At least we are past the “didn’t do anything wrong” phase and are now to the is it impeachable… Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel just published an OpEd at the Daily Caller arguing that what Trump did is wrong but not impeachable.
Donald Trump should not have been on the phone with a foreign head of state encouraging another country to investigate his political opponent, Joe Biden. Some Republicans are trying, but there’s no way to spin this as a good idea. Like a lot of things Trump does, it was pretty over-the-top. Our leaders’ official actions should not be about politics. Those two things need to remain separate. Once those in control of our government use it to advance their political goals, we become just another of the world’s many corrupt countries. America is better than that. That’s also why it’s good that there are finally investigations looking into the extent to which the Obama FBI may have used our government — and even foreign governments — to try to crush Trump in the last election.
Carlson always makes me chuckle with his man of the people schtick because he’s a scion of the old school Beltway WASP elite. The kind of family that presidents put on short lists for Treasury Secretary. I mean, come on, his name is Tucker, he wears bow ties with plaid and tweeds, has a 1980s blow dry razor haircut and without even looking I guarantee he has some kind of goofy WASP nickname like Tip that his friends and family call him.
I agree that certainly Trumps actions can be the discussion of whether they were appropriate or if the same investigative result couldn’t have been had by a different process. There is lots of room for discussion there.
However, after three years of investigating the Trump campaign for collusion and coming up with “no significant evidence” of cooperation, then to make this incident the subject of an impeachment enquiry is ridiculous. As if though no one ever had investigations that might affect their political opponents before.
But then, possibly Democrats are holding this inquiry “for personal political gain”?
Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson. He has that attitude of the private-school, trust-fund type that’s coasted through life on easy mode. I followed him for awhile, since the Crossfire days. Watched his show some when it was on MSNBC. Now, I can’t even bear to watch him.
You can just as easily make the argument that it was ridiculous for Trump to engage in any sort of communication, with Ukraine of all places, that even resembled “inappropriateness” (as you say), regarding the exact very thing the entire collusion investigation, which he had spent years trying to discredit, was all about. That Trump would think that a conversation even resembling the one captured in the “memorandum” was appropriate, is what is ridiculous.
Will you admit that by itself made this especially inappropriate, and dumb, for the president? This phone call was a day after Mueller’s testimony, I believe. You can say Obama was brazen, but that takes some balls, man. Some serious, serious, balls.
