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Obama ordered Drone Strikes on zones with a lot of civilians, it's not a maybe, he's definitely a war criminal.
21 Men Accuse Lincoln Project Co-Founder of Online Harassment and inappropriate sexual conduct
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Here's a riddle for you:
For years, we have been told that Trump's actions as president were illegal, but they couldn't prosecute him because of his position, the only recourse was the political process of impeachment. Now, Trump isn't the president, any immunity he had is gone, but they're still only using the political process of impeachment. If he committed crimes, and they intend to convict him, why are they not convicting him of criminal charges when nothing stands in their way?
It's a statement of disapproval from the top, and stops him running for office again.
Trump still can be prosecuted, and for all we know someone's looking at it right now. On the other hand, I don't think even if he were prosecuted he would be convicted, because people of his class have very expensive lawyers and too many owed favours to be taken down by anything but the most egregious crimes.
I suspect also there's an element that the political class don't want to set a precedent of being prosecuted in the courts after they've left office, either. There's a certain pragmatic case there, because politicians may need to take difficult decisions and should have some freedom to do so without persecution by their successors. On the other hand, there's a sense I have that it's just another means they make for themselves to be able to get away with stuff, on top of the benefits of expensive lawyers and owed favours.
You might have (somewhat of) a point if we weren't only 2 weeks past the inauguration. Criminal investigations take a bit longer than that.
Specifically to the impeachment, I definitely think it should go ahead for the sole reason to stop any last day shenanigans (I,e, coup) from happening. We were fortunate this time around because Trump was willing to slag off on anyone who slightly disagreed with him, which annoyed people on his side, the general populace and, mostly importantly, the army hierarchy. When he asked for a coup, he was denied
It’ll be a whole lot worse next time if someone is actually smart and charismatic was in the same position as Trump was
Fair, but I'll stand by my statements in the future if I'm wrong, feel free to mock me if that time times.
Well, to be fair, I would not be surprised at all if Trump was prosecuted for criminal charges with regards to his personal behavior. He should be prosecuted if he committed crimes against people, of which there are many accusations out there.
What I don't expect to happen is criminal charges for his conduct as president. There are certainly laws on the books to charge people for wrongs committed in their elected positions, and I don't think there's a case like that against Trump to make. Like, there are lots of examples of him suggesting illegal activity and being told "no, you can't do that", but then he didn't do the things. Ignorance of the law isn't a defense, but it's not a crime in itself either.
One might note the obvious open door is the Mueller report. DoJ stated guidelines that he should not put a recommendation that the president be charged even if the evidence were sufficient, leaving it very unclear what his professional opinion of the quality of the evidence is.
The other issue is that we know Trump destroyed White House communications that are supposed to be preserved (staffers having to tape back together letters he tore up, etc.) and messages were defined as confidential that arguably should not have been, potentially to conceal improper actions. If there is material in there which is damaging, it may merit prosecution. Whether the DoJ is interested in looking is another matter: I think Biden would rather move on, and again there's the reluctance to set precedent by investigating previous presidents.
Yes. Apparently, in Republican circles, the staggering ignorance of the president is not even grounds to think he's unfit for office.
Well, we have faith in the system. We've survived plenty of Democrats before Trump, and we'll survive more after.
Maybe. The problem - and probably my main objection to Trump - is his contempt for the system. Laws and systems have cracks; and often they work through conventions rather than strict rules. When tested, we often find some of these cracks and conventions are dangerous when exploited and in a worst case scenario, systems can be undermined and damaged. This really is the threat of populism: a president who breaks the law, but the system is afraid of the repercussions of punishing him for it.
It's one thing to say that he asked whether illegal things could be done and that is not per se illegal, but as a pattern of wider behaviour, Trump was a disturbing president. This includes waiving security for his family, dragging state apparatus into his attempts to dig dirt on his political opponents, overt cronyism, cack-handedly exposing intelligence for PR, firing inspectors overseeing executive function, musing about pardoning himself, directing government business to his profit-making enterprises etc. His rhetoric claiming powers he did not have can be sort of comical, except that this really is underlying authoritarianism; the way he undermined and encouraged attacks on state governors, and encouraged mobs at state and federal Capitols. This is an irony of Trump: all that fury about inattentive, unaccountable elites put in support of an inattentive member of the elite who busied himself destroying the means put in place to hold him to account. And his broad success in doing so cannot have gone unnoticed by a lot of other politicians who may be far less incompetent.
The thing is, history - including the last ten years (e.g. Poland, Hungary) shows that systems can be broken, and everyone who thinks things like "It couldn't happen here" gets proved wrong eventually. What you call "faith in the system" looks to many like complacency about or even complicity in its degradation.
I hate to just lazily repeat myself, but again, we've survived plenty of Democrats before and we'll survive more after. The Democratic Party is populists with contempt for the system, and have been for generations. And on multiple occasions, their contempt for the system and exploitation of cracks in the system have lead to changes that you might like and even I might like (think DACA). It's really not a problem that's going to end the nation any time soon.
You have to realise that vague whataboutery waffle on allegedly populist Democrats is just partisan blather and counts for nothing.
It's not that I think there is no issue about iffy executive orders, but it is a widely (ab)used system both parties have happily exploited. We've all sat through the mind-numbing tedium of each side complaining about the other's dubious executive orders and then doing it themselves when they take the presidency, and it has the defence that it's been going on so long without any critical failure that it suggests it's not a critical flaw. DACA was declared in plain sight, legally challenged (and may yet be shut down by the courts), and frankly could already have been shut down by Trump had his administration not been so blitheringly incompetent.
This is not the same thing as fundamentally facilitating corruption, and attacking systems of transparency and accountability to impede the ability of the public to scrutinise and judge what people within the government were doing. Stuff that Trump was all about engaging in, because he did not believe there should be impediments to his rule, up to and including (as events of Nov-Jan so clearly demonstrated) presidential elections.
Winning procedural fights on technical grounds for gains that are largely orthogonal to or sometimes against the interests of entrenched power is quite different from ginning up a mob to go fail at a putsch on behalf of a self-proclaimed billionaire incumbent.
Right, the biggest difference being the first is a thing that happened and the latter is not a thing that happened.
Why'd you have to go and let him know that someone noticed? Yeesh.
.... Even with your braindead notion that Trump is secretly a democrat. The Republicans voted for him because he was supposedly an outsider who would fight against "the system".
So Republicans are now the ones fighting for a functional government that runs smoothly and without corruption....
Pretty sure there's a nice bridge in Alaska for sale currently. You can even see it from Sarah Palin's house! You should look into it.