By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
The Democratically controlled Senate spends thousands of collective hours conducting an impeachment trial against a president who is no longer president.
The acquittal is predetermined, as in the first impeachment effort a year ago — and known to be so to the Democratic prosecutors.
The constitutionally mandated presiding judge — the chief justice of the Supreme Court — refused to show up. Chief Justice John Roberts apparently believes that an impeachment trial of a private citizen is either a waste of time or unconstitutional — or both.
The Democratically controlled House of Representatives is busy ferreting out purportedly extremist Republican House members. For the first time in memory, one party now removes committee members of the other party.
Yet for each Republican outlier, there is a corresponding Democratic firebrand member who has either called for violence or voiced anti-Semitic slurs — and yet will not be removed from House committees.
So the asymmetrical tit-for-tat continues.
The subtext to this madness is that the Democratic Congress, the new administration, the administrative state, and the political Left are obsessed with dismembering the presidential corpse of now-citizen Donald Trump.
Apparently, they fear that one day he will rise from the infernal regions to wreak his revenge.
Meanwhile, life in America goes on.
Yet few of our leaders are very worried about the existential crises left unaddressed by their obsessions with the ghost of Trump.
Take the debt. It is now nearly $28 trillion, and it is growing by almost $2 trillion a year. No one in D.C. talks about reducing the annual budget deficit. Nor do officials find ways to balance the budget. The idea of paying off the monstrous debt remains a fantasy.
The idiot Biden shows all the capability of being at least as much a failure as Obama was, if not more.
Suddenly, after 4 years of not giving a damn, you care about debt and deficits again? And this newfound concern sets in 12 months into a viral pandemic that’s on track to kill more Americans than the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919?
All it took to arouse your concern was for the guy who ran the debt up by $7.8 trillion in four years to be replaced by a democratic President, who now has to somehow deal with the disaster that was already waiting when he arrived.
Why do I feel like I’ve seen this movie before?
@Greg:
After 8 years of $10 trillion in debt with NOTHING to show for it, you EVER cared about debt? After Democrats controlling the House and running up over $4 trillion in spending, very little of which went to those that needed it, you want to pretend you can make anyone believe you care about debt?
The idiot Biden is anything but democratic. In case you haven’t noticed, he has destroyed jobs, cut our energy independence, opened our borders and destroyed women’s sports and personal security without even involving Congress. Once again, we will see skyrocketing debt with nothing but pain and suffering for the working people. And all this thanks to Democrat election fraud.
@Greg:
We all cared about debt. It just wasn’t the catch-all “gotcha” that piss-ants like you were touting as to why Trump should just be yanked from office.
Oh, the Democrats have a large hand in this disaster. Their new Dictator Biden is hardly “dealing” with anything except sun-downing.
Instead, we have an unelected government bent on hunting down and killing off a group of strawmen that don’t exist.
Because you have. 30s Germany, 20s Russia, and the current-day China shithole CCP.
Backwards Communism, brought to you by the Democrat Party.
Democrats get us into debt. Republicans get us out.
@Nathan Blue:
Mind backing that up?
today, everyone seeks the easy answers and the intellectually lazy way out. societies avoid tipping points by finding comfort spots in the form of anti-intellectual climate. leftism, communism socialism radical, marxism for all its claim to be a workingman’s ideology, has always been the domain of disaffected intellectuals who consider themselves a vanguard elite. these individuals praise them selves as vanguard warriors : street trash, black terrorist movement, and antif**k-up are post-modern suicide terrorists. this street trash dotes on the idea of martyrdom : 72 virgins, this is ?? if they are bi. well 144 right, like the movie the two popes, promise of heaven for 70 relatives, really, 90% don’t know who their daddy was. this suicidal trash can not comprehend that they exist in a paranoid-narcissistic spectrum.
debt, inflation a a dead economy is characteristic of commicrat leadership-paranoid-narcissistic congress members of the commicrap party.
@Ronald J. Ward:
Nope. Go look up “balance sheet” on Google, and make sure you understand what “assets” are, junior.
Democrats prey on the financial ignorance of their constituents so they can keep poor blacks and underthinking whites as their voting slaves.
@Nathan Blue, #4:
Giving huge permanent tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires while pushing annual deficits back up over a trillion dollars per year somehow doesn’t convince me of any such concern. Republicans predictably take up their fiscal responsibility mantra again the moment a democratic President takes office.
The fact is that we’ve just seen $7.8 trillion added to the national debt over only four years during a time when the economy was booming—a time when we should have been able to reduce annual deficits and the use of emergency stimulus measures.
Economists warned that the continuous use of tax cuts and reduced interest rates to stimulate an already-recovered economy would leave us without tools to respond the next predictable economic downturn. Trump paid absolutely no attention.
@Nathan Blue:
Uh, so, your claim of “Democrats get us into debt Republicans get us out” is valid because if you “look up “balance sheet” on Google” it will explain assets to you.
?
?
?
WTF?
And if that doesn’t fully explain it, you just twist reality and make up some stupid rubber/glue unsubstantiated and unfounded nonsense of how Dems want to keep black people poor.
?
?
?
Sorry, I just don’t understand your level of derangement.
If it were possible to pull you from Trump’s and scrap the Trump feces from your eyes, we could might start with your confusion or ignorance of the federal deficit verses the debt, which are 2 separate things..
The Dept of the Treasury explains: The deficit is the difference between the money that the government makes and the money it spends. If the government spends more than it collects in revenues, then it’s running a deficit.
The federal debt is the running total of the accumulated deficits.
Now, aside from your frothing derangement and fabricated self-serving bullshit that you need so badly, let’s take a look at what actual D and R presidents have done.
Checking the numbers from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the guys that keep an actual data base of such, here’s the deal in rounded numbers:
President Ronald took the deficit from $78.9 billion to $152.6 billion.
George H.W. Bush 41 took it to $290.3 billion.
Clinton got it to zero.
George W. Bush 43 took it from 0 to 1.2 trillion.
Obama cut it in half to 600 billion.
Want to talk about Trump? How about you provide those numbers?
Want to talk about the national debt? Year by year and president by president?
I suspect you don’t. I suspect you simply making up whatever nonsensical and emotional feel good talking points which better suits your narrative is more pleasing to you.
You made believe Trump was infallible in his electoral fight because, well, yeah! You made believe, and still believe that his lies were Gospel. Facts and reality have no place in your mission to lick Trump butt. You do not know what is true and what is not, nor do you care.
@Greg:
“Tax cuts to millionaires” is tax cuts to small businesses. The middle class benefitted the most. And, they paid for themselves; we had more in revue than ever before. Now, the idiot Biden, like America-hating Obama before him, will be killing jobs and driving businesses back overseas.
@Ronald J. Ward: Clinton didn’t cut anything until Republicans took over Congress and forced welfare reform upon him. Bush was cutting deficits every year from 2004 to 2008 until the Democrat-induced recession hit. Obama ran the deficit up to $1.4 trillion before Republicans took over the House and forced spending cuts. Trump had to rebuild and reequip a military Obama used up and ignored. Then, the virus the idiot Biden’s business partners sent us caused economic chaos, but instead of passing aid bills that simply helped those that needed aid, Pelosi held those in need hostage until she and the Democrats could load the packages up with wasteful pork. Currently they are trying to spend another $1.4 trillion we don’t have, even though $1 trillion of the past packages has yet to be spent. It appears their primary goal is to DESTROY the economy.
So, once again, you are completely wrong.
@Deplorable Me, #11:
No they aren’t. That’s republican propaganda. Most small business owners are not millionaires. As of 2017, the average small business owner in the United States had income of $73,000 per year.
Questions to the prosecution and defense are now being presented by Senate jurors and responded to, but FOX News has broken away from the trial to cover some celebrity b.s. involving Britney Spears.
@Greg:
I see you are as intelligent on economic and business issues as other leftists that don’t have a clue. No, the small business owners are not millionaires. Usually, far from it. But many small businesses make gross incomes that can be in the millions and THEY file the taxes. So, when you raise taxes of high incomes, this affects small businesses. The small business owners are paid by the small businesses. Sheesh… it’s like explaining things to an infant… or a liberal that doesn’t want to understand facts.
And speaking of NO understanding (or respect) for facts, Trump’s legal team in three hours kicked the lying, corrupt, violence-inciting Democrat’s assess all over the floor today. Anyone that has paid attention to events over the past 4 years don’t need to watch this embarrassing sham of an excuse for an official proceeding. The Democrats lied, as they have for 4 solid years, vented their hate-driven bile and then Trump’s team sauntered in and destroyed them with their own lies and hypocrisy. And they didn’t even break a sweat.
That’s not what I saw happen. But Trump’s lawyers were playing to Donald Trump and an audience of Trump supporters, not to the Senate jurors or to objective viewers. They’re sure they know already how a majority of republican senators will vote, no matter what they say.
If republican jurors wanted to save their honor and save their party, they’d convict Trump and disqualify him from holding any office in the future. He doesn’t care about them, and he’d be completely OK with the disintegration of the GOP. If the GOP won’t wholeheartedly become The Party Of Trump, he’d just as soon see it destroyed so that he can plunder the wreckage to build an extremist party of his own.
That will never happen. He’s got too many potential criminal indictments waiting in his immediate future.
@Greg:
Of course it’s not. Lies, not truth, resonates with you. The Democrats played heavily edited video to hide the fact that nothing Trump said incited any violence UNLESS they have all been inciting violence with the same words for years. One of the Democrats actually got up, “answering” a question and LIED about Trump’s response to the question about the Proud Boys and white supremacy during one of the debates! Democrats did nothing BUT lie and Trump’s team shoved those lies right up their corrupt asses. It was a thing of beauty, but it was also incredibly easy.
Now, once and for all, are you finally clear that Trump did NOT call Nazis fine people and did, in reality, denounce white supremacists? Or, will you merely wait a few seconds and repeat that lie again?
That isn’t why he’s on trial. He’s on trial for promoting a lie about an election he lost to the point where he incited a violent mob to take over the Capitol Building in an effort to stop the electoral college count—and then let them run wild for two hours before trying to do anything to stop it.
@Greg:
I guess you think that the woman who is from the Virgin Islands complaining that the Trump lawyer’s video of all the Democrats shouting “fight” was a lot of black women and she was insulted by it does anything to prove your claim that Trump incited a riot?
The left has played the race card so many times when they hold losing hands has made the word “racist” meaningless.
I’m confused about which part of your description of her is intended to provoke a response.
Trump remains a skunk whether Senate republicans acknowledge the stink or not. I would think they would want to dissociate themselves and their party from the smell, but I suppose that’s a personal decision.
@Greg: No, he’s on trial for inciting a riot which he clearly and undeniably did not do. Part of the defense was even Raskin calling election results into question; how is that different from Trump’s position other than, in Trump’s case, the fraud ACTUALLY HAPPENED?
Now, once and for all, are you finally clear that Trump did NOT call Nazis fine people and did, in reality, denounce white supremacists? Or, will you merely wait a few seconds and repeat that lie again? How about an answer?
Are you under the impression that repeating something over and over makes it true?
Trump is the fraud. There was no significant level of election fraud anywhere. Sixty-some separate lawsuits came to nothing when presented for consideration by sixty-some individual judges because there wasn’t a damn bit of credible evidence cited in connection with any of them. 50 individual states have certified their election results as accurate. That includes states where republicans are responsible for managing the election process.
I’m beyond caring what Trump called somebody. If he wanted to clarify anything he could have done so at the Senate trial. He didn’t because his counsel wouldn’t let him. They knew he would have destroyed his own defense the moment he opened his mouth.
@Greg: The “impeachment” is a sham. There is no cause, and certainly no evidence, of any impeachable offense.
Add to that the absurd fact that you can’t remove someone who isn’t in office, and this whole proceeding is illegal, and cannot be upheld by any part of our Laws.
Maybe in your country this makes sense?
Congress disagrees with you.
The House successfully impeached Trump for a second time while he was still in office. McConnell then declined to recall the Senate before Trump was removed as the result of losing an election. That delay didn’t end the process, however; when the new Senate was called to order, they immediately took the matter up.
The constitutionality of trying an impeached former president was then immediately contested in the Senate. That question was discussed and put to a vote. A bipartisan Senate majority determined that the matter was within the Senate’s jurisdiction. Six Republicans were in agreement on that point with their Democratic colleagues. Trump’s lawyers keep bringing that matter up, as if it were something unresolved. It is not unresolved. That’s why they’re now participating in a trial.
At this point it’s not about removal, the first recourse available upon conviction. It’s about the second specified constitutional power of Congress: that of disqualifying a person from holding any federal office of power, trust, or profit in the future. This remedy isn’t punitive. It’s preventative. It gives Congress a power that can be exercised to protect the nation from someone determined to represent a serious threat. Trump has demonstrated that he is. He didn’t like the way an election turned out, so he tried to kick over the table by unlawful, unconstitutional means. That was an act of insurrection.
Trump’s most extreme followers are no less crazy than they were before January 6th. He himself won’t acknowledge he was in any way wrong or at fault. He did it once, and there’s absolutely no reason to think he won’t try it again.
@Greg:
And then….
Trump got more done in 4 years… hell, TWO years than Obama did in 8. He truly improved the nation, yet you want to call that “fraud”. The “fraud” was what the Democrats committed November 3rd and then tried to cover up. But, a shallow grave won’t suffice for that massive, stinking corpse. Nice try. FAIL.
But Congress is not the decider. The Supreme Court is and Roberts pretty clearly provided the opinion of the Court by expressing he SHALL totally ignore unconstitutional witch hunt vengeance trips by crybaby, butthurt Democrats.
No hearings, no witnesses, no evidence, no due process, so THAT was illegitimate. Just Pelosi, who makes rules, fines others, then won’t follow her OWN rules going on a little tantrum…. again.
No, it’s about your goddamn FEAR. Your fear of free speech, freedom, individual rights and a majority that chooses AMERICA over left wing, socialist totalitarianism.
Every time the media trots out a legal expert to explain why President Trump can be impeached, he turns to the Belknap trial and the Thurman resolution as if they were the Constitution.
The legal experts, like Schumer, don’t discuss how the Belknap trial concluded.
The still refuse to prove that Biden actually won, while bragging in Time mag how they rigged it.
There were only enough votes to impeach Secretary of War Belknap in the first place because legislators argued that Belknap had resigned to avoid impeachment. But the Senate acquitted Belknap because its members believed that a former official couldn’t actually be impeached.
Impeachment failed because 23 senators voted, “not guilty for want of jurisdiction.”
Not only did the Belknap trial fail because Schumer was wrong, but the entire premise doesn’t even apply. Had Belknap’s term naturally expired, there would have been no impeachment.
citation https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/democrat-precedent-impeaching-trump-comes-racist-daniel-greenfield/
@Greg:
Congress, along with the entire Federal Government, is no longer legitimate. There is no authority, and I willingly tell people I no longer acknowledge the Federal Government as sovereign.
For now, I am a citizen of my State, and a true American. The “United States of America” is no more.
Both “impeachments” mean nothing, as they did not meet the requirements in the Constitution. That a Democrat coup was underway to group-think the lower IQ representatives (all paid off or leveraged, in some way) is of no consequence.
History is already showing that Trump is one of the best Presidents, but unfortunately our last. Dictator Biden is….just that.
False trials and false imprisonments always follow with un-elected, totalitarian regimes.
@Greg: #23
“Are you under the impression that repeating something over and over makes it true?”
Well, you certainly seem to be.
Many people have put the lie to your statements such as “There’s no evidence because the judges refused to consider any evidence”, yet you keep repeating your talking points, as if repeating them endlessly will make your lies and distortions true and factual.
You, along with others just like you, are too stupid to understand that the more you attack us, the more insults you express, the more lies you tell…
The stronger our resolve becomes, to never stop fighting, to never give up.
Maybe you’re making the mistake of believing that we would react to attacks like you and others of your ilk will, that with enough screams and violence we’ll give up and go away, but you’re wrong. We’re nothing like you.
Many of us here are veterans or others who once gave an oath, and realize that we’ve never been released from that oath. Most of us are ordinary people who love this nation, and recognize both it’s flaws and it’s weaknesses, it’s greatness as a creation of both God and men.
And you, and other hate-filled ignorant savages like you, want to tear it down because you can’t understand it, because you can never recognize the value of something that transcends any individual.
You want to destroy it because it is the creation of men who are infinitely better than the clay golems, the created false gods that you worship.
All you have is hate, lies, deception and destruction… And you hate us because we stand in your way.
But you’ve been coming here for years, with your false gods, your false claims, your false views, and your false accusations.
And here we still stand, unmoved. Getting stronger, more firm in our resolve to resist evil, with every statement you make.
You’re a failure, Greg. You’ve accomplished nothing here other than to blow smoke which dissipates as soon as you blow it. You’ve built nothing lasting.
You’ve failed, Greg. We’re still here, still fighting against evil, still resisting. You can’t even stop us by killing us, because our ideas and ideals are greater than any one of us.
So keep it up, Greg. Keep showing us how hateful and dishonest you leftists are, we need it.
We can’t afford to forget who you are, Greg, so keep reminding us. In the days ahead, we’ll need to be as strong as possible.
@Nathan Blue:
Canada calling? By all means, don’t let the door hit you in the ass.
@Petercat:
Emphasis on the word “once”.
@Ronald J. Ward: Canada is in worse shape than we are right now, we arent going anywhere this is our country. We are not about to hand it over to a pile of commies.
How many times to you have to make an oath or take a vow, therein lies your problem you lack understanding what they mean. That makes you a beta ze.
@kitt: He must have pledged to lie and avoid facts at all times and has remained loyal to that oath.
@kitt:
As always, you missed my point.
If Nathan doesn’t love and respect his country and hates it as he says, he can take his sorry seditionist, racists, lying, violence promoting, white supremist loving, treasonous ass to Canada or as far as I’m concern to hell.
And the country would be indeed better off if he took you and the entire FA lot with him.
@Deplorable Me:
It’s fearful people who always fall in line behind a posturing playground bully like Donald Trump. Now they’re afraid to face the truth about him, and the politicians who have enabled and pandered to him are afraid of them.
No one really expects many Senate republicans to rise to the occasion. They’re not made of the stuff of earlier generations of republicans. They’ve become cheap, opportunistic imitations, false to their oaths and false to themselves.
As my grandfather would have rightly observed, it’s just pitiful.
That said, Trump is done, and all who refuse to hold him accountable will be seriously damaged. He has inflicted terrible damage on the party he stole. In spite of that, they’re going to allow him to continue to do so. They’re about to let their great opportunity to redeem both themselves and their party pass them by. It’s as if they somehow still believe this egocentric fraud is a man who returns loyalty for loyalty and still has something to offer them. He isn’t, he doesn’t, and they know it. Their vote to acquit will actually be all about their fear. They’re cowards.
@Ronald J. Ward: You miss my point your feelings dont matter, your brainwashed repetitious accusations are as hollow as your head.
@Greg: More MSNBC commentary puked out here so predictable.
@Greg: Once again, corrupted Democrats fail to impeach Trump.
If only there was some Constitutional justification, support, or actual evidence?
Now, on to Dictator Biden. More than enough dirt to remove this imposter from office.
Did you like what Mitch McConnell had to say about Trump’s dereliction of duty and ongoing criminal liability?
@Greg: Mich Chinas Bitch? IDGAF
Thanks to Bidens illegal immigration orders this is coming to America soon
MEXICO CITY, Mexico — Prosecutors in the western Mexico state of Jalisco say that police have found 18 plastic bags full of hacked-up body parts on the outskirts of the city of Guadalajara. Police found one human limb near a highway overpass, which led them to the heap of taped-up bags in a gully nearby, the agency said late Thursday. The severed limbs are being examined to determine how many corpses the parts belonged to.
DEFUND THE POLICE!
TRUMP FOUND NOT GUILTY AGAIN.
@Greg:
You don’t see anyone on the right trying to kill free speech. You don’t see anyone on the right so afraid of a personality that they constantly create false accusations to attack him with. You don’t see anyone on the left physically attacking those that dare to have different viewpoints, even when those viewpoints are the WORST in the country. No, only DEMOCRATS conduct themselves like that. Only DEMOCRATS fear the right to draw one’s own conclusions. Only DEMOCRATS seek to ban every opinion and thought but their own. Now, why is that?
You mean the occasion of impeachment to reach a political goal? The occasion of, once again, accusing someone of a crime they never committed? The occasion of LYING to the American people? Nah, you Democrats have that fully covered.
You feared Trump so much that only FRAUD could defeat him. Democrat irresponsibility was overwhelming; without a crime and without proof of a crime, there was no possibility of a crime that never happened, he never committed and there was no proof to support. Yet, instead of addressing the needs of the people and the nation, Democrats, as they always do, chose to fondle themselves on national television, prove to the nation what vindictive, vengeful crybabies they are and put their pathetic, degenerate party before all else. Just as they did with shitting on our sacred election process with fraud and corruption.
Now, once and for all, are you finally clear that Trump did NOT call Nazis fine people and did, in reality, denounce white supremacists? Or, will you merely wait a few seconds and repeat that lie again? How about an answer?
@Deplorable Me: He will circle back on that(like a dog on his own poo).
@kitt:
You sidestepped what McConnell said and what it meant.
Trump was found guilty from 57 senators. Mitch and about 20 other Republican senators acknowledged his guilt but hid behind an excuse of jurisdiction, timing, or some other technicalities.
Mitch even blamed the House for failure to send the articles over in time when he himself refused to move on them in time.
The party of Trump has evolved into a pack of profound liars and con men, just like their boss.
@Ronald J. Ward: If Trump was so guilty, why did the Democrats find it necessary to lie, edit video and leave out vital parts of Trump’s speech? If he was actually guilty, the TRUTH would prove it. Instead the truth found him innocent.
What do you think of your genius Grampa Grope Biden calling his business partner Xi and wishing him a happy lunar new year before he has even called Israel, our most loyal, reliable and capable ally? I guess Xi giving the Democrats the gift of the Wuhan Virus puts Xi tops on his list. You like that?
@Deplorable Me, #38:
No one has stopped Trump from spouting lies and incendiary nonsense. Several privately owned social media platforms simply took away a crazy man’s free Mr. Microphone. He should have enough of his followers’ money by now to buy one of his own, without even having to dip into his own supposed personal billions.
Slept through January 6th, did you? I’d have thought you would at least have seen a few of the reruns.
No, I mean an occasion that should have defined the limit of acceptable behavior for any future president.
There was no significant fraud. The election results were entirely legitimate. Officials of every one of our 50 states affirmed that. Over sixty lawsuits failed to produce any credible evidence to the contrary. Trump lost the popular election by nearly 8 million votes. He was soundly rejected by a strong majority of American voters in an election where voters turned out in record numbers.
What happened on January 6th happened because of Trump’s lie. I hope he’s prosecuted. I’d be just as happy to never hear his name again.
@Greg: Did him not starting any new wars bother you and your blood thirsty, war mongering pals that much?
Not silencing his detractors but shining a light on what fools they were?
He certainly didnt need troops surrounding him as he was installed illegally.
@Ronald J. Ward:
Trump was found “guilty” by NO ONE.
This isn’t a legal case. It’s a fraudulent and misused failsafe weaponized by Democrats.
Trump wins.
Total exoneration.
@Greg:
Incorrect.
It happened because the election was rigged, and Democrats staged the Capitol riot as a false flag.
@Nathan Blue:
If the impeachment was void because, as you say, it was an illegal case (which you conclude Trump was found guilty by no one), how can it be that Trump was “exonerated “, as you also say?
You don’t make sense. You just ignore reality and spout things as true (always without evidenced and usually contradicting facts and reality and hell, even your very own statements) that compliment your narrative.
You are incapable of distinguishing what is true and what is not true. Nor do you care.
@Nathan Blue:
By what logic would it be that Dems “staged” a protest on the Capitol as a false flag to stop a process of confirming an election that they won?
You say the most incredibly ridiculous things.
@Nathan Blue:
When the likely convictions of the civilian Trump are handed down by courts and jurors and he’s put behind bars, will he actually be behind bars or will they be fake bars because the jurors and the courts conspired against him?
@Ronald J. Ward:
The density of the rock in your noggin is beyond penetration.
@Ronald J. Ward:
The density of the rock in your noggin is beyond penetration.