Trump Doesn't Seem To Understand He Can Be Impeached For His Criminal Behavior

I have a good friend who's in his mid-20s, a brilliant scientist, currently studying glaciers in Greenland. He's very good at working on the global cryosphere and, especially in on glaciology, his specialty. But outside of his field, he's like a 12 year old. He runs around Greenland in a t-shirt or, when he remembers, a sweatshirt. This is the weather in Nuuk this week:

So he got sick. I told him to go see a doctor. "Yeah, yeah, I will," he said. He didn't. I told him how dangerous pneumonia is. He thinks it's like a bad cold. I told him people die from it or get life-changing effects. He basically ignored me and went about his glaciology-- until he... well, I won't horrify you with the symptoms. He finally went to a doctor who told him he has pneumonia and could have died if he hadn't come in. He's on antibiotics now, but still not taking care of himself... and not getting better. Usually teenagers are convinced of their own immortality or invincibility. Somewhere in their late twenties, they get over that. Trump, though, never has.

The Washington Post's crack team-- Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Rachel Bade-- reported yesterday that Señor "No Collusion" was colluding with-- or trying to-- another foreign president, Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Trump and Giuliani , in their push to "influence the newly elected Ukrainian leader reveals a president convinced of his own invincibility-- apparently willing and even eager to wield the vast powers of the United States to taint a political foe and confident that no one could hold him back." One would hope that dope Pelosi is starting to take this seriously.

“We haven’t seen anything like this in my lifetime,” said William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution who graduated from college just before Watergate. “He appears to be daring the rest of the political system to stop him-- and if it doesn’t, he’ll go further.”

The effort-- which came as the Trump administration was withholding financial and military support from Ukraine to help the small democracy protect itself against Russian aggression-- illustrates Trump’s expansive view of executive power and what appears to be a cavalier attitude about legal limits on his conduct.

...Trump has said he did nothing improper in his calls with Zelensky or any other foreign leader, and on Saturday he derided Democrats and the media for what he dubbed “the Ukraine Witch Hunt.”

But the scrutiny surrounding the phone call has brought fresh peril to Trump’s presidency and could turbocharge the drive by some House Democrats to open impeachment proceedings.

Democrats’ frustration with their inability to check Trump and hold him accountable for his conduct after nine months in the majority is starting to boil over. Lawmakers for the first time are saying publicly that their caucus looks feckless, and some are fretting that their flimsy oversight and reliance on the courts to eventually rescue them have proved fruitless.

“We back off everything,” said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN). “We’ve been very weak.”

By "we," Cohen was talking about Hoyer and Pelosi-- and don't think I put Hoyer's name first by chance. But yesterday, even as unwavering a Pelosi loyalist as Adam Schiff began... wavering. I lived in Schiff's district even before it was Schiff's district. You see "Impeach Trump" signs everywhere-- many of them homemade. On my block there's one on a picture window facing the street that went up in 2017. Trump only got 22.3% of the vote in CA-28-- and the vote for Trump is even that high because whoever drew the map tacked on the Crescenta Valley (La Cañada Flintridge and La Crescenta) to a district that is basically deep, deep blue areas like Hollywood, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, the Hollywood Hills, Glendale, Burbank, Echo Park, East Hollywood, Atwater Village, and West Hollywood. Schiff is finally catching up with his district.





Yesterday Schiff was a guest on State of the Union (above) and he told Jake Tapper that he's edging closer to calling for impeachment. It's hard to believe he would say that without a go ahead from Pelosi.

TAPPER: Well, I said that to Secretary Mnuchin just two minutes ago, why not just release this to settle the issue?

And he said, because it would set a horrible precedent, because world leaders should be able to talk to President Trump without having those conversations shared. Your response to that?

SCHIFF: Well, not if those conversations involve potential corruption or criminality or leverage being used for political advantage against our nation's interest.

And that's what's at stake here. This would be, I think, the most profound violation of the presidential oath of office, certainly during this presidency, which says a lot, but perhaps during just about any presidency.

There is no privilege that covers corruption. There is no privilege to engage in underhanded discussions. And, again, I don't know if this is the subject of the whistle-blower complaint. But if it is, it needs to be exposed.

And we know the inspector general found that complaint urgent. We also know the inspector general found this did not involve a policy disagreement. It's one thing if you're talking about a presidential communication that involves a policy issue.

That is not a valid whistle-blower complaint. But, here, the inspector general said, this is not what is at issue. We're talking about serious or flagrant abuse, impropriety, potential violation of law.

And there's no privilege that protects that. And the reason I think that, if these two issues are, in fact, one issue, if there is a relationship between this complaint and this issue, you have not only this illicit conduct by the president of the United States, but you also have the added element of a cover-up.

TAPPER: If the president did, in fact, in that phone call push the Ukrainian president to investigate Hunter Biden and Joe Biden eight times, as the Wall Street Journal reported, is it an impeachable offense, in your view?

SCHIFF: Well, Jake, you know I have been very reluctant to go down the path of impeachment, for the reason that I think the founders contemplating, in a country that has elections every four years, that this would be an extraordinary remedy, a remedy of last resort, not first resort.

But if the president is essentially withholding military aid, at the same time that he is trying to browbeat a foreign leader into doing something illicit, that is, providing dirt on his opponent during a presidential campaign, then that may be the only remedy that is co- equal to the evil that that conduct represents.

We're going to hear from the director of national intelligence on Thursday why he is the first director to withhold ever a whistle- blower complaint. And we are going to make sure that we get that complaint, that whistle-blower is protected.

And we're going to make sure that we find out whether the president has engaged in this kind of improper conduct. But it may be that we do have to move forward with that extraordinary remedy, if indeed the president is, at the same time withholding vital military assistance, he is trying to leverage that to obtain impermissible help in his political campaign.

"We cannot afford to play rope-a-dope in the court for weeks or months on end. We need an answer. If there's a fire burning, it needs to be put out. And that's why we're going to have to look at every remedy."

NBC and the Wall Street Journal released a new poll yesterday while Schiff was recording his interview. One of the findings is that Trump is the most hated president in American history. 69% of registered voters say they don’t like Trump personally, and that includes 19% who hate him but like his policies. Only 29% of voters say they like Trump personally. (Before Trump, the most disliked president in modern times was George W. Bush-- in the midst of his mishandling of Hurricane Katrina-- at that was just 42% personal dislike.