Your so called first hand accounts have not only been countered by other first hand accounts, but at least one of them admitted his belief was speculation as was everyone else’s.
Your talking point is that Zelenski was intimidated, so of course he would not admit to being pressured right? So what is keeping Zelenski from coming out now and admitting that he was in fact intimidated? Do you think with the scrutiny of the world on Donald Trump and his administration, that any type of retaliation against Zelenski or Ukraine could be carried out now if Zelenski changed his story? Surely, if Zelenski changed his story and told the “real truth”, the new Democrat administration would be so jubilant, not only at the achieving of their goal of removing Trump, but at the new lack of corruption, and new levels of honesty from the Ukraine, that the aid to Ukraine would continue at even higher levels! It’s a win win situation for Zelenski, and yet, he maintains he was not pressured. The whole extortion scenario only makes sense to the Trump deranged brain. Or if you prefer, to those Democrat Patriots sacrificing their short careers for the good of their country!! ( Except of course, and as usual, Democrats like Schiff, Pelosi, Nadler, Schumer, and others in perfectly safe Democrat districts)
How does your scenario about Zelensky account for the fact that he still has not gotten the White House meeting that he wanted? Why would Trump not allow this to happen?
I suspect you’re right. They will do what is politically expedient. The most favorable polls for the Democrats show at best, a 50-50 split in public opinion. This is before the Republican response to the Democratics Inquisition. You can bet the Republican controlled trial is being planned to punish the Democrats to the max in the shortest possible time. Not looking good for Democrats, their support can only go down from here.
How can you argue that the Republican performances in the Intelligence and Judiciary Committee as well as McConnell and Graham’s statements, Trump’s tweets and the nonstop commentary from the Conservative Entertainment Complex don’t constitute the Republican response?
That 50% that favors removing Donald Trump from office has heard at least as much from Republicans as from Democrats.
Adam Schiff is undeniably a Trump hater. By any judicial standard, he should have recused himself from the proceedings. Schiff is the only one who got to determine who the witnesses would be. Yes, the Republicans got to ask some questions of them, but that is not the same thing as choosing who will testify. During the Senate trial, the Republicans will get to choose witnesses, not the Democrats. Despite the Democrat controlled process and the witnesses they got to hand pick, Democrats have only achieved 50% support for impeachment and that is in the best of polls. Why would you think a Republican controlled defense, with witnesses brought in that Schiff denied ( or didn’t choose to testify in the first place) in the house inquiry, would result in a greater support for impeachment? If there was ANYTHING WHATSOEVER more that Democrats could have stuck on Trump, they would have done it already because they won’t have the chance in the Senate and they knew that before they even began. Their case against Trump is done. They were hoping for massive support from independents and undecideds and they didn’t get it. Now it’s the Republicans turn…
The house prosecutes in a senate trial… Yes, the senators get to vote on who is a witness but polls show that both republican and democratic voters want to see relevant witnesses (Bolton, Mulvaney, etc.). This will all be public and each vote recorded…
Several of the witnesses whom Schiff approved were requested by the Republicans
The largest influence over who testified was President Trump who ordered almost everyone to not testify. Most of those who did defied Trum
"Only 50% is not such an unimpressive number. Support for removing Bill Clinton never went over 25%. Given that support for Trump hovers around 42%, and his base will never support impeachment – that’s 50% out of an available 58% which is sizable.
The key here is “WITNESSES WHOM SCHIFF APPROVED” in your own mind, choose who you think was the strongest witness against Trump at the inquiry. I suspect you and the Democrat Senators would like to call that person to testify at Trump’s trial. What is going to be the level of Democrat outrage when the Republicans in control say Nope, not happening…That’s what Schiff did to Republicans.
People refusing to testify is irrelevant. You can only speculate on what they MIGHT say. When you say “most who did defied Trump”… So what? They testified and still produced nothing helpful to Schiff. Again, you can only speculate and perhaps have come out worse if they did testify. Remains to be seen who will testify at the trial.
Your numbers aren’t accurate. True, there is a large percent that were never going to convict Trump. I’ll accept your 42% number for the sake of argument. But that does not mean 50% of the remaining 58% are in favor of impeachment because of that 58%, there is a large percent that would impeach Trump for jaywalking. If you subtract those people there are only the undecideds and independents. Those are the only people who are going to make the difference in 2020. It is still an uphill battle for Dems…
When people go to the poll those who would vote to impeach Trump for jaywalking will be entitled to one vote a piece, the same as the people who would vote for Trump if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue. You can “unscrew” all you like. The most recent poll is 50% favor impeach and remove, 42% favor dropping the whole matter and 8% are undecided.
Trump won the Presidency with roughly 47% of the vote. His support is around 42% now so to win he has to get back 5%. That is doable but it is not a lock… especially since the trend post 2016 has been for a huge jump in Democratic turnout. Trump needs to get at least 62% of Undecideds. I have no idea if we can do that.
Yes Schiff had the power to approve, but that was a power the Republicans assigned to the Chairman alone to facilitate their repeated investigations into Hillary Clinton – replacing a prior bi-partisan requirement. It seems disingenuous to complain about Democrats using rules that Republicans put in place.
They stopped republicans from asking questions they didn’t like, both Nadler and Schifty interrupted them and gaveled them down if they attempted to go down roads that were not approved.
