Low regard for Donald Trump his perverse character and lewd conduct

"Put your own narrow interests ahead of the nation's, flout the law, violate the trust given to you by the American people and recklessly disregard the oath of office, and you risk losing your job.”

USA TODAY’s Editorial Board (echo) wrote those words two decades ago, when it endorsed the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Donald Trump is on audio admitting lewd behavior.

Lewd conduct proven in the Hollywood Access audio "I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." Commentators and lawyers have described such an action as sexual assault.

Now, in graver circumstances with America’s system of checks and balances at stake, they apply to another president facing impeachment, Republican Donald Trump.

The current board has made no secret of our low regard for Trump’s character and conduct. Yet, as fellow passengers on the ship of state, we had hoped the captain would succeed. And, until recently, we believed that impeachment proceedings would be unhealthier for an already polarized nation than simply leaving Trump’s fate up to voters next November.
Trump leaves Democrats little choice

Unless public sentiment shifts sharply in the days and weeks ahead, that is the likely outcome of this process — impeachment by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives followed by acquittal in the GOP-controlled Senate. So why bother? Because Trump’s egregious transgressions and stonewalling have given the House little choice but to press ahead with the most severe sanction at its disposal.

Impeachment Day December 18, 2019

Clinton was impeached by the House (but not removed by the Senate) after he tried to cover up an affair with a White House intern. Trump used your tax dollars to shake down a vulnerable foreign government to interfere in a U.S. election for his personal benefit.

In his thuggish effort to trade American arms for foreign dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, Trump resembles not so much Clinton as he does Richard Nixon, another corrupt president who tried to cheat his way to reelection.

This isn’t partisan politics as usual. It is precisely the type of misconduct the framers had in mind when they wrote impeachment into the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton supported a robust presidency but worried about “a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper” coming to power. Impeachment, Hamilton wrote, was a mechanism to protect the nation “from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”

Approve articles of impeachment

Both articles of impeachment drafted by the House Judiciary Committee warrant approval:

►Abuse of power. Testimony before the House Intelligence Committee produced overwhelming evidence that Trump wanted Ukraine’s new president to announce investigations into the Bidens and a debunked theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.

To pressure the Ukrainian leader, Trump withheld a White House meeting and nearly $400 million in congressionally approved security aid, funding that was released only after an unnamed official blew the whistle.

To former national security adviser John Bolton, the months-long scheme was the equivalent of a “drug deal.” To Bolton's former aide Fiona Hill, it was a "domestic political errand" that "is all going to blow up." To Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, “it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” And to Ukrainian soldiers, fighting to fend off Russian aggression in the eastern part of their country, the money was a matter of life and death.

►Obstruction of Congress. Trump has met the impeachment investigation with outright and unprecedented defiance. The White House has withheld documents, ordered executive branch agencies not to comply with subpoenas and directed administration officials not to testify.

Allowing this obstruction to stand unchallenged would put the president above the law and permanently damage Congress’ ability to investigate misconduct by presidents of either party.

The president’s GOP enablers continue to place power and party ahead of truth and country. Had any Democratic president behaved the way Trump has — paying hush money to a porn star, flattering dictators and spewing an unending stream of falsehoods — there’s no doubt congressional Republicans would have tried to run him out of the White House in a New York minute. Twenty-seven Republicans who voted to impeach or convict Clinton remain in Congress. If they continue to defend Trump, history will record their hypocrisy.

Our support for Trump’s impeachment by the House — we’ll wait for the Senate trial to render a verdict on removal from office — has nothing to do with policy differences. We have had profound disagreements with the president on a host of issues, led by his reckless deficits and inattention to climate change, both of which will burden generations to come.

Policy differences are not, however, grounds for impeachment. Constitutional violations are!
Bill Clinton should be impeached and stand trial “because the charges are too serious and the evidence amassed too compelling” to ignore, the Editorial Board wrote in December 1998.

The same can be said this December, about the serious allegations facing Donald Trump. Only much more so.

Speaker Pelosi has used her power well- an echo opinion

Echo opinion published on CNN, by Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University

CNN- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has brought the impeachment inquiry to its final phase. In her press conference Thursday morning, she announced that the Judiciary Committee will begin drafting Articles of Impeachment.

Unless a large number of Democrats break from the Speaker, President Trump will join Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton as the only presidents who have been formally impeached by the House. From the perspective of presidential history, this will become a major part of how we remember the term.

With a firm hand and clear vision, Speaker Pelosi has done something that no one else seemed to be able to accomplish. She has seized back the public square from the Trump White House. For the first two years of the administration, Democrats struggled to focus any discussion as the President and his tweets and scandals constantly sent the media chasing the latest shiny objects.

Democrats often seemed incapable of responding. Without control of the House, they were in a perpetual struggle to move the discussion away from the chaos and fog and toward the most pressing issues.

But the 2018 midterms changed the power balance, and Speaker Pelosi has used her power well. 

After vacillating over fears of an anti-impeachment backlash, Pelosi instructed the Intelligence Committee and now the Judiciary Committee to move forward.

Now, after spending several months laying bare to the public how the President used his power for personal political advantage and blocked efforts to uncover the truth -- abusing his office and obstructing justice -- the House will formalize the charges against him. In doing so, Democrats will make a collective statement fulfilling their constitutional obligation to say that this President is corrupt, abusive and dangerous to the national interest.

By shaping the debate in this fashion, Democrats have thrown new light on everything that goes on in and around the White House, such as the current overseas trip of Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, meeting with a former Ukraine prosecutor seeking an investigation into Biden.

Even though Senate Republicans will probably not join a vote to convict and remove the President, Speaker Pelosi will have made the case with greater clarity and force than Trump ever could have imagined. She has explained why so many Democrats see this President as such a dangerous presence in Washington, and why some Republicans are privately fearful of what is happening. Democrats will put in an official vote to state that they believe Trump should no longer serve.

While polls show that most Republicans remain supportive of the President, national polls tell a different story. More Americans believe that the President is deserving of impeachment and being removed than was true with President Richard Nixon in the final months of his presidency.

Trump White House's fatal flaws revealed in startling detail

This will be the major issue of the 2020 campaign. Of course, other national issues will help determine the kind of candidate Democrats select. But more important than anything else facing the electorate will be this: Can our democracy withstand four more years of Trump? As a result of Speaker Pelosi's determination, Democrats will make their answer very clear -- and Republicans, by voting to protect the President, will make their position clear as well.
For all the talk of an Imperial Presidency, Speaker Pelosi has just reminded Americans that when they have the power and the will, congressional majorities can still respond with force and vigor to a President who listens to no one.

Maine echo to Senator Susan Collins

By Gail Marshall- An echo opinion published in the Mount Desert Islander newspaper.

Many times Senator Susan Collins has gushed her adoration of Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who, in 1950, stood in the Senate to speak her “Declaration of Conscience.”

U.S. Senator from 1967-1973/ B. 1897 D. 1995 in Maine

It was the act of one woman who found the courage to challenge Senator Joseph McCarthy’s long running, mendacious campaign of hatred that had rendered her colleagues politically paralyzed in fear and silence. It broke the logjam and eventually ended his reign of terror.

Recently, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and former National Security Council member Fiona Hill showed themselves to be Sen. Smith’s true heirs. They put their years of non-partisan public service on the line and strode to the Capitol over the objections of the Trump State Department and White House. They each sat for ten hours before the House Intelligence Committee. They each outlined facts amounting to a blistering condemnation of the corruption and self-dealing of Donald Trump, his State Department and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, undertaken at the expense of national interest and security.

Senator Susan Collins was wrong to support the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court

In contrast, as years of Trump’s corruption, chronic dissembling and threatening, and destructive actions and policies continue to cheapen the office of the Presidency and endanger our nation, Senator Collins repeatedly issues anodyne statements of “disappointment” and “disagreement.” She has never taken any action or definitive step that will draw even the faintest line in the sand.

Where exactly is her line? When will enough be enough?

It wasn’t enough when:

Trump actively obstructed the investigation of the Russian interference in the last election to his advantage. We now know it was likely a prelude to what he is trying to orchestrate for 2020.

He staffed the Office of the President with his completely unqualified children, overriding security clearance assessments on their behalf.

He met alone with Vladimir Putin and seized the notes of the talks, freezing out our own national intelligence agencies.

He withdrew us from the Paris Climate accord and subsequently took a wrecking ball to clean air, water, and land protections as the nation increasingly floods or burns, freezes or broils.

He and his children enrich themselves as foreign leaders, businessmen, state officials, the Defense Department and Cabinet members fork over cash at Trump properties.

He engages in and encourages racist, hateful demagoguery that has lead directly to an explosion of right wing extremism, including threats and violence.

When was the last time Senator Colins listened to the entirety of a Trump rally with his often alarmingly incoherent, coarse incitement to violence and hatred? She should. (You should too.) And then explain to us how a “moderate” Senator can fail to take meaningful action for the good of the nation.

He willy-nilly started trade wars, costing us billions of dollars. The cost of tariffs comes directly out of our pockets, as does the cost of billions in farm subsidies to partially offset their Trump-made losses. Or at least it will eventually. Right now they are just throwing it on to their exploding deficit.

He operated intentionally and unnecessarily cruel border and immigration programs, including forcibly separating from their parents thousands of young children.

He openly trashes our painstakingly built strategic alliances the world over, favoring and empowering anti-democratic tyrants instead.

He runs much of the government with “acting” Cabinet Secretaries and others who, per the Constitution, are supposed to be confirmed by the Senate. When he does send nominees to the Senate, the Senator votes to confirm people like William Barr and Michael Pompeo, both of whom operate their respective Departments like they are personal and private subsidiaries of Trump, Inc.

How about Syria, where he’s suddenly abandoned our allies, the Kurds, offering a preposterous excuse that that they didn’t help us at Normandy? Turkey, home to one of Trump’s large hotels, promptly began slaughtering Kurdish men, women and children, and deliberately bombing all around US military positions, as ISIS fighters escaped from Kurdish captivity. Russia and Syria have moved in quickly to fill the void he created, with Russia now occupying one of our former bases. The Senator said Trump’s move is “terribly unwise” and would favor sanctions if things get out of hand. The horse is out of the barn, Senator, so do bar the door, won’t you?

Senator Collins argues that if Articles of Impeachment are referred to the Senate, she will serve as a “judge” of the charges against Trump, so she can’t express any opinions in advance. How very typical and convenient. And also not true. It’s just another tree to hide behind. She’s had plenty of power and tools at her disposal all along and she’d done nothing. Instead, like the rest of the Republican Senate, she has fully enabled a narcissistic bully to turn far too much of the nation into a cauldron of fear and loathing, hollow out our international capacity to credibly represent and protect ourselves, weaken and degrade our fundamental democratic standards and safeguards, and imperil our children’s future.

If Senator Collins were truly the “moderate” she claims to be, she would take a page from Ambassador Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill and Senator Smith. She would draw a line right now. She would risk her Senate career for the good of the nation. She would act in a bold way to help stop the increasingly radical damage done by Donald Trump to this nation before we are beyond the point of no return.

From Gail Marshall, a resident of Mount Desert, Maine