10-08-2019, 04:53 PM
(10-08-2019, 02:10 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(10-08-2019, 01:21 PM)David Horn Wrote:(10-07-2019, 02:41 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Trump is asking other governments to invent conspiracy theories in order to smear his political opponents. He uses the office for his own financial gain. He should be carted out of the oval office and taken to jail.
True that! Trump is the first POTUS to totally ignore the responsibilities of the office, while exercising powers for his own gain -- many that are specious at best. If the GOP office holders who back him now continue until he finishes a second term, there won't be much 'America' to pass on to the next POTUS.
I think that your naive to believe that Trump is the first American President to use their power and influence to sway a foreign leader or a fellow politician to do something for them that's in their personal interest to have occur or American interest. In Trump's case, he may have attempted but he didn't succeed so no law was broken.
FDR never asked Churchill to campaign with him. Both had more important matters at hand, and in 1944 that included finishing off three Evil Empires that had sought to finish us off.
Personal interest -- as in some business deal to the benefit of the President for his profit or to rescue his assets? Unthinkable for 43 other Presidents (in this case I am not counting Grover Cleveland twice), and inexcusable now. The American interest? Sure -- as defined by some Congressional vote. So here are some weapons with which to fight fascists (whether Nazis or ISIS) or Commies... But the American interest is not that the President or his family get a low-interest loan, a business opportunity, or money into the campaign fund of himself or others.
Let me discuss Ukraine. First, Ukraine needs some military aid for standing up to an aggressive neighbor that has been pinching off Ukrainian territory bit by bit and would love to turn the rest of the country into a satellite. Congress has so decided in votes, and it is not up to the President to rescind that money by making it contingent upon some smear of a rival's son. Second, democracy and the rule of law are shaky in Ukraine -- and Trump is attempting to get the new President of Ukraine to compromise both.
Donald Trump has brought a level of corruption to the White House that many of us thought could happen only somewhere else. He is the real-life Berzelius Windrip of It Can't Happen Here. But he is also making another story all the more likely as a realization: Seven Days in May. This President has offended the Intelligence services, federal law enforcement, and the Armed Forces. In many other countries that is the portent of a military coup.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.