So Trump could well have been found guilty and impeached at his first impeachment trial, in February 2020.Listen to Republican H.R. McMaster straight-up confirm the basis of the *first* Trump impeachment: that Trump stalled critical military aid for Ukraine to try to get election dirt on the Bidens. Sheesh. pic.twitter.com/YHVvA2cr9X
— Heath Mayo (@HeathMayo) August 25, 2024
But the key people who could have testified against him -- John Bolton, Jim Mattis, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster -- all decided to shut up and let the nation suffer.
They saved their juicy tales of treason and malfeasance for interviews with journalists or for their own books -- basically, they took the money.
Yes, the House impeachment heard from Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman and Fiona Hill. Their testimony was devastating.
But it wasn't enough to enrage the country - so in the end, the only Senate Republican who voted to impeach was Mitt Romney.
Just six months later, Bolton confirmed in his book that Trump actually had tried to withhold military aid to Ukraine so they would investigate Joe and Hunter Biden.
Jim Mattis stayed quiet about how incompetent Trump was until he saw how Trump was mishandling the Floyd protests in June 2020.
In 2021, it was revealed that John Kelly had told reporter Michael Bender about Trump's Hitler envy, but nobody knew about it until the reporter's book was published in 2021.
Now - four years later - we see H.R. McMaster also confirming Trump's incompetence in foreign policy and willingness to kowtow to Putin.
I can hardly imagine how the world could have changed if they all had stepped up in December 2019 to tell the House impeachment what Trump had done. Their testimony would have been so devastating that I expect enough Republican Senators would then have voted with the Democratic Senators for impeachment on Feb. 5, 2020.
And Mike Pence would have been president when COVID hit six weeks later.
At least 1.1 million Americans died of COVID -- I wonder how many would have lived if the Orange Turd and his callow son-in-law had not still been in charge?
2 comments:
I think you're assuming a level of good faith and commitment to democracy lately not seen among Republican members of Congress.
Trump's second impeachment trial, for incitement of insurrection, featured video footage, documentary evidence and witness testimony. Hell, most members of Congress witnessed the baying mob for themselves. Yet only seven Republican senators voted to impeach, ten short of the threshold needed.
I doubt the outcome of the first impeachment trial would have been different, even with cabinet member testimony. The GOP is far too corrupt.
Perhaps so, Cap - but I remember when America turned on Nixon and it happened quickly and permanently - mid-July he thought he could last it out, 2 weeks later he had to resign. We'll never know, I guess, whether the American people are still capable of being repulsed by Trump
Post a Comment