I watched the entire impeachment procedure from the first day of public hearings and what the diplomats described, Bill Taylor and George Kent, is the very definition of what Trump has claimed it was not, a quid pro quo. The case for a quid pro quo could not be more transparent, as Ambassador Sondland continued to make it a point that it wasn’t a quid pro quo even while confirming to Taylor that unless Ukraine’s President complied and agreed to begin an investigation into Burisma and the Bidens, Trump would not allow the security aid to be passed on to Ukraine. The transparency, to me, is that of a 3rd world country. You know, one of those places in either Africa, South America or the Middle East, where everyone knows the innuendo, even the people not familiar with it, and yet, the corrupt continue to say it is not so.
The innuendo in this case was the “investigation“, as Taylor explained, during all of his conversations with what he called the “irregular” diplomatic channel, was referred to. Whenever the issue of withholding the security aid to Ukraine came up, the irregular diplomatic channel would say that it all depended on the so called investigation into corruption. All the along, investigation meant the newly-elected Ukrainian President going on CNN to say his country would start an investigation into Burisma, the Bidens and interference by Ukraine into the 2016 election. To be clear, the reason this is illegal, or an impeachable offense, is not because he was trying to leverage the security aid to fight corruption, or really for anything else the President would have felt was in the interest of the American people. No, the reason this is impeachable is because the hold-up he was imposing was as leverage against a political rival. That is illegal. That is impeachable.
And yet, his defenders claim that because Ukraine ultimately got the aid and this is just the way Trump does business, this makes it OK. Trump’s true genius is not in ability to get into office, and stay out of jail. No. Trump’s true genius is in his ability to have moved an entire party so far off the rails that their identity will be forever be associated with hypocrisy, double-talk, and self-above-country. For all of their talk about America, Trump’s defenders are both, watching it burn, while helping Trump go on a fuel-run.
In the background, as Trump says and does one dumb thing after another, Republican Senators are busy confirming life-time judicial appointments. All along, their game has overload the judicial system with sympathetic judges that will ensure their manipulation of the voting rights and gerrymandering, will live in perpetuity. For these individuals, Trump is literally a puppet, a talking-head, someone that can entertain us and keep us busy, while they go forward with their plan to regress America to the 1950s.
So will Trump be impeached? Yes, I am certain of this. The evidence is to clear to not impeach him. But I am almost certain he will not be removed from office. And worse, Trump will play it as success, as a victory, and I am afraid it may be enough for him to win a second term.
