The First Strictly-Partisan Impeachment in U.S. History
I don’t mind long titles, but if this review were to assign the appropriate adjectives to the word “coup” in the title, it would become longer than even I can accept. The coup should be designated “the Socialist/Democratic Party ‘Resistance’/DOJ-FBI Deep-State Bureaucratic/U.S. Mainstream Media Coup.”
Because of the active role of the media, U.S. Democrats have heard a steady, fire-hose diet of insults and name-calling aimed at President Trump for over three years now. They have not received reports of the many surprising political and economic achievements of the President. The media have no time for the complete story of what is going on. They have repeated their mendacities so many times about the alleged vices, crimes, immorality, corruption, dishonesty and depravity of the president that around half of the American public have come to believe, to assume, and to contend that the smears are really true. This applies equally to educated and sophisticated people who “don’t closely follow politics.”
I add this blog because of the important role played in the impeachment of President Trump by the Socialist/”Democratic” Party, the socialist “squad” in congress, and socialist advocacy in general in the U.S. House of Representatives.
From a moral standpoint, Donald J. Trump may be no less perfect than most other Americans. If you look at his record of accomplishments as U.S. President, however, you must assume that he has been far too busy as president to spend nights being driven around in police cars in pursuit of illicit personal relationships. Has he been less morally pure than the average American? There is no evidence that the many negative assumptions and prevarications of our mainstream media are true.
My candidate for the presidency in the Obama era, Mitt Romney, thinks President Trump is morally inferior, having labeled the President as a “phony, fake, and fraudulent con-man.” I am absolutely convinced that Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has retained moral purity and faithfulness to his one, admirable wife through his entire married life. He was also a model of civility in his comportment throughout the 2012 presidential campaign. Unfortunately, he was smeared by democrats as a “vulture capitalist” and many other such things; he put up little fight against their unfair and untrue denigration, and he lost in the election. President Trump, whose support was solicited by Romney, observed the nastiness to which Romney was subjected in that campaign and decided firmly and irrevocably that, should he run, he would not take such treatment passively. If he was a fighter before, the democrats transformed him into a warrior.
candidate and moral judge of President Trump.
Some of the president’s fights produce tweets that are distasteful and which I don’t particularly enjoy. True it is that, although many of his tweets are not strident, the President catches more flack for them than he deserves. But Pastor Jeffress of the First Baptist Church in Dallas made an important point about President Trump on Fox News. [1]) Jeffress emphasized that he did not vote for President Trump to be his pastor. Rather, he wanted him to be his president and, in working for the American people, to represent American values. President Trump does that admirably. Nor are Senator Romney’s moral complaints as appropriate for Trump as for many on the other side of the aisle, where Mitt often seems remarkably at home.
This would be a good place to mention an important letter regarding the impeachment, which President Trump sent to House Speaker Pelosi. That letter was smeared, as expected, by the perpetual, name-calling democrats as being an “unhinged rant.” But among the many valid points the letter made is an impressive list of Trump’s achievements as president. He sees many of those achievements as being the greatest in U.S. history. Probably a few of them may be only the second or third greatest achievements of their type since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Even honest democrats have to admit that the Trump economy is the strongest we have seen in the last half century.[2]
The Actors in the Coup
The Socialist/Democratic Party Resistance.
Interestingly, Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Schumer announced at the beginning of the Trump presidency that they would resist everything the president tried to do. That seemed quite natural to Trump haters. But for what purpose are representatives sent to Congress? What if the president tried to do something of actual benefit to the American people? What if he solved political problems with which numerous administrations have unsuccessfully struggled? What if he made all Americans better off? What if he enforced the laws? Should all of that be resisted? At least Mitt Romney on becoming a senator announced that he was going to speak out only about the things President Trump does that don’t meet Romney’s supernal moral standards. But Pelosi and Schumer demonstrated that they would resist everything President Trump might attempt.
Shortly after the impeachment, Pelosi insisted it wasn’t an action of hate. She averred that she prayed for the president. If she was publicly committed to resist everything the president does, is she then praying that her own negative, destructive efforts will be frustrated and go for naught? That doesn’t seem very likely. Perhaps she prays that he will immediately be taken up to heaven, as were the prophets Enoch and Elijah.
La Resistance usually relates to the activities of a nation’s patriots resisting an invading and occupying foreign power. But here in the United States it is a group of elite (if not intellectually so) politicians and bureaucrats determined to undermine and sabotage anything undertaken by a(n “illegitimate”) president who was actually elected by many millions of us “deplorables” in the electorate. When la resistance is undertaken by domestic forces that should actually be the loyal opposition, but who are trying to sabotage and destroy, one wonders when our discussion becomes one about the term sedition.
The Squad. Socialism also has to do with the arrival in congress after the 2018 elections of the self-proclaimed socialist “squad” of four congresswomen who, under the leadership of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, openly declare their advocacy of socialism and especially of the impeachment of the president. It seemed apparent that it was the pressure of the “squad” that pushed Speaker Pelosi into the decision to impeach the president. Pelosi understood the political hazards of impeachment and knew that it must be a bi-partisan exercise if it were to be legitimate. Observing the results of the impeachment, it is clear that the exercise is best described in terms expressed by President Trump.
What’s Behind the Impeachment?
The impeachment itself consists of only two articles. First, President Trump is found guilty of abuse of power. The “abuse” consisted of a telephone call to the new President of Ukraine. It was assumed that he called to offer a quid pro quo , viz., he would release promised military aid if an investigation into Vice President Biden and his son Hunter would be undertaken by the Ukraine.
When the President heard the quid pro quo charge, he immediately issued a transcript of the telephone call. The requested investigation related to former Vice President Biden’s son. Hunter, collecting somewhat more than a handsome income to be a member of a Ukrainian corporate board without any apparent qualifications. (Hunter Biden himself suggested in an interview played with some frequency on television that he had often enjoyed various benefits as a result of being the Vice President’s son.) President Trump knew very well that Ukraine had been a very corrupt country. His interest was in assuring that American aid would not be squandered through corrupt, politically-motivated payouts. When President Trump was informed by his staff that the new government could be trusted to clean up the corruption, he released the funds. Such military assistance was never granted at all under the Obama administration, which was willing to give these adversaries of Russia no more than some food and blankets.
It was not President Trump’s fault that a potentially spectacular instance of corruption happened to come from the former vice president of the United States. The President indicated that he was acting in the interests of the United States, being morally obligated to protect American taxpayers by assuring that their funds were not being fraudulently used for corrupt purposes. In my view, he was not simply seeking support for a potential political campaign. But the Democrats required no evidence as to the president’s motives, since they inferred he simply wanted to smear the former vice president and his son for electoral purposes.
Anyone who knows Trump can hardly imagine him fearing Joe Biden as a serious political opponent. It is hard to imagine that a nation of rational democrats could abuse one of their former political heros in his advanced years by actually selecting him as their presidential candidate.
Here we have another instance of psychological projection. Democrats had sought aid from the Russians and Ukrainians to sabotage the Trump political campaign and presidency. From their perspective, why shouldn’t Trump have done the same thing?
Trump stated that he applied no pressure to perform the investigation; he simply wanted Ukraine to do the right thing. President Zelensky said he felt no pressure in his communication with President Trump and U.S. military aid was released without any investigation from Kiev.
Of this affair, USA Today wrote about Biden’s interference in Ukraine when he was responsible for the firing of a minister Shokin who was investigating corruption in the firm that had hired Hunter Biden for its well-paid Board of Directors, even though Biden had no experience with Ukrainian business, the Ukrainian language, or the firm’s business. So one read in USA Today on October 3rd, 2019:
“Biden has boasted about his role in getting Shokin fired. During a 2018 speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, he said he withheld $1 billion in loan guarantees for Ukraine in order to force the government to address the problem with its top prosecutor.
“I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden said.
To me, this appears to be a quid pro quo — fire this investigating agent or you will not receive the promised assistance (of food and blankets).
No crimes were cited in the two articles of impeachment, since the Democrats could find no proof of any crime at all. The second article of impeachment was “obstruction of congress.” The congress had demanded an inordinately large amount of personal information from the president. This is not unusual for an obstreperous congress, and it has not been unusual for presidents to claim executive privilege and deny the request for unnecessary and potentially damaging personal and official information. What happens next in the conflict of the political powers is that the congress goes to the official referees between congress and the administration – the courts. Because congress was in a big hurry to get the impeachment done before too far into the 2020 election cycle, they did not go to the courts to try to get their subpoenas. So they then claimed that the president should be cited for “obstruction of congress.” News flash: congress is not a national dictatorship. In the division of powers the president cannot obstruct congress. A refusal to honor a court-issued subpoena (not a congress-issued subpoena) might obstruct justice. But one might ask, if the congress denies the president the traditional and legal executive privilege without recourse to the courts, should the congress be impeached? No one is above the law! Not even congress!
The DOJ/FBI
James Comey, former Director of the FBI, has been very busy lately trying to spin a recent report of Inspector General Horowitz on the DOJ/FBI surveillance of both Candidate and President Trump. The report found deep problems – corruption is the appropriate term – in the Comey team’s protection of presidential candidate and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. An alliance between the Clinton presidential campaign and the DOJ/FBI leadership initiated a spying operation against President Trump’s campaign, and later against the Trump presidency and administration. Their surveillance against Trump was enabled by the FBI operating under the aegis of the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court, which approved of the spying action because of the lies and the omissions supplied by the investigators. The Obama administration’s agents undertook activities involving a British spy, the Russians, and possibly also the former Ukranian administration[3] to surveil and smear the candidate, and later President Trump.
It is a comment on the Obama Administration that when emails were being exchanged between FBI officials Strzok and Page, it was mentioned that POTUS wanted to know everything they were doing in the FISA-spying of the Trump campaign. One can only hope that the investigations underway in the current DOJ under the leadership of AG Bill Barr will reveal the parties and agencies that were working together to spy on and undermine the president, both before and after the 2016 election.
Under the previous administration the FBI and the Department of Justice were led by dishonest partisans apparently lacking morals or conscience. Through their gift of projection, they first spied on the Trump campaign and solicited foreign assistance in their intervention, then they accused Trump and his team of what they themselves had been doing. This led to the Special Council of Robert Mueller and the report that failed to discover any coordination between the Trump campaign or presidency and the meddling Russians. Well, the Russians did indeed meddle, but it was with the Clinton campaign. It has been thoroughly investigated and demonstrated that they did not coordinate their meddling with Trump’s team.
When the Inspector General’s recent, lengthy report came out, Comey tried to take control of the narrative, claiming he had been exonerated by the report. That was explicitly and immediately denied by IG Horowitz. Then Comey tried to claim that he was surprised to learn of the “sloppy” work of the FBI. But the FBI work was certainly not mere carelessness; it was a deliberate, criminal effort to spy on and bring down President Trump. Former Director Comey then explained that he could not, at the head of this large organization, know what was going on numerous floors below where he sat. But that cannot be accepted! Ten floors down the agents had no clue at the time what the Director and his minions were doing to the integrity of their proud tradition. Comey and a relatively small number of the top FBI leadership were lying by commission and omission to the courts, and Comey signed the FISA warrants, not the folks ten floors down.
An outraged, abused and persecuted president of the United States wanted to know who these people were who were working so hard to bring him down. He is, as we have observed, a fighter. As President of the United States and Commander in Chief, he is the policymaker for our country’s foreign relations. The deep state, intellectual “elites” who bureaucratize foreign policy are not in charge. They are the consultants, perhaps, and analysts, and agents of our foreign policy, but President Trump is in charge. It is obvious that he would want to know what had happened to his candidacy for the presidency and to his administration after the 2016 election.
The “Deep State” Intelligence and Other Agencies
Wikipedia tell us there are 17 separate United States government intelligence agencies. They work separately and jointly to support the national security and foreign policy of the United States. I have every hope that Clapper, Brennen and Comey will receive the legal justice they richly deserve for their unlawful interventions in political affairs currently under criminal investigation.
I have not researched these agencies individually, but on the basis of the research I have done on bureaucracy and organizations generally, I can assure you that this number of agencies is larger than we need. If we had two or three bureaus, perhaps with five or six departments each, that should almost suffice. Such bureaucracies, of course, cannot be adequately overseen by the administration or the congress. The current intelligence agencies spend much money and employ many individuals – so many that they apparently must look for things to do. We have learned recently that they exist to assure the United States that a rogue president shall be reined in to keep from undermining our national security and destroying our country! Such is apparently the conversation of our civil servants.
I call for the immediate freeze on hiring federal civil servants in the United States, the consolidation of our agencies, and the geographic dispersion of the bureaucracy throughout the country.
The U.S. federal bureaucracy is far too large (See the book, Socialism: Origins, Expansion, Decline and the Attempted Revival in the United States on the issue of bureaucracy and the organization of the Obama Administration’s management of welfare policy, taxation, and the economy.) A hiring freeze should be in place for, perhaps, a decade or longer so that the agencies can shrink by attrition through retirements. There should be fewer agencies and they should be placed throughout the country rather than in proximity to Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Communications Media
President Trump has discredited the “fake news” of the mainstream news sources in the United States. Starting with journalism majors in U.S. universities, students are indoctrinated not only into socialism, but also into the notion that as bearers of “news,” they are morally obligated and privileged to convince the public of the virtues of socialism and the abuses of conservatives. For our faux journalists, every reportage is an opportunity to advocate for their cause. But President Trump’s favorite media targets, CNN and the New York Times, have most notoriously been leaders in the campaign to denigrate all things Trump and they are unafraid to bend, distort, and mutilate the truth in their continuous, ongoing smear.
Presently, 66% of Americans say most news media fail to perform in separating fact from opinion. As recently as 1984, only 42% of the populace expressed this conviction.[4] The level of confidence of America in the mainstream media has for some time been in continuous decline. The bias of the “news” sources is apparent, and it comes across as outright bigotry when President Trump is the topic of discussion.
All the forces for impeachment have worked together in the revolutionary spirit of Marx. Socialists have stirred themselves up to a fever pitch in their denunciations of Donald Trump. Perhaps if he had meekly and mildly refused to tweet about his political renunciation of the Democrats, he would have been less harshly and stridently assaulted by the media. But the loathing of the resistance was not really so much a result of anything done after the election as his having the audacity to win an election they all knew was already in the bag for the Democrats. I personally suspect that if he had been meek and civil, the democrats would merely have added adjectives such as “weak”, “feeble” and “lame” to their list of insults about him.
One hopes that in America’s political future impeachment will
not simply be added to the politician’s arsenal of weapons. But it would be so
easy for any opposition party with a majority in the House to find some
egregious offense, e.g., jaywalking
or using the wrong fork on a salad at a state banquet, summarily to impeach the
president.
[1]Fox News has been regularly smeared by democrats and the public media, but those who want socialistically uncensored news, Fox is its only cable news carrier. Another unbiased mainstream news source is the Wall Street Journal and its editorial page, where one finds the opinions which are not injected editorially into the rest of the paper. Most of the socialists’ political reporting is filled with bias.
[2] The statement on the strength of the Trump economy is anything but facetious. By way of contrast, I wrote extensively about the Obama economic disaster in Socialism: Origins, Expansion, Decline, and the Attempted Revival in the United States.
[3] Journalists have asserted falsely that Ukrainian interference in the Trump campaign and our election has been “debunked,” although Politico and the New York Times have reported on Ukraine’s election meddling. Which Democrat or democratically biased institution would seriously investigate Joe and Hunter Biden? The Ukrainian interference hasn’t been “debunked,” even if assertions have been made about Biden’s quid pro quo. See the Washington Examiner of December 20, 2019. As of publication, the referenced article is still on line.
[4] This is taken from a major report of January, 2018 from the Knight Foundation on the public’s eroding trust in the mainstream media. See GALLUP PODCAST, January 16, 2018, How Much Confidence Do Americans Have in the Media?
