Donald Trump — the only US President to be impeached twice and the only one to face criminal charges — can be impeached in his trial.
Oh, it’s not the same thing.
You see, during a trial, a witness’ credibility can be “impeached” by evidence that the person is dishonest.
For instance, if a defendant takes the stand and says “I didn’t do it!” a prosecutor can say “Isn’t it true that you have a record for theft, false reports, fraud, and slander?” These are crimes of dishonesty (the latin term used in courts is crimen falsi) and it is perfectly fine to bring that up so during your closing argument you can say “We already know the defendant is dishonest based on this record, so don’t believe him when he says he didn’t do it.”
Well, Trump clearly has a record of dishonesty. There’s that fraud case where he and his family stole money from a children’s charity. There’s that February verdict where he fraudulently stated the value of his assets for economic benefit. And there are the two defamation cases…
They can also use his own words against him to show that he has changed his story and is inconsistent in his defense.
So yeah, I’m anxious to see Trump impeached. Again.
(And if he manages to get elected and the Democrats take the House, he’s certain to be impeached again and again and again.)
God: “Hmmm, how can I tell people to repent? Let’s see. I can appear on everyone’s devices at the same time, speaking their individual languages! Nah. Maybe I could just appear in their minds and tell them. Uh-uh. I guess I could send Jesus back, have him do a few miracles again, and then tell everyone…
No! Wait! I know! I’ll send a small earthquake — you know, the kind that happen all over the world every year — and an eclipse that can easily be predicted, even by the ancient Mayans! That’ll do it for sure!
(I still don’t get why they didn’t all repent when I sent an image of Jesus on Mrs. O’Malley’s toast!)”
The people around Trump know he is a terrible guy, but they don’t care if it gets them money and/or power. So they remain silent until those things are no longer available, and then they finally say what they had been thinking all along.
No, this isn’t a hit piece. These are actual quotes from Republicans who worked with Trump. (I did not create this meme, but I can confirm that these are real quotes that I have seen elsewhere from reliable sources.)
While Biden was not even in my top 5 choices last time, I still voted for him over Trump and will again. And I’m pretty sure he is going to win, for the following reasons:
Trump’s support isn’t as good as it seems. The man lost the popular vote the first time he ran, never even reached a 50% approval rating his entire time as President (unlike every other person who has been President), and lost his second election by an even larger amount. A majority of Americans don’t want him.
And a large percentage of Republicans don’t want him this time, either. As a semi-incumbent, he should be getting the numbers that Biden is getting in the primaries, but instead, quite often, he’s lucky to get more than 50% of the registered Republicans voting for him. Many old-school Republicans (the kind who aren’t part of the Trump cult) can’t stand him, see the harm he will cause, and while they may not vote for Biden, they aren’t going to vote for Trump, either. They’ll probably just stay home.
The Republican party doesn’t have a lot of money. People just aren’t contributing to them in the same way they are for the Democrats. There are stories all over the states where the local parties are going broke. Which leads to the next point:
Trump has taken over the party. The head of the party is now Eric Trump’s wife. You remember Eric, who took money meant for a children’s cancer charity? Well, you can bet that any money the party raises isn’t going to go to the campaign. It’s going to go to Trump (and probably his legal fees, assuming he pays them).
Moreso, these people have no real experience in running a campaign, and they just fired all those who do.
Trump’s legal worries may influence the undecided. The Trump cultists will never change, and as Trump once said, he can shoot someone on 5th Avenue and still have their support. It’s difficult to imagine how anyone can be undecided in this election, but apparently there are a lot of clueless folks out there who can’t tell the difference between as a well-meaning old guy and a lying, cheating, raping idiot who wants to be a dictator, but perhaps the more Trump spends time in court, the more these undecideds may think that maybe they don’t want a criminal as President.
Democrats have done better than expected in recent elections. We’ve managed to win quite a few special elections and in those that we didn’t win (in very red areas) we did much better than expected and much better than the polls predicted. Some of that is because we’re angry and pissed, and that gets people to the polls.
And we’re tremendously angry about abortion rights. In red states where this was on the ballot, pundits were shocked to see that even conservative voters voted to keep abortion legal. Many states are putting the issue on the ballots in November, which hopefully will bring more Democrats out to vote to protect this right (and then they’ll vote for the Democrats running as well.)
And, let’s face it, there are still some reasonable Republicans and moderates out there who may come out to vote because while they don’t agree with Democratic policies, they don’t want someone in there who has vowed to be a “dictator on day one.” Some patriots will put the country’s needs over the party’s.
All we have to do is hold the states we won last time. All over the country, purple states are becoming bluer all the time. It’s not that hard. We can lose Georgia, Arizona and Nevada and still win.
There are more of us than there are of them. Democrats have won the popular vote in every single election except one since Bill Clinton, and the only reason Republicans got into office was because of the electoral college. We can overcome that by showing up in huge numbers in the swing states where our votes are tremendously important.
If we lose, it will be because we stayed at home and didn’t vote, or wasted our vote on a third party candidate. And then we can scream and shout all we want as our country moves toward a Putin-friendly dictatorship, but it won’t do any good because it will be our fault.
And now, a caveat: The GOP knows all this, so they plan to use their secret weapon: cheating. They’ll do everything they can to make it harder for anyone to vote; they’ll use the judges they’ve appointed to throw out ballots whenever possible; they’ll lie in campaign ads and use connections in Russia and China whose goal it is to dismantle American power; and otherwise claim to have won if they lose despite all evidence to the contrary (just like they did last time).
My wife is an award-winning artist who, like other creative people, gets targeted with scams on-line from people claiming they want to buy her art. I’ve blogged about one scam they’ve used before.
Here’s how this one works:
They want to buy something from you. You give them the price. It’s usually for a lot of money, because that way, you’re very excited to have sold something for such a huge amount. That makes you more willing to make sure it happens.
Then they send you a message saying they paid. You then get an email that looks like it’s from PayPal (it isn’t) that says your account can’t accept this money because the account needs to be updated to a business account. “Once updated, the money will be available to you. Please deposit $500 into your account to activate the business account.”
You contact the person and they say, “OK, I’ll pay to update the account and then when you get confirmation that it has been approved and my payment has gone through, you can refund that money to me.” (Or, alternatively, you are provided with a link to PayPal so you can make the payment yourself, but of course, the link is a fake one that doesn’t go to PayPal.)
If you do this, you’ll get another fake email saying the account is active and the payment went through. You’re then asked to refund the $500 to the person, who also gets your credit card and banking information that they can use to hack into your account later. See how it works?
Heidi and I do have fun taunting the scammers though before finally calling them out and blocking them. Heidi then publicly posts the scammer’s name and email on her Instagram page to warn others.
Remember: the internet is full of scammers. Always be wary.
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