweeted.

“He has politicized the DOJ, undermined the rule of law, abused his power, obstructed justice [and] violated the first amendment,” the Democrat added. “He is not fit to be Attorney General.”

RELATED: Tim Scott Rips Into ‘Liberal Democrats’ For Sending Racist Death Threats

No Support

Perhaps this clown should concentrate on serving the people of Tennessee rather than wielding impeachment as a political weapon every time something happens that he disagrees with.

Cohen’s main points of contention lie in Barr’s reduction of sentencing for Roger Stone, something he calls a “travesty,” and the attorney General’s alleged role in a decision to remove rioters from Lafayette Square during a protest last month.

But Cohen has little to no support for the effort from more prominent Democrats.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) called any effort to impeach Barr a “waste of time,” while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) dismissed it by saying “let’s solve our problems by going to the polls and voting on Election Day.”

But then, she said that prior to the last election as well.

RELATED: Attorney General Barr Announces DOJ Has Opened Over 500 Cases Involving Rioters’ Mayhem And Destruction

For Show

Cohen’s actions, just like those taken by Democrats who tried to reverse the election of 2016 by impeaching the President, is all for show. He’s a nut, who likes to dance to please his radical base.

This is, after all, the same clown who attempted to insult Attorney General Barr last May when he refused to show up to a sham House Judiciary Committee hearing.

Cohen, you see, wanted to mock Barr as a chicken, and he did so very, very subtly …

Cohen previously butted heads with Pelosi over Trump’s impeachment, pushing her by saying it was the ‘patriotic’ thing to do.

He introduced articles of impeachment in 2017 over the President’s reaction to violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, which has been proven to be a media-generated hoax.

You’d think the people of Tennessee would be embarrassed by this man.

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Colbert Discusses Coronavirus: Says He Wishes We Could Go Back To When ‘We Were Looking Forward To Impeaching Trump’

Posted on by LifeZette

March 12, 2020

Late night television host Stephen Colbert has had enough of living in the dark times surrounding the coronavirus. On his show last night, Colbert reminisced about the “good old days” when he and his fellow Democrats were “looking forward to impeaching” President Donald Trump.

“A few months ago was great, it was the holidays, I was drunk on eggnog, I was watching Cheer, I was falling in love with Baby Yoda,” Colbert said to open his show on Thursday night. “I was looking forward… I was looking forward to impeaching the president, remember that feeling? We’re going to get you, Trump! John Bolton is going to testify and Republicans are going to do the right thing!”

Republican senators ended up dashing the dreams of Democrats when they voted to acquit Trump in his impeachment trial.

MORE NEWS: If he wins the Democratic nomination, can Joe Biden make it to November?

“2020 has done the impossible… and made me nostalgic for 2019,” Colbert added, as his typically liberal audience laughed and cheered enthusiastically. Colbert should enjoy this reaction while he can, because starting next week, his show and all other late night television programs will not be filmed before live studio audiences because of the coronavirus, according to Breitbart News.

Colbert’s monologue serves as proof that Democrats were lying when they tried to pretend that they were taking pleasure out of trying to impeach Trump. Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats tried to pretend that the impeachment effort was a somber affair for them, but they could barely contain their excitement over it.

While it comes as no surprise that a liberal like Colbert, who takes pleasure out of bashing Trump on a nightly basis, would fondly reminisce about the impeachment witch hunt against the sitting U.S. president, it doesn’t make it any less despicable. This is the kind of hate that Trump has had to deal with every day since he was elected, which makes all that he has accomplished for this country since taking office all the more impressive.

We can’t wait to see Colbert’s reaction at the end of 2020, when Trump is reelected for a second term. I wonder what year Colbert will be reminiscing about then.

This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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Highlights from the first two weeks of the Republican Party’s sham impeachment trial

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

Two weeks of history came to something of a head on Friday. The Senate Impeachment trial, while a coverup orchestrated by the Republican Party, is also a historic attempt by American patriots to begin the process of fixing a corrupted executive branch before irreparable damage is done. Lead House Manager Adam Schiff began by explaining the seriousness of the charges against Donald Trump.

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And then a quick reminder of how Sen. Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republican party has hamstrung this essential Democratic process,

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House Manager Jerrold Nadler from New York spoke on the Senate floor on Thursday, and brought some receipts. First the fact that the evidence is overwhelming.

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And then a relentless barrage of video showing that the conservatives arguing on Trump’s behalf, with names like Alan Dershowitz and Lindsey Graham, arguing the absolute opposite just a few years ago. 

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One of the most glaring realities of the “perfect” phone call, and subsequent statements about Trump’s personal interest in getting an investigation started into the Bidens is the fact that he didn’t care if there were actual investigations into corruption … just the perception of investigations.

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Schiff came back and delivered what many called an “historic” 30-minute closing argument to end day two of the Senate Impeachment trial. The final eight minutes included a powerfully stark reminder of what is at stake.

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On Friday, House Manager Hakeem Jeffries once again reminded the world that this is not a partisan process—at least it is not supposed to be one.

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On Saturday, the Republican Party—who has made this a thoroughly partisan procedure—had their chance to begin the defense of Donald Trump. As all the president’s men began their disinformation campaign to muddy the waters with conspiracy theories, news began circulating of an almost 90-minute long audio tape purportedly secretly recorded by Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas. Highlights included Trump angrily saying he wanted people to “get rid of” then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Besides the myriad questions this should bring to anyone’s mind didn’t seem to faze Republican lawmakers: 1) Does Donald Trump not realize he has the right, as president, to replace her, and if he does 2) What was he suggesting be done with Yovanovitch, and 3) What kind of crap national security is being run if any dubious character can record the president secretly for almost 90 minutes? 

On Sunday, news came out that former Ambassador John Bolton’s new memoir would feature smoking gun statements of Trump’s guilt in the Ukraine affair. Calls for witness testimony were reinvigorated. It would seem that allowing for such testimony as Bolton’s would be a fait accompli but, with the republic under fire from inside, there is nothing we can take for granted.

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This, of course, was followed by the deafening silence of Republican officials, and vitriol on Twitter from the the chief executive of our country. On Monday, all the president’s men went back to their posts to defend the indefensible. This might have to do with their fear of their fearful leader. Who is more cowardly, the coward or the cowards afraid of him? And while they went to work, trying to figure out what to do about the John Bolton-sized elephant in the room, the Trump defense spewed lie after lie after lie.

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Oops. Sorry, that’s a different Republican Senator clearly from an alternate reality.

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It is hard to sum up how outrageous the Trump-defense presentation on Monday was.

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A considerable amount of Monday’s “defense” was dedicated to figuring out ways to use old-fashioned phraseology that could be succinctly grabbed for headlines. Words like “poppycock” provided the deepest defense Trump’s team had to offer. The day ended with a promise of one thing, though.

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To place you in time, Monday also included Iowa Sen. Jodi Ernst embarrassing herself in remarkable fashion.

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By Tuesday it became more and more clear that the leaked John Bolton manuscript was becoming too hard to control and witnesses would likely need to be called in to testify. However, the plan for Republican leadership at this point was how best to hide testimony from the public, so that the rightwing propaganda machine could more easily lie about the framing and characterization of said testimonies. The summary of Trump’s defense by the end of Tuesday was best summarized by Steve Vladeck.

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By the end of Tuesday, Republican Majority Leader McConnell had brought fellow GOP senators into his lair for a closed-door session, to discuss whether or not they had the votes to stop witnesses from actually being called during this “trial.” Reports from numerous media outlets contradicted one another, with the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post reporting that McConnell did not have the votes secured to stop something resembling a real impeachment trial from breaking out, while Politico and The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman saying he did. 

By Wednesday morning, it seemed that the Republican Party was exactly where they’ve always been—inside of Donald Trump’s pocket. The White House, after telling everybody that John Bolton’s memoir meant nothing, decided to threaten legal action against Bolton and his publisher. Republican leadership sent out the new day’s talking points which consisted of admitting that Donald Trump did indeed hold up money in order to force Ukraine to publicly “investigate” a political rival, but … so what? “#WeWantWitnesses” went viral as protestors descended upon our nation’s capital.

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And then the questions began:

Sens. Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz thought they were able to put together a real stumper, using the old Obama whataboutism.

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Trump attorney Dershowitz took the fragments of what was left of his career and integrity and flushed them down the drain of history, by arguing that a president couldn’t be impeached for crimes, because his belief in himself as being awesome made it not a crime. The law scholar he repeatedly cited during this extraordinary argument went on television and also wrote an op-ed in The New York Times to say that Alan Dershowitz was as full of shit as you suspected him to be.

Meanwhile, news broke that Chief Justice Roberts had denied Republicans from outing the “whistleblower,” in the most cowardly fashion available to them: by getting Chief Justice Roberts to read their name as one of the submitted questions. Chief coward amongst them, Sen. Rand Paul.

Lead Manager Schiff  presented the Joseph Heller-level Catch-22 breaking news story of Trump’s Department of Justice, arguing in federal court—resisting subpoenas—that a president can’t be impeached by the House if they cannot be in court to fight for subpoenas … because they are in the Senate making their case for impeachment. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

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And sadly, none of us have made any of this up. It’s just the lazy writing of corruption and cowardice and incompetence. Americans rolled out of their beds on Friday to news that Sens. Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander, and Cory Gardner—all possible swing votes—were all in agreement that there was no such thing as crime. Just as Donald Trump’s new favorite lawyer Alan Dershowitz instructed. The rest of the day was filled with the bad, illogical theater one has come to expect from this Republican Party. Sen. Murkowski voted against new witnesses and new evidence, even with Bolton revelation after Bolton revelation getting leaked to the public. Her statement on the matter should truly disabuse anyone of the belief that Lisa Murkowski is anything but a corrupt tool of a politician, with zero ethical convictions whatsoever.

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#RIPAmerica began trending on Twitter.

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And the cowards we have come to know under Donald Trump continued to fly their bright yellow colors.

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The Republican Party made their decision clear. Our democracy means far less to them than the promise of short-term power. As Friday wore down, we were left with murmurs of amendments and promises of votes to come.

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In the end, this was the takeaway for next week, when the United States Senate, led by the Republican Party, decide to set the precedent that a president can be corrupt as long as he—and they are definitely talking about a man—thinks it is in his best interests to be corrupt.

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But before the very end of Friday, Republican Senators all stepped up to write the first line of their obituaries, voting to nix witnesses and to block five amendments Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer put up.

Commiserate below in the comments. If you feel up to it.