Jonathan Turley: on the MSM ignoring/hiding Obamagate
It’s not easy to write clearly and succinctly about the outrages that have been going on for the past couple of years that have been given various inadequate nicknames: “Russiagate,” “Spygate,” and now – with an emphasis on the role of the previous administration – “Obamagate” or the more comprehensive “ObamaBidengate.”
Sometimes I feel overwhelmed. I’m not saying that to get sympathy, it’s just a statement of fact. It takes many hours to even follow the news each day, much less write about it and write about it clearly. The entire story so far is both horrifying and fascinating. So learning about it engenders several competing emotions at once: extreme interest and strong repulsion and outrage, a sort of approach-avoidance dilemma at reading about it at all.
Amidst the turmoil, I especially admire those who can write about it in a way that’s easy to understand, compact, and yet relatively comprehensive, knowing that it would take a several-volume book to cover it all. And it’s even better if that person is not just parroting the party line he or she wishes were true.
One of those rare people is Jonathan Turley – not a Trump fan, not a conservative, but someone who seems to be more than willing to face the truth. This piece by Turley points out how rare a trait that is. I suggest you read the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts:
For three years, many in the media have expressed horror at the notion of the Trump campaign colluding with Russia to influence the 2016 election. We know there was never credible evidence of such collusion. In recently released transcripts, a long list of Obama administration officials admitted they never saw any evidence of such Russian collusion. That included the testimony of Evelyn Farkas, a former White House adviser who was widely quoted by the media with her public plea for Congress to gather all of the evidence that she learned of as part of the Obama administration.
The media covered her concern that this evidence would be lost “if they found out how we knew what we knew” about Trump campaign officials “dealing with Russians.” Yet in her classified testimony under oath, she said she did not know anything. Farkas is now running for Congress in New York and highlighting her role in raising “alarm” over collusion. As much of the media blindly pushed this story, a worrying story unfolded over the use of federal power to investigate political opponents.
There is very little question that the response by the media to such a story would have been overwhelming if George Bush and his administration had targeted the Obama campaign figures with secret surveillance. That story would have been encompassing if it was learned that there was no direct evidence to justify the investigation and that the underlying allegation of Russian collusion was ultimately found to lack a credible basis.
But the motives of Obama administration officials are apparently not to be questioned. Indeed, back when candidate Donald Trump said the Obama administration placed his campaign officials under surveillance, the media universally mocked him. That statement was later proven to be true. The Obama administration used the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court to conduct surveillance of Trump campaign officials.
Yet none of this matters as the media remains fully invested in the original false allegations of collusion. If Obama administration officials were to be questioned now, the coverage and judgment of the media may be placed into question, as even this latest disclosure from the investigation of the unmasking request of Biden will not alter the media narrative.
Actually, nothing will alter the media narrative.
I don’t understand how the Media can thrive, when they have shown themselves to be untrustworthy.
Kurt Schlichter, a lawyer who writes for Townhall, has just posted a piece in which he expresses extreme skepticism that any Democrat will ever face any legal consequences for the worst political scandal in many a decade (“Forget about Seeing Any Justice for Obamagate”). It is not easy to dispute his conclusion.
I seriously get why you have a hard time. I can’t even get through a paragraph of reading about it, because by the time I get that far I’m about ready to throw whatever device I’m on through a wall. It just pisses me off to no end. The other part of it is that no one on the left even cares. Yes there are a few lone voices, like Taibbi. I was listening to a brief clip on Rogan this morning, and he was going into it, and his guest said she had heard a brutal take down about having to believe several giant conspiracy theories to get there, and frankly, she didn’t care. Which leads to my second point, the left has only one priority, and that’s BEAT BAD ORANGE MAN. They don’t care about anything else, because they see Trump as excessively evil, and the ends justify the means. So, it all feels really pointless to me. This was always a giant lie, and no one but the right cares. Same for the impeachment grounds, they explained Biden bragging about doing what they accused Trump of away, and they didn’t care. I also think this will lead to massive attempt to cheat in the election, and steal it by whatever means necessary. *heavy sigh*
For your convenience, the aforementioned clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2IFLHkidX4
SCOTTtheBADGER:
It’s pretty simple.
Their propaganda is relentless and pervasive in the sense that it is coordinated across the entire MSM. They are speaking to people whose sources of information are from that same MSM and from other people who read the same sources. Part of the propaganda is to denounce and even demonize other sources: “Oh, it’s just a right-wing zealot, so of course it’s a lie.”
The combination of the entire thing is very seductive and even convincing to a lot of people, apparently.
I never could understand how the countries in Europe, by the 1900’s, who were doing so well, with better communication, transportation and international trade yet, between their media and their governments, they did the unthinkable and went to war two times with various combinations of nations killing millions.
What the media did in Germany between the wars of convincing the people of the great need to come together and do the right thing for the good of the people was a prime example of the power of media working for socialists. I lived for three years in Germany in the 1960’s and I had some good conversations with some fine older Germans and almost every time they would say, “You know Hitler was terrible but he really did a good job for us in the 1930s until the war started and then things got real bad.”
For the media Obamagate never happened because the wonderful leader Obama could do no wrong, wrong never happened, so don’t tell us it did.
The liberal media love to love their socialist progressive leader Obama and they were even get behind good old liberal Hillary who was destined to carry on for Obama the Great. That leader worship for a strong leader, for the people, is still present in the party of the left however they sure came up empty this time with the old hound dog Joe Biden after culling their litter of curs.
I’ve come to the sad conclusion that the only thing that will stop the MSM relentless 24/7 hyperventilating hair-on-fire daily hysterics will be the return of a Democrat to the Oval Office–nothing short of that will do.
The GOP can control the House or Senate and will be attacked daily but the noise will not be as deafening.
Trump is not of their world–he’s not a lawyer–he’s not a professional politician–he never ran for or held public office and he will never be accepted by the political insiders of Washington DC.
He’s not one of them & he never will be.
The likes of Trump can not be allowed to stand, this can not happen again and a message must be sent to anyone else from the unannointed class to never do this again.
“Actually, nothing will alter the media narrative.”
If Trump gets re-elected, sustaining that narrative is going to pretty hard. I mean physically and emotionally if nothing else.
Mike
“You know Hitler was terrible but he really did a good job for us in the 1930s until the war started and then things got real bad.”
Actually, Hjalmar Schact did a good job for them. He didn’t join the Nazi Party until he felt compelled to in 1937, wasn’t implicated in any atrocities, and was in a concentration camp at war’s end. Growth in per capita product in Germany between 1913 and 1926 was nil, and betwixt and between there were periods of famine and ruinous inflation. That, apart from the humiliation of losing the war and of the provisions of Versailles. Per capita product reached its pre-Depressionary peak in 1928, about 15% higher than it was in 1913. Then the economy imploded over the next four years, with real per capita product falling by 18% and grisly levels of unemployment. That pretty much discredited the German political establishment. The ultimate authority in the country’s political life was the country’s president, the senile and refractory Paul von Hindenburg. Schact crafted an economic program which generated a 50% increase in per capita product over five years and managed to cure mass unemployment.
In foreign affairs, Hitler’s tactics managed to engineer the effective abrogation of the Versailles treaty (including and especially its disarmament provisions) and to arrange for the capture by Germany of every piece of Germanophone territory in Europe it would have been practical to attempt to incorporate and hold bar Danzig (a de facto German dependency by 1935), Memelland (with a five digit population, seized without incident in March 1939), and the northerly portion of South Tyrol (which had a population of < 200,000 and was held by ally Italy).
Germany treated its Jewish population shamefully during those five years, but it had not slaughtered them. German Jews were not imprisoned. More than 70% of them were able to emigrate between January 1933 and September 1939.
You want to maintain the legitimacy of democratic institutions, it helps to have a political class which can perform certain tasks. That the Weimar Republic did not have.
Democrats are the Anti American, pro China party.
Oh, 1939, that’s when the T4 program was initiated in Germany. Kind of sucked to be them, and that was not the fault of the Weimar Republic or that democratic institution. Something about an underlying philosophy or moral outlook. They got around to the Jews and others later.
https://www.britannica.com/event/T4-Program
I know what would alter the media narrative- a non-leftist party that was actually interested in altering it.
It is astonishing that the Republican party has often declined to even stop giving the leftist-controlled NPR huge sums of money. My God why? There is no rational reason why conservatives should be forced to subsidize leftist propaganda by what is supposedly our own party, but yes we are. They never even bother to insist that actual conservatives get air time.
Even worse, why are we forced to subsidize other leftist-controlled propaganda organs like CNN- or even lately ESPN- by not being allowed to pick cable channels a-la-carte, as I’ve seen proposed several times.
Yet even more worse, why was a Mexican billionaire allowed to subsidize the New York Times, quite possibly saving it from bankruptcy? Why is the US government so indifferent to foreign influence of the American public discourse?
Know why? Because the geee ohh peee and its globalist establishment simply hasn’t been interested in any of that, because it’s quite happy with the media landscape as it is, which never questions anything they really care about, which is globalism. And the left doesn’t like America or Americans anyway, and can be counted upon to side with our enemies at every chance.
Know what else? Despite all these advantages, these folks still couldn’t stop Trump. That should give everyone hope, even if the MSM never stops shrieking. Reality doesn’t go away because these folks have stopped believing in it, and don’t want to tell their audiences about it- and reality always gets a vote.
Regarding what to call it, I was tired of everythingGATE years ago, but I like “Obamagate” in this instance because of what remains when one removes the first 3 and final 2 letters.
You cannot spell “Obamagate” without, “MAGA.”
Bill Serra,
I agree with your assessment. That goes a long way to explaining the prosperity of the ’90s*. Bill Clinton was President and the media wanted him to succeed and Gingrich and a Republican lead House wanted to keep Clinton from moving the country Left. So even when Clinton went along with pro-incarceration measures and limits to welfare the media mostly gave him a pass because they wanted him to succeed.
*Along with the happy coincidence of the rise of the dotcom economy.
Art Deco ~
You are right about what happened however Herr Hitler raised his right arm up and saluted der Volk and they saluted him back, der Volk love to honer the leader who will move them Vorwärts. And that’s what the left media want.
Xennady,
Agreed. The GOP is fairly gosh awful and has been for decades. Republicans have benefited from Individuals who embraced their party; Reagan, Limbaugh, Gingrich, Trump… But the party itself is feckless.
Feckless: missing or lacking a sufficient quantity of feck. Without feck.
The Feckless Old Party.
FOP.
Fitting.
About Feck, perhaps as the next few months play out someone will figure out how to draw a line in the sand. Texans understand that since the Alamo is our high holy place but how do we draw a line in the internet, media, sand? Just asking and thank you.
neo on May 18, 2020 at 4:45 pm said:
…
The combination of the entire thing is very seductive and even convincing to a lot of people, apparently.
* * *
Turley also thinks it may not be working.
https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/18/bobo-the-clowns-revenge-how-the-media-is-reelecting-donald-trump/
Xennady on May 18, 2020 at 8:06 pm said:
…
It is astonishing that the Republican party has often declined to even stop giving the leftist-controlled NPR huge sums of money.
* * *
We have learned that, sadly, many Republican politicians really are conservative-in-name-only, and are mostly on-board with Democrat-cum-leftist policies.
How many Republicans, like their Democrat colleagues, are owned by the Chinese?
https://www.conservativedailynews.com/2020/05/pbs-stations-that-received-millions-in-federal-funds-partnered-with-chinese-foreign-agent-on-pro-beijing-film/#comment-674421
Rufus – Agreed on the Feckless Old Party.
feck
n. Power; force; strength; vigor; use; value.
n. Space; quantity; number: as, what feck of ground (how much land)? what feck o’ folk (how many people)?
n. The greatest part or number; the main part: as, the feck of a region.
“Feckless” most often connotes “powerless” or “weakness.”
The Democrats, on the other hand are generally ruthless.
ruth
n. Compassion or pity for another.
n. Sorrow or misery about one’s own misdeeds or flaws.
n. Sorrow; misery; grief.
obaMAGAte does have a certain appeal.
I think we actually dodged a progressive bullet in November four years ago and did not continue the Obama Regime and it brought all the sad unhappy people who lost the legacy of their leader together including the entrenched in Washington and they thought they could topple the man with funny orange hair and get along with Pence for a bit. I heard this was passed around with a lot of old time Republican leadership in Dallas and other places. Get the nut job out of there and get back to business as usual.
Who knew, Trump could be Trump and out play them this far and we are entering the starting gate for a race he might well win. They played all the cards they had and at the end came up with the Virus card and once more this last ditch play might put them under.
The self-appointed job of the media is to sink Trump at all costs, including driving the economy into the ground, and protect the sacred legacy of the Obama.
More from Turley:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/05/18/michael-flynn-jonathan-turley-judge-sullivan-fbi-column/5212869002/
Maybe we are seeing some of that progressive moral evolution, though: in the old days, an unpopular criminal defendant released by the prosecutors or courts was dealt with in more violent ways than having a judge look for excuses to send him to jail.
BTW, the USA Today post by Turley linked to an opposing article by Barbara McQuade that demonstrates the uphill battle imposed on the Right.
You can check it yourself to see the spin.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/05/18/michael-flynn-case-tests-justice-system-independence-column/5204400002/
Barr declares Biden and Obama off-limits.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2020/05/18/attorney-general-barr-just-made-major-news-on-obamagate-youll-want-to-sit-down-for-this-n399988
Andrew McCarthy addresses Barr’s remarks, and is usual lucid and convincing.
I generally agree with him.
However, his final sentence undercuts the entirety of his preceding arguments.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/attorney-general-barr-remarks-on-obama-and-biden-make-an-important-point/
Forestalling that well-founded worry is one of the best reasons for prosecuting the political perps in whatever ways possible.
It is also why President Trump is running his own operation outside the DOJ, because he knows that public opinion is the only thing that will punish behavior that is abusive but not illegal, and unless he raises a ruckus the media (and congress, including sadly a number of Republicans) will ignore it all.
McCarthy calls that out here:
Xennady, to your list of MSM outlets coddled by the GOP brass, why not add the WaPo?
Did any GOP wheel beef about the lack of anti-trust Dept. interest, in the purchase by the world’s richest man, of one of the country’s most influential papers?
Why wasn’t that buy seen, as a bid to build horizontal oligopoly?
Old Texan:
I was thinking along the same lines about this shutdown. How did so many people get duped by the Fake News?
Exquisite timing, sell the story and then follow the disaster in the mainstream media. Then next few weeks will play out and we will see what happens, In my town here in Texas with 60,000 people within ten mies of the center we have had 20 cases, 15 recovered and 0 deaths and we have a lot of older people. Is this just a bad case of flue, the next few months will tell the story.
Our town has been mostly open for several weeks and we seem to b all right.
Another thing the media has shown no interest in: why were Treasury officials unmasking General Flynn?
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/05/obamas-treasury-department-spied-on-trump-associates.php
And why is Sullivan allowing this circus to continue?
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/18/absolutely-nuts-court-appointed-amicus-prosecutor-requests-briefing-schedule-oral-arguments-and-possible-witness-fact-finding-in-flynn-case/
“the left has only one priority, and that’s BEAT BAD ORANGE MAN. They don’t care about anything else, because they see Trump as excessively evil, and the ends justify the means.” Tom
The left’s sole priority is gaining enough control that their power will be incontestable.
The ideologues on the left solely care about their ideology.
Leftist ideologues hate Trump because they see him as the foremost impediment to their goals.
Liberal useful idiots hate Trump because its “the right thing to do”.
“The ends justifying the means” has become the definitive ‘principle’ on the left.
Hate blinds people and those on the left are now so blinded by hate that they are incapable of even considering what the predictable results and consequences will be of the path they are embarked upon.
It’s worse than that.
Out of US, the Obamagate doesn’t even exist. People never heard of it, and the Russian collusion was real but Trump was too powerful to pay for his crimes.
That’s the story both in conservative and leftist newspapers. Why? Because they often use Press Agencies to get the news from foreign countries, including US.
The problem now is way worse than MSM. The problem is that Press Agencies, that used to be neutral and just report the facts, without political bias, have become completely politicized.
This started a few years ago, after Matti Friedman published an article called ‘the most important story in earth’
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-insider-guide
After that, Press Agencies started to enforce confidentiality agreements in their employees. Right now, Press Agencies have become opaque, politicized and corrupt propaganda machines.
How many Republicans, like their Democrat colleagues, are owned by the Chinese?
And how come that question never ever gets asked about either set of them?
I remember reading many years ago in the National Review an article highlighting just how much money Saudi Arabia spread around in DC to ensure its interests were protected. I’m pretty sure China has them beat by an order of magnitude or two.
But crickets.
Why doth treason never prosper, what’s the reason? Because if it prospers none dare call it treason.
Xennady, to your list of MSM outlets coddled by the GOP brass, why not add the WaPo?
No doubt Jeff Bezos’s blog is pretty coddled, but I’m not sure if I’d call his purchase an anti-trust violation.
But since he has plenty of money to spend on lobbyists and lawyers, of course he was allowed to do whatever he wanted.
I expect the only rich person right now who wouldn’t be allowed to buy a high profile paper or start a cable news network would be Donald Trump, because OrangeManBad.
“…shamefully…”
I guess that depends on how one defines “shamefully”.
(E.g., might being brutalized be defined as “shameful”?)
“…not imprisoned…”
I guess that depends on how one defines “imprisoned”.
(E.g., might being thrown in Dachau—which was a concentration camp, and therefore not a prison?—be considered “not being imprisoned”?)
“…More than 70% of them were able to emigrate between January 1933 and September 1939….”
I guess that depends on how one defines “were able to”.
(E.g., is being forced out of one’s job, hope and future considered “being able to”?)
(Oh, and the other, um, less than 30%?…)
File under: Bizarre
Actually, nothing will alter the media narrative. A 50% execution rate would do wonders for public opinion and the narrative.
Geofrey,
I agree 100% with everything you said, and I think Trump is even worse for them. Unlike any of the other presidential candidates that were on the stage in 2016, Trump is actually implementing policies and appointing judges who undermine their cause. None of the rest of them could have done it, because they would have caved to the pressure. Trump either thrives on it, or just plain and simply doesn’t give a sh!t about it. He also bates them into pulling their masks off. I’m one of those Never Trumpers who has come around. I will be voting for him this election.
File under: Bizarre
I’ll file yours under ‘Willful and Malicious Absence of Reading Comprehension”
Barry Meislin:
You have found another example of the Art Deco dictionary in action, and of course when readers find the use of the dictionary “interesting” it is of course the problem of the reader not the author.
Willful? Moi?
Malicious? Oh undoubtedly! Absolutely!!
And if anyone’s less than convinced, I insist—with all the maliciousity that I can mustard—that words do have meanings. At least sometimes….
(To be fair, I really do think we should call upon Humpty Dumpty to adjudicate here…
Forthwith!!)
….In other gnus, here’s a Public Service Announcement (via Mollie Hemingway):
https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/status/1262420352451465216
It’s a Clarence Thomas documentary, whereupon we find the Great Man scratching his head when contemplating the esteemed—oh, and honorable, yes, honorable!—senator from Delaware….
Related (and important) on what the author of the piece labels “Resistance Journalism”
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/18/ben-smiths-nyt-critique-of-ronan-farrow-describes-a-toxic-corrosive-and-still-vibrant-trump-era-pathology-resistance-journalism/
(Also via Mollie Hemingway)
…while Lee Smith links to a lawyer with a remarkable and articulate legal intelligence, of whom I never heard (not that that means a whole lot), who is addressing, with extraordinary insight and clarity, the issue of Michael Flynn’s long and contrived prosecution—and his continued persecution by the Obama camp.
Here’s her twitter feed (after scrolling down a bit, you’ll find links to her posts at “The Federalist” site over the past several months):
https://twitter.com/McAdooGordon
“Related (and important) on what the author of the piece labels “Resistance Journalism””
Yeah, but why is the underlying target/example Ronan Farrow? There’s a hundred other more high-profile media figures who pedaled the Russian collusion hoax to be written about. Why use Farrow?
I think it’s because he’s most known for his reporting on sexual assault/harassment cover ups and that kind of reporting needs to be undermined to protect Biden.
Mike
No, you’re wrong. (You’re very wrong) [no, wait; I’m hearing JC Superstar before the Judas betrayal in my mind.]
Actually, nothing will alter the media narrative.
You might not be correct – indictments of Dem criminals may change the narrative.
And Trump mocking their Fake News effectively will help.
No indictments, no crimes, no Dem media changes.
Indictments after October are discounted by 95%.
I think that Farrow is being focused upon here for several reasons.
– He’s a very prominent representative of the phenomenon (the rot?).
– On the other hand, from what I’ve been able to follow, is also not hyper-extreme. That is, if I’ve understood things correctly, he has changed direction in the past, somewhat, and admitted fault (all things being relative).
(And might this be a first step in the “rehabilitation” of Woody Allen? Hmmm, no, didn’t think so….)
Interesting, though, that you mention (poor?) Harvey Weinstein. What are the chances he’s ruing the day he decided to head for Hollywood and instead wished he’d decided become a politician and even—perhaps—had run for president!… Fateful choices, Harve!
NPR (or as I call it, “National Omertà Radio”) this morning did not even cover the President’s announcement that he has been taking Hydroxychloroquine (sp?). I expected them to roundly mock his decision, but instead they burIed it, which must mean they fear it! They don’t want to let such a huge tiger out of the bag, I suppose! Imagine if it is true that HQL works and is being widely used, and the MSM guardians allow it to become known!!
But they are riding the State Department IG firing story hard! They had an Obama Government Ethics Secretary (Jesus wept) on that made a mockery of any objectivity in his answer to the host’s questions!
Lt. Gen Flynn’s lawyer Sidney Powell tweets just now: #BREAKING Team Flynn has just delivered to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit a Petition for Writ of Mandamus to correct Judge Sullivan’s unauthorized actions.
https://mobile.twitter.com/SidneyPowell1/status/1262802060132651009
Godspeed, Team Flynn.
THIS is why I despise, detest, and distrust the media. I don’t know if the media are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Dem Party, or if it’s the other way round, but it’s CLEAR that both are in cahoots.
So have the wheel’s fallen off the wagon yet?
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/phone-calls-between-quid-pro-joe-biden-and-ukraines-poroshenko-leak-explicitly-details
https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/19/breaking-declassified-susan-rice-email-confirms-michael-flynn-was-personally-targeted-in-oval-office-meeting/
(Truth is, they fell off the—ethical—wagon a long time ago…. Probably kept on by a blatantly dishonest group of moral imbeciles in high places and a furiously spinning MSCM. Well, they’re gonna have to “up” their game now for sure… But can they spin any more furiously than they already are?)
“the media are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Dem Party,” — sort of.
The exact same college
educationindoctrination fills the media college educated reporters heads as most Dems.Colleges hate pro-life Reps & Christians & Capitalism, and indoctrinate their students to do the same. Most who want comfy lives accept it … and like Winston in 1984, they start to believe it.
faux-religiously.
Farrow (cont.).
Things seem to have taken a rather entertaining twist:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/matt-lauer-ronan-farrow-criticism
Xennady, if Bezos’ purchase of the WaPo isn’t an anti-trust violation, then those who wrote those laws were living in Dream World.
I share the Media Shall never change pessimism of our host completely. They exist to promote and propagandise for “Progressive” tyranny to “fundamentally transform” the USA. All must bow as subjects Ruled.
However, indulge me in an idea worthy of a quick story to sketch out the next two years.
Since Barr will not prosecute Obama or Biden, and since no justice would be served by the premature end of investigations, but Trump’s possible defeat in November would seal this, Trump must soon and quickly declare a Special Independent Counsel to investigate Obamagate. This would ensure the continuation of the investigation.
Of course, the Left Media would howl – but Team Trump can simply quote all the lying media talking points that are fair and reasonable, simply substituting Trump-Russia with Obama and henchmen versus Trump and staffers and family.
Now, suppose this fair and balanced approach to justice gets not only Trump re-elected but a Republican win of the House majority. This return to right reason opens up further possibilities.
Tonight, I listened to a Mark Levin replacement host, Dan Valdez. In the first hour, he recapitulated the debate on the question of post-facto impeachment. Early state constitutions had this provision quite explicitly, and our federal Constitution can be read to contain it by history and implication.
That is, it is not merely for removing the guilty from High Office but for holding such ex-office holders to political account for other wrongdoing while once in office. How? Banning the accused from ever holding federal jobs or offices. (Naturally, contesting this would quickly get resolved at the SCOTUS level.)
And, of course, this pathway builds strength during 2021, while knowledge of the Obamunist Deep State coup spreads outside of the lying media precincts, and becomes popular against their force of re-education propaganda.
Pressure builds. Congress prepares to pursue this just remedy because it was ONLY(hah!) a soft coup, not a military or bloody one.
At some point, Trump exercises noblesse oblige – the People are going to get widely educated on Obama’s perfidies and betrayal of oath, subversion of Rule of Law through mass impeachment back to IRS Director Lois Lerner who corrupted our government to stop Tea Party’s from organising as tax deductible issue education organisations.
So will Never Trumpers learn, finally. Truth will prevail, it appears. Thus, second term President Trump reverses course and fires the Special Prosecutor, to let this healing and revealing educational process go forth with long hearings and open investigations, completely unlike the Obamunist show trials by that Piece of Schiff. Post office impeachment to turn the corrupt political culture around? Why, yes.
(Maybe. Kurt Schlichter could write the novel.)
OK. Thank you for letting me share my little fairy tale.
From Turley:
The fact is that Trump has a curious record: He has been repeatedly (and correctly) chastised for untrue statements, and yet he has one of the best records for actually keeping campaign promises — the crackdown on immigration, building of the border wall, pro-life policies and appointments, selection of conservative jurists, tax cuts, regulation rollbacks, opening up areas to oil drilling.
It’s a standard Dem talking point that Trump lies; here it’s more nuanced “untrue statements” – while he’s actually keeping campaign promises.
Most Dems have trouble mentioning any Trump untruths that are “worth mentioning”.
Here’s an idea – when some Dem attacks Trump, just claim that they hate him for keeping his promises, or trying to. As listed above:
1) against unlimited immigration,
2) building the Wall,
3) pro-life policies and appointments,
4) conservative judges,
5) tax cuts,
6) deregulation,
7) more oil drilling.
Ask (challenge?) Lib friends which policies they really hate.
@Ymarsakar:
You said,
Yeah, but you’re imagining the bad guys getting the guillotine. That’s not likely. The good guys are functionally outnumbered and strategically outmaneuvered; and on top of that, they’re the good guys and tend to act like it. So who’s most likely to get executed?
This is a little like the debate between Sorab Ahmari and David French a while back, about what Ahmari called “David French-ism.” Ahmari expressed exasperation at how French seemed too polite with Leftists, too unenthusiastic about being as violently hostile to the Left as they are to us. But French noted that a majority even of those who self-identify as Jews and Christians can’t successfully be convinced to faithfully practice Judeo-Christian morality. What hope, then, was there that the power of the state, if used to enforce some consistent worldview today, would enforce the Judeo-Christian one?
If 50% of American schoolkids were educated in anti-socialism-oriented Classical Education private- and home-schools for the next 50 years, taught the classical canon from Moses and Aristotle through Cicero and Seneca, through Maimonides and Aquinas, and up to Montesquieu and Burke and the Founding Fathers, and taught to be able to distinguish the Persian, Punic, and Peloponnesian Wars off the tops of their heads, and were sufficiently conversant in the Bible to at least get the overall storyline, you could then perhaps risk a civil war featuring a purge of Leftists…assuming that all this classical revival didn’t have the effect of convincing you that purges-as-such were immoral or imprudent!
But at the present time, in the present culture? It would be the Leftists doing the purging, I fear. There are more than enough of them; the general population is sufficiently propagandized so as to be sympathetic with them, violence is entirely consistent with their worldview, and the competing worldview mostly comes from a tradition famous for longsuffering faithfulness during persecution and extreme reticence about doing anything that could be mistaken for persecuting.
So, Adam Schiff may merit being decently hanged, but I don’t look for it. Those who believe in a Final Judgment may rest easy that he’ll get his, same as the rest of us. But probably no real justice, before then.
This is a little like the debate between Sorab Ahmari and David French a while back,
Ahmari was being charitable with French, and treating him as if he had some motor other than vanity. The NeverTrump residue has tended to make the case for the sort of abuses the security state has engaged in, or pretended it wasn’t happening. That should be sufficient to discredit the muh-principles crowd.
R.C.
True, but it seems to me that Trump, with his essentially decent basic instincts, and seeming inability to shrink from not only standing his ground but assertively counter-attacking is a candidate for Orwell’s maxim that,
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
(Though I would substitute “…ready to do violence…” with, perhaps, “…ready to stand one’s ground…” against the intellectual, social and political thugs and bullies of the Left.)…
…and as such he could well serve as an inspiration to all decent and concerned citizens (who given the current levels of Democratic Party corruption and tyrannical behavior should probably come to the conclusion that “sleeping peaceably at night” is no longer really an option).
@Art Deco,
I don’t know David French’s motives, and I know someone could easily interpret my own words or actions uncharitably to ascribe bad motives to me. (Heck, any Leftist would label me twenty different kinds of bigot on the basis of opinions I arrived at by sober reasoning, begrudgingly, and in the teeth of my own emotional resistance to them!) So I’m reticent to indulge in too much mind-reading.
I hesitated to mention the Ahmari-French thing precisely because it might divert attention from my point towards that earlier incident. But since my use of that example has provoked comment, I’ll add my own: I think French’s opposition to Trump, when the alternative was Hillary, was ridiculous…and inadequately explained by his attempts at justification. It struck me the way Nehemiah or Ezra might have been struck by the haughtiness of an exiled Jew who was too proud to return to Jerusalem because the man who made it possible, Cyrus, was a pagan. (Not that I’m Nehemiah or Ezra.)
Still, in spite of that, French still seems to be on our side vis-a-vis how the culture and the laws ought to change. For that reason I put him in a different category from Jennifer Rubin and Bill Kristol, who turned almost in the middle of a sentence from lauding conservative cultural/legal desiderata to excoriating them as barbarous and slandering all those who supported them (their former comrades). For me, an obtuse opinion about the optimal tactics for achieving our strategic goals ain’t half so bad as holding opposite goals; and even that ain’t half so bad as reacting to a boorish ally by irrationally reversing all your goals!
I hold out some hope, therefore, that French will belatedly come around, at least as regards Obamagate and whoever eventually succeeds Trump as the prime-mover for advancing conservative policy. (I’ve no expectation that he’ll make peace with the personality of Trump, himself.)
@Barry Meislin,
I agree wholly with what you said there. There are probably cases in which Trump’s big mouth has gotten him in trouble or damaged his own side. But for the most part his boldness and his ability to constantly draw attention to himself have shown us what must be done to drown out the gaslighting-narratives spun by the Left. Let us hope that the rest of us can learn the knack of strategically dominating the conversation the way Trump has.