Sunday, January 31, 2021

Censure of Trump instead of conviction: a slap with a limp noodle by the weak-kneed

The ruse being used to deflect GOP Senators from voting for conviction is to have censure instead of Trump's role in inciting the January 6 insurrection.  If the reason behind this is to signal displeasure instead of punishing him by keeping him from running for federal office later, that is a weak-kneed way out.. Ask yourself if it has been tried before and if the results were any better than a failed slap on the hand with a limp noodle. Did you even know only four times in our history have there been resolutions attempted to censure a president and the results were useless?: Either the resolution failed or it was later expunged (Andrew Jackson). The rest failed. Others targeted were James Buchanan,. Abraham Lincoln, and William Howard Taft. where the resolutions were watered down to an admonishment of practices or the presidents were not named per se.  In this second impeachment trial of Trump, the alternative of censure would be another wet noodle slap because Trump is already out of office and he could continue to bedevil the GOP as a candidate. The serious attention he would get as a candidate in 2024 would be more significant than just being a loud venomous voice on media.

Trump's impeachment trial attorneys, all five of them, just quit.
It is not clear why Trump's attorneys quit, but given Trump's modus operandi in the past to require those loyal to him to lie on his behalf, the most likely suspect is that Trump wanted to base his defense on the lie that the January 6 mob believed: Trump won the election so they had to stop the steal. Over 50 court cases and 80 judges of all stripes and even those Trump appointed listened to the evidence of a steal or never heard the evidence because Trump's attorneys did not have the evidence of widespread fraud. Attorneys could lose their licenses if they appeared in court and tried to make a case without evidence or flat out lied. Perhaps these 5 attorneys wanted to keep practicing law. What lends credibility to the suspicion that Trump demanded his impeachment trial attorneys lie on his behalf is that he tried to get Georgia elections officials to lie about the vote count, and the president of Ukraine to lie about findings of Hunter Biden's alleged corruption. It all becomes a loyalty test to him. However, the Georgia incident is part of the current articles of impeachment. A similar attempt was made to get the Arizona governor to violate election laws. Both the Georgia and Arizona governors were members of Trump's GOP. In the Georgia case, Trump also threatened them with action. The Ukraine incident was the cause for the first one. Since Trump relied on partisan votes to escape conviction in the impeachment trials, and it will happen again in the current one, he seems to think he can always get away with lies. The victims in this are those who swallowed his lies and ended up charged with crimes for the January 6 insurgency or Trumpists who try to win national or swing district general elections. In the Ukraine case, our national defense interests to stop Russian aggression was involved. The needed military assistance to fight the Russians was threatened to be withheld as "inducement" to lie. when Trump asked the Ukraine president to "Do me a favor, though".



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