Posted on 11/23/2019 5:16:01 AM PST by NorseViking
Donald Trump ought to be impeached and removed from office. This isn’t what I thought two months ago, when the impeachment inquiry began. I argued that the evidence fell short of the standards of a prosecutable criminal act. I also feared impeachment might ultimately help Trump politically, as it had helped Bill Clinton in 1998. That second worry might still prove true.
But if the congressional testimonies of Marie Yovanovitch, Bill Taylor, Gordon Sondland, Alexander Vindman and especially Fiona Hill make anything clear, it’s that the president’s highest crime isn’t what he tried to do to, or with, Ukraine.
It’s that he’s attempting to turn the United States into Ukraine. The judgment Congress has to make is whether the American people should be willing, actively or passively, to go along with it.
I’ve followed Ukrainian politics fairly closely since 1999, when I joined the staff of The Wall Street Journal Europe. It has consistent themes that should sound familiar to American ears.
The first theme is the criminalization of political differences. Years before Trump led his followers in “Lock Her Up” chants against Hillary Clinton, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych did exactly that against his own political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, who was sentenced to seven years in prison on a variety of byzantine charges after she had narrowly lost the 2010 election.
She spent three years in prison before her release during the 2014 Maidan Revolution. Key to Yanukovych’s efforts to discredit Tymoshenko was — who else? — Paul Manafort.
A second theme is the use of political office as a shield against criminal prosecution and as a vehicle for personal and familial enrichment. Why have so many of Ukraine’s oligarchs — including Burisma Holdings founder Mykola Zlochevsky — also served as government
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Helicopter rides.
Project much?
A second theme is the use of political office as a shield against criminal prosecution and as a vehicle for personal and familial enrichment.
Project much?\
First Peggy (dingbat) Noon and now Bret (et tu Bret?) Stephens.””
There are a great many people who would love to “with deep regret” talk us into putting Trump behind us for “the good of the country”. It wouldn’t surprise me if the next month or so features a great many of these “reluctant but realistic” phonies opining thusly...
>>> The first theme is the criminalization of political differences <<<
A theme mastered by Hussein Obama.
I assume you are calling the author an idiot?
“”A second theme is the use of political office as a shield against criminal prosecution and as a vehicle for personal and familial enrichment.””
He may as well have said, “former political office” but he couldn’t do that or it would have swept Biden up in his derangement - (both Biden’s and the writer’s) except Biden wasn’t the FORMER VP when he made that threat for Ukraine to fire the prosecutor, was he? Every word in that sentence pertains to Biden and not President Trump.
When 3rd hand information at best is used as solid evidence to try to “legally” overthrow a President then yeah a nation tends to look corrupt.
From a bedbug’s vantage point, all nations and their warm blooded inhabitants are the same.
How could they give a pass to so many unethical actions and outright crimes by the left, and then claim that it is Trump who is a threat to our national integrity?
Oral sex in the Oval Office, ‘throuples’, flights with underage girls on the plane of a sex offender - to his private island, outright lies about the circumstances under which our Ambassador to Libya and his protectors died in Benghazi, outright bribery by Biden to force the Ukraine to fire the prosecutor investigating his son, altering FISA records, spying on an opposition presidential candidate (Trump), sending billions of US dollars on pallets to Iran, selling our uranium to Russia, mismanagement if not theft of charity monies meant for Haiti, etc., etc.
Despite the above, which is only a representative small amount of the plethora of unethical and/or criminal behaviors of the Democrats and left, the media concentrates on a phone call by Trump - for which he has released the transcripts.
It's an unconscionable abdication of responsibility, ethics, and honesty by the media.
FReepers wanting to avoid an unnecessary visit to google.com, always a good idea, can find the original NYT article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/opinion/trump-impeachment.html
I wouldn’t wrap my bait fish with the NYT.
Wouldn’t line my bird cage with NYT.
Bret Stephens, BTW, reacted to being called a “bedbug” on Twitter to the Holocaust. He is a pretty weird guy.
Bret Stephens is a fake name...
What else ?
Trump must be detroyed because he threatens the smooth running kleptocracy that the US govt has become. In the current system politicans and their families are allowed to get rich by:
- Influence pedaling of all sorts.
- Giving protection to corrupt organizations that put half-witted family members of politicians on their board of directors.
- Not being subject to insider trading laws.
- Forming “Foundations” that collect hundreds of millions of dollars that are simply bribes to gain favor.
- Being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for “speeches” that have no obvious value except as a cover for bribery.
- Getting millions of dollars in “Book Deals” for writing books that no one wants to read and that will never make a profit (aka BRIBES).
All these and probably dozens more ways to “legally” steal money are turning us into a 3rd world nation.
The last occupant of the White House was not Constitutionally eligible, so maybe we are worse than Ukraine.
Exactly!
This demonstrates why, intellectually, Bret moved from the slightly Conservative Wall Street Journal to Pravda on the Hudson, where now he must really feel at home.
The Impeachment of Donald J...thousands of times more interesting than The Trial (Kafka) of Joseph K. Take notes. TAKE NAMES.
When you earn a living as a propagandist, you often have to write sh!t that makes you look like a jackass and a moron.
The National Enquirer is a much more reliable source than the Washington Post or New York Times.
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