[anarchist23]

Trump has been trying to govern by impulse, on whim, for personal retribution, for profit, by decree ― as if he had been elected dictator. It doesn’t work, and the wheels are coming off the bus. After a week!

Impeachment is gaining ground because it is the only way to get him out, and because Republicans are already deserting this president in droves, and because the man is psychiatrically incapable of checking whether something is legal before he does it.

Impeachment is gaining ground because it’s so horribly clear that Trump is unfit for office. The grownups around Trump, even the most slavishly loyal ones, spend half their time trying to rein him in, but it can’t be done.

They spend the other half fielding frantic calls from Republican chieftains, business elites and foreign leaders. Trump did what? Poor Reince Priebus has finally attained the pinnacle of power, and it can’t be fun.

It is one thing to live in your own reality when you are a candidate and it’s just words. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time maybe even to get elected. But when you try to govern that way, there is a reality to reality—and reality pushes back.

One by one, Trump has decreed impulsive orders, un-vetted by legal, policy, or political staff, much less by serious planning. Almost immediately he is forced to walk them back by a combination of political and legal pressure—and by reality.

Unlike in the various dictatorships Trump admires, the complex skein of constitutional legal and political checks on tyranny in the United States are holding—just barely at times, but they are holding. And the more reckless Trump’s behavior, the stronger become the checks.

Only with his lunatic effort to selectively ban refugees (but not from terrorist-sending countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt where Trump has business interests) has Trump discovered that the American system has courts. It has courts. Imagine that.

The more unhinged he becomes, the less will conservative judges be the toadies to ordinary Republican policies that they too often have been. Anybody want to wager that the Supreme Court will be Trump’s whore?

In the past week, Republicans from Mitch McConnell on down have tripped over each other rejecting his view of Putin. They have ridiculed his screwball claim of massive voter fraud.

They are running for cover on how to kill ObamaCare without killing patients or Republican re-election hopes. This is actually complicated, and nuance is not Trump’s strong suit. Rep Tom McClintock of California spoke for many when he warned:

“We’d better be sure that we’re prepared to live with the market we’ve created” with repeal, said Rep. Tom McClintock. (R-Calif.)

“That’s going to be called Trumpcare. Republicans will own that lock, stock and barrel, and we’ll be judged in the election less than two years away.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, mocking Trump’s own nutty tweeting habits, sent out a tweet calling a trade war with Mexico “mucho sad.”

Trump’s own senior staff has had to pull him back from his ludicrous crusade against Mexico and Mexicans, where Trump forces the Mexican president to cancel an official visit one day, and spends an hour on the phone kissing up the next day.

Trump proposed to reinstate torture, but key Republican leaders killed that idea. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the Senate’s third ranking Republican said Wednesday that the ban on torture was settled law and the Republicans in Congress would oppose any reinstatement. Trump’s own defense secretary holds the same view. After blustering out his new torture policy, Trump meekly agreed to defer to his defense advisers.

All this in just a week! Now capped by federal judges starting to rein him in.

Two weeks ago, in this space, just based on what we witnessed during the transition, I wrote a piece calling for a citizens impeachment panel, as a shadow House Judiciary Committee, to assemble a dossier for a Trump impeachment, and a citizens’ campaign to create a public impeachment movement.

In the two weeks since then, Free Speech for People has launched a citizens’ campaign to impeach Trump. About 400,000 people have already signed the impeachment petition.

The bipartisan group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, (CREW) has been conducting a detailed investigation. Senior legal scholars associated with CREW have filed a detailed legal brief in their lawsuit, documenting the several ways Trump is in violation of the Emoluments Clause, which prohibits a president from profiting from the actions of foreign governments.

There are already plenty of other grounds for impeachment, including Trump’s putting his own business interests ahead of the country’s and his weird and opportunistic alliance with Vladimir Putin bordering on treason. A lesser-known law that goes beyond the Emoluments Clause is the STOCK Act of 2012, which explicitly prohibits the president and other officials from profiting from non-public knowledge.

Impeachment, of course, is a political as well as a legal process. The Founders designed it that way deliberately. But after just a week in office, not only has Trump been deserting the Constitution; his partisan allies are deserting him.

Despite his creepy weirdness, Republicans at first thought they could use Trump for Republican ends. But from his embrace of Putin to his sponsorship of a general trade war, this is no Republican. One can only imagine the alarm and horror being expressed by Republicans privately.

In 1984, the psychiatrist Otto Kernberg described a sickness known as Malignant Narcissism. Unlike ordinary narcissism, malignant narcissism was a severe pathology.

It was characterized by an absence of conscience, a pathological grandiosity and quest for power, and a sadistic joy in cruelty.

Given the sheer danger to the Republic as well as to the Republicans, Trump’s impeachment will happen. The only question is how grave a catastrophe America faces first.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the ... 65cbbcd09f

[Atlantis]

Trump has been trying to govern by impulse, on whim, for personal retribution, for profit, by decree ― as if he had been elected dictator. It doesn’t work, and the wheels are coming off the bus. After a week!

The people voted for an autocratic strong man, they shouldn't complain when they get one.

Trump's executive orders are orchestrated. They are purely symbolic to show his supporters that he is a man of action. The wall, the ban, etc., have no positive effect whatsoever, except making everybody hate America, of course. They will be dropped discreetly in 3 months time, when Putin will be directing his orange gorilla at the White House to get down to the real business of oil exploration. He needs the cash with the economy going down the drain.

[Suntzu]

Someone was asleep in civics class.

[layman]

If one thing will catch him out it's lying. Bill Clinton nearly got impeached for one stupid lie.

How long can trump help himself before he tells a big one?

[Suntzu]

Nearly my ass. There was never any danger.

[quetzalcoatl]

Nearly my ass. There was never any danger.

Agree. DJT's penchant for incessant and imaginative whoppers has already discounted in the public mind. The bar for impeachment will be extremely high now - it would have to be something that would dismay the ordinary Republican.

Democrats, if they have any sense at all (questionable), will not let themselves be involved in any movement to impeach Trump. The Republicans must not only own Trump and his policies, but they must also clean up any mess he causes. The GOP are the past masters in shifting blame, and they would dearly love to have the Democrats bear the brunt of any impeachment effort.

In real life this won't happen. The only plausible mechanism for removal will be the 25th Amendment. In that case, Pence and a majority of the cabinet would have to certify that Trump is unfit to serve. So, obviously this cannot happen either, absent a severe emotional or psychological meltdown (one that can't be hidden from the public).

[anarchist23]

If one thing will catch him out it's lying. Bill Clinton nearly got impeached for one stupid lie.
How long can trump help himself before he tells a big one?

Yes. He said, a week or so ago, that he has received loads of environmental awards. The reporters reaction was of disbelief.

[XogGyux]

People need to hold their pants up for a while now. We need to at the very least accept that this is our reality at the very least until midterm elections or even until next presidential election in 4 years. The worse that could happen would be a weak impeachment movement that not only fails to remove the orange stink out of the white house but also energizes the mass of stupidity that put him there to begin with.

[layman]

@anarchist23

Of course he lies non stop but I guess crowd sizes and awards are not considered serious and official enough. Conflating a blowjob with "sexual realations" apparently is ...

I think the difference is the context of the lie. Is it to congress, is it in an official capacity or to the press. I guess it's probably a technicality that will catch him out as he has no grasp of the detail.

[Beren]

Trump could be impeached for treason only. It wouldn't be the same as impeaching someone for lying about a blowjob in the Oval Office though. If you impeach the president for treason, you'd better go through with it, or you'll be finished.

[MistyTiger]

The people voted for an autocratic strong man, they shouldn't complain when they get one.

Some people voted for the jerk. He does not represent the will of the majority of Americans.

Trump's executive orders are orchestrated. They are purely symbolic to show his supporters that he is a man of action. The wall, the ban, etc., have no positive effect whatsoever, except making everybody hate America, of course. They will be dropped discreetly in 3 months time, when Putin will be directing his orange gorilla at the White House to get down to the real business of oil exploration. He needs the cash with the economy going down the drain.

His orders show that he thinks he is a big boy who does not need Congress to push him around and Constitution be damned! Without the Constitution, there would be no elections process though. He forgets that his authority comes from that ancient piece of parchment.

[ThankU4votingTrump]

If one thing will catch him out it's lying. Bill Clinton nearly got impeached for one stupid lie.

How long can trump help himself before he tells a big one?

I don´t picture Trump as being much of a fibber. Trump has proven to be a man of his word.

[Beren]

Trump has proven to be a man of his word.

You're right, his words mean nothing.

[Donna]

...impeachment...

*Deep state coup

[colliric]

If one thing will catch him out it's lying. Bill Clinton nearly got impeached for one stupid lie.

How long can trump help himself before he tells a big one?

Bill Clinton was Impeached. The word refers to the trial process itself, not the sentence.

"Impeached and prosecuted" is the term used when a sentence, such as removal from office, has been applied.

[colliric]

Also let's not have bad memories....

Bill was impeached not just because of one blowjob.

It was because of the location of that Blowjob(specifically in the Oval Office) and because he already had a history of sexual issues with women(he is after all a rapist) and a history of cheating on Hillary. A long history.

He was basically a "Sex rat" as we call them in Australia. Most employers would rightly consider what he did a sackable offence. Trump has yet to do anything that clearly constitutes a "sackable" offence. He's fibbed alot, but then fibs are usually rewarded as ingenious in todays society.

[Hindsite]

MistyTiger wrote:
Some people voted for the jerk. He does not represent the will of the majority of Americans.

His orders show that he thinks he is a big boy who does not need Congress to push him around and Constitution be damned! Without the Constitution, there would be no elections process though. He forgets that his authority comes from that ancient piece of parchment.

None of your liberal whining means a thing now. Trump is the President and Commander-in-Chief now because enough people like me believed in the same ideas he expressed in such an entertaining way. He showed me that he was a real man and a much better leader than Hillary Clinton proved to be with the disastrous international results we inherited from her term as Secretary of State. It will probably take more than a decade to correct all the damage she caused. However, I pray that God will help Trump turn this nation back to law and order and to the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution as our founding fathers meant it. I see him as a Trump of God sounding the warning to the nation and I pray that he executes that God given authority. Even though he may have not gotten the majority of the votes, it appears that God may have performed a miracle to put him in office. Therefore, I believe he will not be removed from office without another miracle of God. Satan and his minions will be vanquished.
HalleluYah.

[mikema63]

It's unlikely unless Dems somehow manage to retake Congress in 2018 and he does something relatively serious. A lie in and of itself wouldn't be enough to make it stick I think.

[Hindsite]

mikema63 wrote:
It's unlikely unless Dems somehow manage to retake Congress in 2018 and he does something relatively serious. A lie in and of itself wouldn't be enough to make it stick I think.

You think wrong. Just look at all the lies Qbama told as proof.

[Beren]

It's unlikely unless Dems somehow manage to retake Congress in 2018 and he does something relatively serious. A lie in and of itself wouldn't be enough to make it stick I think.

I could imagine situations in which Dems and Republicans could cooperate and impeach Trump together, I wonder if either the Dems or most Republicans prefer presidents with close Russian ties. It all depends on whether how much support Trump has within the GOP's base and among Congressional Republicans. If his support drops below a certain level, he becomes impeachable even by a Congress with a GOP majority.