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The scarlet “I” of IMPEACHMENT — 44 Comments

1. The problem is that I’m not sure that Trump looks at it that way. I don’t think he thinks it’s The Scarlet Letter. I think to him it’s The Red Badge of Courage. He thinks (and rightly so), that he keeps #WINNING, and that the Dems can’t defeat him through traditional means, so they have resorted to impeaching him over, well, being Donald Trump. So, to him, impeachment is a victory of sorts. It proves that he fought. And survived.

2. Chris:

   Neither Trump nor anyone other than Democratic partisans see it as a scarlet letter. In fact, the Democrats indict themselves, except in the eyes of their base.

3. Just my two cents, but I think it’s more likely to be a stain on this Congress, her as Speaker, Schiff (what a slimy little maggot!) and Nadler.

4. And if Trump wins reelection, and the Democrats retain control of the house, ole Nancy will make sure that Donald is “stained” by being the only president impeached twice (or three times, or five times.)

   KRB

5. yeah, like having spent decades in jail or having a criminal record has really tarnished Nelson Mandela’s legacy and reputation. seems more like badges of honor to me when the impeachment charges were so trivial , so artificial and under such shaky basis. It proves nothing but to americans any party with a majority in the house can impeach anyone they want for any phony tailored to the target reasons.

6. What was she babbling about? Time, poets, the Midnight Ride? Sounded like crazy code. Or maybe she’s under Trump’s control because I don’t see how anyone could think that this moment will be remembered as a triumph for our American system of governance.

7. Plus, Nadler looked like he was attending his own funeral. I know Pelosi insists this is a solemn moment but Nadler looked severely distressed

8. Was impeachment a greater “scarlet letter” for Bill Clinton than the rape accusation or vice versa?

   Mike

9. Pres. Trump has been astoundingly fortunate in the uniformly vicious incompetence of his adversaries across the aisle of our political divide. One and all, this collection of vacuous boobs, clowns, charlatans and pipsqueeks make his life a glide to success. Amazing, really.

10. Jerrold may want to lose the green sheen before the impeachment trial starts on TV.

11. They’re sending Schiff and Nadler to spearhead the impeachment in the Senate, after these two handled grossly biased “inquiries” in the House. Will we see Schiff repeat his fictional recap of the phone call?

12. Mike, my thoughts exactly. Of course Ole Bill is stained with Hillary.

13. Do Pelosi or Schiff or Nadler worry about having to spend eternity getting tortured in hell for the sins they have committed in their lifetime? Hope now is not too late for them to change their evil ways so they could join us in Heaven. I pray for their redemption.

14. Dave, I pray your prayers fail.

15. Kai, LOL, my prayer was as sincere as when Pelosi said she never wanted to impeach Trump but Trump left them no choice.

    Is it just me who thinks pelosi looks like skeletor from the 80s cartoon He-man?

16. Mad Pelosi, vacuous Schiff and nervous nelli Nadler are perfect examples of the “banality of evil”. With their “false witness” they condemn themselves. May God have mercy on their souls.

17. I can’t take this impeachment seriously. I think it is a total joke.

    Trump’s defense will turn this into a huge PR victory for Trump.

18. The very elaborateness with which Nancy P is handling the trappings accompanying this procedure only accentuates the triviality and venality at its core.

19. And as to the scarlet “I,” what Pelosi, et al., have done is to cheapen impeachment. There is not even the excuse of a federal felony charge.

20. Watch the video again. As you do, remind yourself that the grandest of Schiff’s plans was to impeach both Trump and Pence, so that Nancy Pelosi would then be President of the United States.

21. Gothamite on January 15, 2020 at 4:46 pm said:
    What was she babbling about? Time, poets, the Midnight Ride?
    * * *
    I think she might have been referring in some garbled way to Turley’s latest essay, in which he discusses the failure of the House to use time to their advantage, choosing instead to waste it in delaying the transmission of the Articles of Impeachment instead of letting subpoena challenges work their way through the courts.
    RTWT, of course.

    Cap’n Rusty: if I have nightmares tonight, it’s all your fault.

    https://jonathanturley.org/2020/01/14/pelosis-blunder-how-the-house-destroyed-its-own-case-for-impeachment/

    …
    Trials will usually last a fraction of the time of an investigation, but few investigations are as hurried or heedless as the House investigation was. The House wasted four months after the whistleblower complaint without issuing a subpoena to Bolton or Rudy Giuliani or others. Had it sought to compel such subpoenas, it would have had rulings from the courts by now. Indeed, it took only three months for the appeal over the Watergate tapes to be ruled on by the Supreme Court in the case of Richard Nixon.

    The Senate could set a generous period for the trial of three weeks. That is in addition to the four weeks the House wasted on the poorly conceived ploy by Pelosi. If the House is ready to present these witnesses, they can be heard. But if those witnesses are not ready to testify due to ongoing litigation, they will not be called and the Senate will proceed to its verdict. In that way, future Houses are now on notice that it is in their interest to complete their records before sending an impeachment to the Senate.

    It would send a message for future impeachments, as the author Herman Wouk wrote, “Remember this, if you can. There is nothing more precious than time. You probably feel you have a measureless supply of it, but you have not. Wasted hours destroy your life just as surely at the beginning as at the end, only in the end it becomes more obvious.” It is now obvious.

22. Chris J. Breisch on January 15, 2020 at 3:49 pm said:
    The problem is that I’m not sure that Trump looks at it that way. I don’t think he thinks it’s The Scarlet Letter. I think to him it’s The Red Badge of Courage.
    * * *
    That was kind of the point of Neo’s older post.

    I’ve noticed that many of the justifications for impeaching Trump involve some sort of gloating that now he must bear the shame of having been one of the few presidents in our history who have been impeached. In other words, they want him to wear for all time a scarlet “I”.

    But did it ever occur to them that it might look to a lot of people – even including historians of the future – like a scarlet “M” for “martyred”?

    If you impeach someone for trivial reasons, or based on lies, or both, how does that make the impeached person look bad?

    That bit about “wearing for all time” is what Pelosi meant when she said his impeachment “will last forever.”

    Some posts I’ve seen today remarked that, if (when) Trump is acquitted, then what she said is false, but that’s not correct. He will always have been impeached by the House, even if judged not guilty by the Senate.
    It just won’t mean a darn thing.

23. IMO, this bodes ill for the Democrats. How the managers can present their case to the Senate with any degree of confidence in changing any minds is amazing. Not a job for anyone with a desire to go down in history as an ethical person of high moral standards.

    I would like to see a full bore trial with witnesses for both sides. I believe that could expose the Democrats as the partisan, hate-filled hacks who attempted to nullify an election.

    On the other hand, spending too much time on the trial really is a waste of taxpayer money. Let both sides present their cases and take the vote. Get it over with as quickly as possible. Save time, money and unneeded drama. Get back to the people’s business.

24. Conservative Treehouse is, to say the least, not impressed.
    One commenter linked a Sean Davis tweet with a nifty graphic.
    Several mentioned “Pelosi and the Seven Dwarfs.”

    One linked a caution from Rand Paul — I don’t always agree with his policy positions, but I would never call him stupid.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/01/15/nancy-pelosi-announces-seven-house-impeachment-managers/

    https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1217611440040939521/photo/1

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/exclusive-sen-rand-paul-says-gop-will-shaft-trump-allow-democrat-witnesses-and-block-his-requests-warns-colleagues-not-to-commit-political-suicide/

    Asked about what he believes is the motivation for his Republican colleagues who are defecting on the issue, Sen. Paul said that some of them think it would be a “distraction” and an “uncontrollable scenario with a lack of decorum.”

    “That’s fine,” he said. “If they think that, then let’s have no witnesses. You can’t just have witnesses for one side and that is the point I am going to keep making both publicly and privately. It’s not fair to the president.”

    “I also think there will be a political price to pay for this, even for Republicans running in purple states, there are strong pro-Trump presences in every purple state. It may not be 50% of the vote, but it’s a third of the vote or more. My guess is that those voters will not be too happy with the Republicans who vote to allow witnesses for the Democrats, but sits there and watches as witnesses the president would like to bring get voted down. I keep telling them it isn’t a threat coming from me, it’s me looking at the politics of this and saying look — you will lose your election.”

    Sen. Paul concluded that he will continue to lead this fight and that his colleagues who ignore his advice may regret it when they face the consequences later.

    “This is a big deal, I don’t usually lecture my colleagues, but they need to understand that they cannot win an election if they become estranged from the Trump base or Republican base of the party,” he said.

    Paul wants to call Schiff as a witness, if there are any at all.
    Sundance observed that, by naming Schiff and Lofgren as House Managers, Pelosi may be trying to give them legal cover not to testify.
    “It does not seem accidental that Pelosi’s team of Lawfare advisors selected Adam Schiff and Zoe Lofgren who are two of the key people who helped construct the fraudulent whistle-blower complaint; and both of whom would be fact witnesses if the ‘whistle-blower’ is called into question. By announcing them as prosecutors for the House Pelosi is attempting to isolate them from testimony.”

    Any lawyers have an opinion?

25. Lindsey Graham has said that he will not allow hearsay evidence, and that no anonymous witnesses will be allowed to testify. That would seem to cut the witness list down to those few people who heard the phone call, in real time.

26. Lindsey Graham has said that he will not allow hearsay evidence, and that no anonymous witnesses will be allowed to testify.

    Is this (absurdly) intended to preclude the testimony of the whistleblower Eric Ciaramella, who has not yet been cross examined as to motive, interaction with Schiff and Co., Vindman, the ICIG and godonlyknows who else? ‘Cause if that’s not on Lindsey’s scope, he’s an idiot.

    Well yeah, I know he’s already an idiot — I mean more an idiot than already.

27. I’m not a lawyer but I don’t give a fuck if Pelosi is trying to shield Schiff from testifying: he testifies because he’s called to as a fact witness to the shenanigans with Ciaramella. They don’t get to pull some bullshit hide the pea game here.

28. It is no coincidence that Trump’s support as POTUS has increased during this sham impeachment exercise. We all expect him to be acquitted by the Senate. I suppose we will then go back to being outraged by… ummm… well I’m not sure what. Russia Election Meddling Collusion, dead. Impeachment, dead. Border, mostly secured, Crisis, dead. Economy, booming. China deal, signed. NAFTA, rewritten. The Democrats to do not lack for creativity when it comes to manufacturing a crisis, so we’ll see.

    They talk about how this impeachment, even if he is acquitted, will forever be a stain on Trump’s presidency. But I see no practical affect or impact to him and what he is doing. Clinton was similarly impeached and acquitted but other than mentioning that in relation to Trump being impeached it never really comes up.

    Is it too much to hope that this is all over by the end of the month?

29. What a sad bunch of malevolent clowns they are, and it would be hilarious, except that these are the people who are supposedly running the legislative branch, and making our laws.

    Oh, yeah. Our country is the best and steadiest of hands.

    Actually, between rambling, incoherent, about to loose her choppers Nancy, “where the hell am I?” Biden, and wild-haired Bernie, angrily flailing away and shouting like some crazy guy on a street corner in San Francisco, its looking more and more like the Democrats are doing a set up for a drop ’em off at “Happy, Happy Acres” commercial.

30. It feels to me as if we have reached a point where our political leaders — our “betters,” if you will — have demonstrated that they are not better. In fact, they are more venal, more self-centered, and more oblivious to the real work of their position in government, than we as voters can accept. But we are not electing them unless we live in their district. Nancy is doddering, Shiff is slimy, and Nadler is dishonest, but their district will continue to elect them until they assume room temperature. They are, in fact not a whole lot different than King George was in the mid 18th Century. You remember how that turned out. Must we use the same clumsy tool on this current crop of so-called legislators? To remind them who is boss and who pays their salary?

31. The really funny part is Pelosi is on video, recorded for all eternity, saying just a few short months ago that what she did is illegitimate.

32. So much for all of Pelosi’s phony sanctimony, her mumbling about how “sad, sad, sad” she was, how “prayerful” she was at this “somber” moment in the history of our Republic, how she was, oh, so reluctantly, forced into taking this act to Impeach a President who has committed horrrible, horrrible crimes.

    And, then, her and the Democrat’s whole sham collapsed, was belied by them staging, of all things, a giddy “signing ceremony” for the impeachment document, with celebratory pens to mark this happy, longed for event for all.

    What a crock!

33. I do not think that Neo’s “great” adjective applies either to Lady Macbeth or to Nancy Pelosi.

34. Trump impeached for investigating a corruption that biden blatantly admitted on tape while Clinton impeached for getting a blowjob from an intern and lied about it, who should be more ashamed?

35. That’s like saying Clinton’s impeachment was an indelible stain …

    I’ll start again as that didn’t come out …

    We’ll it’s off to lunch for me and the missus.

36. Aesop (or others), Turley is flirting with total Dem excommunication.
    Holy cow. Talk about stepping out of line. If he’s not careful The Man gonna come and take him away.

37. JimNorCal:

    You have broken the code regarding Turley. So sad about his suicide. After it happens, of course.

38. I always thought that Hillary Clinton would make a great Lady Macbeth. I can see her wandering the white house halls at night with a blue dress crying “out damned spot”.

39. Ray:

    We’ll have to agree to disagree. For me, it’s Pelosi all the way. Hillary has a self-satisfied and complacent air. Pelosi seems nervous and on edge to me, brittle.

    Although I doubt either of them is troubled by guilt. But then, Lady Macbeth didn’t seem to feel too guilty, either – except in her sleep.

40. JimNorCal:

    It’s my impression that Turley doesn’t care all that much. His history is as a libertarian. He seems to vote Democratic but I think of him as somewhat iconoclastic and not a party-line Democrat, and that’s been the case as long as I’ve known of him, which is probably at least five years.

41. If something lasts forever but it makes you look petty and stupid, the forever part is not a plus, Nancy.

42. Nancy sounded like advanced dementia is calling her.

43. So, due diligence and fiduciary responsibility are impeachable offenses. Welcome to the Twilight Fringe.

44. https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/01/16/as-impeachment-moves-from-house-to-senate-democrats-write-their-fate-with-their-words/

    Trump will not be forever impeached. Not only will he come through the process without impact to his presidency; he will somehow, at some point, be un-impeached. And his impeachers will end up with the peach hue slathered on their own faces.

    For the last three years, we have seen nothing but the downfall, sidelining, embarrassing exposure, and petering out from sheer vacuity of the assaults mounted against Trump, and the people behind them. You’d think folks would have learned by now: the trumpet blast of a fresh charge just means another paroxysm of hype, sound, and fury that will redound only against the charge’s commanders, and take out some hapless bit players along the way.

    A lot of people have learned that, from what I can tell. They see clearly that tilting at Trump means turning your lance on yourself – a seemingly unlikely feat, and yet it keeps happening, like a slapstick comedy sequence growing stale.

    Trump doesn’t do anything but not budge. He doesn’t have to. He’s not even in the scene most of the time; he’s off negotiating trade with the Chinese and rooting around in the federal budget for border wall money.

    The sequence is that the attackers crash into things of their own accord, and do themselves in by their own hands – whether their hands do the work now, or did it years ago, and it was mounting the attack on Trump that turned a spotlight on it.

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