Refuting Conservative Dogma...Still Yet Again: My Reply to ' Should Trump be impeached for speaking with the Ukrainian President?"

-
On Quora, conservative member Philipp Andern asks:

Liberals: Should Trump be impeached for speaking with the Ukrainian President? Why or why not?
My reply:
First, let me say that disingenuous questions like “Liberals: Should Trump be impeached for speaking with the Ukrainian President? Why or why not?” are annoying, dishonest, and meant to deflect from the truth. In other words, they are insincere.
Second, under most circumstances, it is part of any President’s job to speak to foreign leaders. Whether it is to congratulate one - such as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Kelensky - on winning an election or to consult with a major ally on matters of global importance, it is important that a President of the United States reaches out to his foreign counterparts. It’s part of the job and a crucial one at that.
What is impeachable in the case of the conversation with Ukraine’s President Kelensky is the fact that the current occupant of the White House was leaning on another head of state to dig up dirt on a Democratic Presidential aspirant’s family in order to benefit Donald J. Trump’s re-election.
Ukraine right now is embroiled in a nasty civil war fomented by Russia and its authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin. It is not a NATO member, but it is receiving aid from the West to survive predations on its sovereign territory by its bigger neighbor to the east. The Trump Administration is providing some of that military aid to Kyiv (even though it makes his buddy Putin kinda mad at us), but like a Mafia don, Trump wants something in return.
In this case, it is not basing rights for NATO or U.S. forces that Trump wants from Kelensky. No, sweet summer child; what he wants is “political dirt” on the alleged business dealings of Joe Biden’s son in Ukraine, plus a stash of Hillary Clinton’s emails that are rumored to be in the archives of a Ukrainian e-company called CrowdStrike.
As my fellow Quoran Jill Grant says in her answer (regarding that rumored stash of Clinton’s emails):
“He just can’t let that last election go.”
So basically, it is not that Trump talked to Kelensky that is grounds for impeachment.
It’s the motive of the conversation (in this case, asking a foreign head of state to essentially assist Trump in winning a second term by hurting an opponent) and the Mafia don-like behavior that is impeachable behavior.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How many movies have been made based on Stephen King's 'It'?

-
Image
How many movies have been made based on Stephen King's It ? It  has been adapted twice for filmed audio-visual media. The first filmed version of  It was a TV limited series; the second was a duology of theatrically-released movies.  The first adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 doorstop of a novel was a 1990 adaptation made as a two-part ABC miniseries for television. Among the cast members: Tim Reid, Harry Anderson, Annette O’Toole, John Ritter, and Richard Thomas. The miniseries also featured Tim Curry as the evil Pennywise the Clown. Adapted for television by director Tommy Lee Wallace and Lawrence D. Cohen (who also adapted King’s  Carrie  for director Brian De Palma in 1976),  It  was okay but a watered-down take on the scary novel about a group of friends who must face off against a monstrous entity known as “It” twice. Once as kids in 1960, then again as adults in 1990. (Like  11,22.63,  the TV version of It avoids the year 1958, which is where parts of  11/22/63 
Read more

Talking About Tom Clancy's 'Ryanverse': Was Jack Ryan a Republican or a Democrat?

-
Image
Harrison Ford starred in two Jack Ryan films. © 1992 Paramount Pictures On Quora, member Maya Lachman asks: Was Jack Ryan a Republican or a Democrat? My reply: If you’re talking about Tom Clancy’s iconic character John Patrick Ryan, Sr., he is depicted in the novels as being Republican, especially in most of the books that follow 1991’s  The Sum of All Fears. In the early Jack Ryan novels ( The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, The Cardinal of the Cardinal, Clear and Present Danger,  and  The Sum of All Fears ), Ryan works his way up the ranks in the Central Intelligence Agency, starting out as a recently-recruited analyst and rising all the way to Deputy Director (Intelligence), or DDI. During his time at CIA, Ryan doesn’t have much to say about politics (except in the context of U.S.-Soviet relations, in which case he is obviously a Cold War Republican), but his pre-CIA resume includes a stint as a Marine Corps lieutenant, a successful stockbroker who, despite
Read more

Movie Review: 'PT-109'

-
Image
In June of 1963, five months before the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Warner Bros. released director Leslie Martinson’s  PT-109 , an adaptation of Robert J. Donovan’s non-fiction book  PT-109: John F. Kennedy in World War II.   Starring Cliff Robertson ( Charly, Spider-Man ) as Navy Lieutenant (junior grade) John F. Kennedy and co-starring Ty Hardin, James Gregory, Robert Culp, Robert Blake, Norman Fell and even an uncredited George Takei (Hikaru Sulu of  Star Trek: The Original Series ), the film is a fairly accurate depiction of JFK’s naval service in the South Pacific as the commander of a motor torpedo boat given the Navy pennant number PT-109 (the PT standing for the Navy ship designator “Patrol Torpedo”).  Although Hollywood had made movies in which former Presidents (either living or dead) were depicted, producer Bryan Foy, under the direct guidance of Warner Bros.' head of production Jack Warner (who, in turn, was influenced by Joseph P. Kennedy, a f
Read more