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Donald Trump is his own worst enemy. He has a way of expressing things that sometimes makes people squirm. If he could just zip it occasionally, he’d make his own life much easier. But that is not who he is. He is larger than life and let’s face it, nobody takes on the “establishment” without treading on some toes and getting battered and bruised in return.
While I can appreciate that Democrats weren’t delighted about losing the election, their reaction both at the time and since has been nothing short of appalling. If they were losing sportspeople, they’d be banned for life – and quite rightly so.
Having successfully lost the election, their goal has been to bring Trump down by whatever means possible. First, it was Russian collusion and now, it’s impeachment for “asking a foreign power to get dirt on a political opponent” – Schiff’s words – not Trump’s.
The impeachment of a president of the United States is no minor matter; indeed, it would be reasonable to expect that any impeachment proceedings against a president (or for that matter any public official) would need to meet at the very least the same legal and constitutional criteria as any allegation against any citizen. It could successfully, logically and probably constitutionally, be argued that given the status to the nation of a president and the implications of such proceedings, the criteria might even need to reach an even higher bar than for average citizens.
That’s not to suggest that anybody should be above the law. But impeachment proceedings against a president raise serious issues. There are national, international, long and short term ramifications not only related to whatever the outcome might ultimately be, but also to the processes and people involved. There is a huge financial cost and the time it takes to investigate has not only a financial cost, but (as we have seen) stops work on other, arguably more important matters.
The reputational damage to the president and the political integrity as a whole, will impact on the credibility and reputation of the entire country for many years to come. Indeed, it has been suggested that this Trump impeachment inquiry will cause irreparable, long-lasting damage.
The phone call on which it’s all based took place on 25 July 2019, and to make it clear and easy, let me quote the actual segment from the official memorandum of the phone call.
After some friendly chit-chat, President Trump says to President Zelensky:
“I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people; I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”
President Zelenskyy responds confirming that he has the people to look into it and will do so and Mr Trump responds:
Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.
Does that warrant the impeachment inquiry we’re seeing at the moment?
Does that warrant the negative effects and potential damage the inquiry is doing?
Have the hearings provided anything at all to in any way secure the Democrats’ impeachment pathway?
You can read the entire memorandum of the phone call here and decide for yourself.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/25/trump-ukraine-phone-call-transcript-text-pdf-1510770
