Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Trump's people were coordinating with Russia long before he took office. Perhaps we have all forgotten that Jarod Kushner asked the Russian ambassador about using Russian embassy channels to communicate with Moscow before the inauguration. Trump's campaign was run by Manafort. Roger Stone is a criminal. Trump's National Security Advisor lied to the FBI, which is what really got Comey and Mueller going.
All three are the product of what the conservative movement and the Republican Party have become, fueled by demographic changes in the country, the end of the Cold War and technological changes in media. Gingrich was the avatar, though.
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Except it has not been proven that Trump’s people were coordinating regarding election interference with Russia. You can say it was suspected and this why Comey and Schiff put him under enhanced scrutiny. But you cannot say what you said in that first sentence above in regard to meddling in the 2016 election, because it’s still just an allegation.
To answer another post here, I think the issue with Schiff comes down to the fact that, as an ex-prosecutor, he’s a hammer ever in search of a nail. Trump is a shitball, so he takes it upon himself to chase everything, with an admitted intent to take Trump down. That is exhausting. It also has a huge stink of opportunism about it (the guy is on TV talk shows more than some hosts). So Schiff is clearly, partly, political. NTTAWWT. But it puts him in the box with other political people who’ve sought to take out presidents, like Gingrich, Scaife, Starr.
He has a much better case than Starr and Gingrich, of course. But even he knows, censure of Trump followed by his loss in an election is a more likely successful approach. But again, he’s a hammer, and he’s a lawyer, so He Knows Best.
Maybe Schiff has no choice. But he looks a lot more like Ahab than Robert Welch at the moment. Whether a man is guilty or not is not the sole decision in whether to prosecute. The feds don’t indict the terminally ill. A censure, which would rob Trump of the right to say he’s been acquitted and vindicated, may render him effectively terminally ill in terms of re-election. Maybe it’s better to just wait the ten months for his disease to take him out?*
But Schiff always knows best. He is a trial lawyer, a TV darling, and like Gingrich and Starr, he believes this president must be removed, and this is his big moment. In which he risks, and may succeed, in getting Trump re-elected.
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* The argument he needs to be impeached to avoid him stealing the next election is facile. Trump is in a reverse panopticon. If people are concerned about that, they should be impeaching Zuckerberg.
