Trump impeached for second time - 10 republicans crossed over to vote for impeachment - thoughts?

@CestManan Impeachments are forever.

@CestManan It will last forever. Four in history. Trump has half of them.

@windinhishair and @QuixoticSoul

Last time he got impeached, didn't it last just about as long as a fart in the wind?

Trump is one of those bastards who can do whatever he wants and come out smelling like a rose. Some people are just like that.

He never should have held office to begin with. I guess it won't matter next a week though.

@CestManan No. He's still impeached (by the House). The Republican-led Senate voted not to convict, which requires a 2/3 vote. That's what you're thinking of. But the fact a president is impeached is a stain on their term in office, a very rare one. And no president has ever been impeached twice. Until today.

@CestManan No, Trump remains impeached - if not convicted. That's ok, impeachment is as much about setting limits and precedent as anything else.

@windinhishair Nixon is probably thinking, well at least I'm off the hook now.

@CestManan Or W. I think he was a worse president than Nixon. We are still in two wars of convenience that he started close to 20 years ago.

@windinhishair Both totally bogus.

@Strictgram When did we remove all our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq? Oh wait, we didn't. Don't tell me you are a Bush/Cheney supporter too. How was that war in Iraq that would be over in three months and cost no more than $50 million with few if any American deaths? That one is almost as egregious as Trump's statement that the coronavirus is a hoax and will go away like magic in April.

@windinhishair My bogus comment referred to impeachments. Total political nonsense. You know that.

@Strictgram So you support shaking down a foreign government for assistance in Trump's political campaign AND inciting deadly violence against the Capitol and Congress. It figures. Total blind support is your approach to a president committing impeachable offenses. Were you there in DC on the 6th, or just cheering the deaths of others from home?

@windinhishair Look in the mirror your nose continues to grow. Neither premise comes close to the truth. Better re read his words.

@Strictgram His words are what give him away. The Trump supporters who were there on the sixth re-affirmed it. The people who were on the call with the new Ukrainian President knew what was said as well. Too bad you are so far down the rabbit hole you cannot even recognize reality any more.

@Strictgram Literally the most justified impeachments in American history - but it's ok if you don't get it, that reality distortion field is something else.

@QuixoticSoul The justification for impeachment couldn't be clearer or more warranted.

@windinhishair Read the transcript. Trump used the word "peaceful." Read me the quote where he called for violence. You can't continue to distort his words just because you have an unhealthy obsession with him.

@Strictgram [quote]On January 6, 2021, pursuant to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the House of Representatives, and the Senate met at the United States Capitol for a Joint Session of Congress to count the votes of the Electoral College. In the months preceding the Joint Session, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials. Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump, addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. There, he reiterated false claims that "we won this election, and we won it by a landslide." He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in — lawless action at the Capitol, such as: "if you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore." Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the Joint Session's solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive and seditious acts.

President Trump's conduct on January 6, 2021, followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election. Those prior efforts included a phone call on January 2, 2021, during which President Trump urged the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to "find" enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.

In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

Wherefore, Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. Donald John Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.[/quote]

Seems pretty cut and dry to me, and much of it is to do with his general post-election conduct and baseless yet incendiary rhetoric. And no "but he used the word peaceful" isn't going to wash.

@Strictgram I watched his speech inciting violence. It couldn't have been more clear. Gratuitous use of the word "peaceful" in retrospect doesn't forgive his call to violence. You must have been watching cartoons or something else more your speed.

Lindsay Graham couldn't get hold of Trump when he was pinned down in the Senate by Trump's Cultists, so he called Ivanka to get her to ask her father to call the terrorists off. He didn't. He was gleefully watching his Cult commit murder and violence to his personal glory. Even Lindsay knew it was Trump-incited violence.

@windinhishair Read Trump's quote where he advocated violence. there is none. You disregard his use of the word peaceful. You just can't be satisfied. Who will you hate beginning on the 20th?

@Strictgram His words during the "rally" prior to the insurrection to destroy democracy clearly called for violence, as outlined in the impeachment article. You may want to focus on a stray word here or there, but that has nothing to do with the message. The Cult understood and converged on the Capitol as directed (Trump promised to go with him, but like a typical bully, he did not).

I hate no one. I dislike what Trump has done and continues to do to destroy the nation, and it would be disingenuous not to call out his incitement of violence and criminality. I don't even hate you. I do feel sorry that you are no longer able to see what is happening to the nation, and support a white supremacist president.

@windinhishair Don't paraphrase. Use direct quote where Trump advocated for violent insurrection. Ditto white supremacist claim.
Use these. "

@Strictgram [quote]"The media will not show the magnitude of this crowd. Even I, when I turned on today, I looked, and I saw thousands of people here, but you don’t see hundreds of thousands of people behind you because they don’t want to show that. We have hundreds of thousands of people here, and I just want them to be recognised by the fake news media. Turn your cameras please and show what’s really happening out here because these people are not going to take it any longer.

They’re not going to take it any longer. Go ahead. Turn your cameras, please. Would you show? They came from all over the world, actually, but they came from all over our country. I just really want to see what they do. I just want to see how they covered. I’ve never seen anything like it. But it would be really great if we could be covered fairly by the media. The media is the biggest problem we have as far as I’m concerned, single biggest problem, the fake news and the big tech. Big tech is now coming into their own. We beat them four years ago. We surprised them. We took them by surprise and this year, they rigged an election.

They rigged it like they’ve never rigged an election before. By the way, last night, they didn’t do a bad job either, if you notice. I’m honest. I just, again, I want to thank you. It’s just a great honour to have this kind of crowd and to be before you. Hundreds of thousands of American patriots are committed to the honesty of our elections and the integrity of our glorious republic. All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats, which is what they’re doing and stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up. We will never concede, it doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.

Our country has had enough. We will not take it any more and that’s what this is all about. To use a favourite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election, and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election. I say sometimes jokingly, but there’s no joke about it, I’ve been in two elections.

I won them both and the second one, I won much bigger than the first. Almost 75 million people voted for our campaign, the most of any incumbent president by far in the history of our country, 12 million more people than four years ago. I was told by the real pollsters, we do have real pollsters. They know that we were going to do well, and we were going to win. What I was told, if I went from 63 million, which we had four years ago to 66 million, there was no chance of losing. Well, we didn’t go to 66. We went to 75 million and they say we lost. We didn’t lose.

By the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? He had 80 million computer votes. It’s a disgrace. There’s never been anything like that. You could take third world countries. Just take a look, take third world countries. Their elections are more honest than what we’ve been going through in this country. It’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace. Even when you look at last night, they’re all running around like chickens with their heads cut off with boxes. Nobody knows what the hell is going on. There’s never been anything like this. We will not let them silence your voices. We’re not going to let it happen. Not going to let it happen.

Crowd: Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!

Thank you. I’d love to have, if those tens of thousands of people would be allowed, the military, the secret service, and we want to thank you, and the police law enforcement. Great. You’re doing a great job, but I’d love it if they could be allowed to come up here with us. Is that possible? Can you just let them come up, please? Rudy, you did a great job. He’s got guts. You know what? He’s got guts, unlike a lot of people in the Republican party. He’s got guts, he fights. He fights, and I’ll tell you. Thank you very much, John. Fantastic job. I watched. That’s a tough act to follow, those two. John is one of the most brilliant lawyers in the country, and he looked at this and he said, ‘What an absolute disgrace, that this could be happening to our constitution.’ He looked at Mike Pence, and I hope Mike is going to do the right thing.

I hope so. I hope so because if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do. This is from the number one or certainly one of the top constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We’re supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our constitution and protect our constitution. States want to revote. The states got defrauded. They were given false information. They voted on it. Now they want to recertify. They want it back. All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people.
I just spoke to Mike. I said, ‘Mike, that doesn’t take courage. What takes courage is to do nothing. That takes courage,’ and then we’re stuck with a president who lost the election by a lot, and we have to live with that for four more years. We’re just not going to let that happen. Many of you have travelled from all across the nation to be here, and I want to thank you for the extraordinary love. That’s what it is. There’s never been a movement like this ever, ever for the extraordinary love for this amazing country and this amazing movement. Thank you.

Crowd: We love Trump! We love Trump! We love Trump!

By the way, this goes all the way back past the Washington monument. Do you believe this? Look at this. Unfortunately, they gave the press the prime seats. I can’t stand that. No, but you look at that behind. I wish they’d flip those cameras and look behind you. That is the most amazing sight. When they make a mistake, you get to see it on television. Amazing, amazing, all the way back. Don’t worry. We will not take the name off the Washington monument. We will not. Cancel culture. They wanted to get rid of the Jefferson Memorial, either take it down or just put somebody else in there. I don’t think that’s going to happen. It damn well better not. Although with this administration, if this happens, it could happen. You’ll see some really bad things happen.

They’ll knock out Lincoln too, by the way. They’ve been taking his statue down, but then we signed a little law. You hurt our monuments, you hurt our heroes, you go to jail for 10 years and everything stopped. Did you notice that? It stopped. It all stopped. They could use Rudy back in New York City. Rudy, they could use you. Your city is going to hell. They want Rudy Giuliani back in New York. We’ll get a little younger version of Rudy. Is that okay, Rudy?
We’re gathered together in the heart of our nation’s Capitol for one very, very basic and simple reason, to save our democracy. Most candidates on election evening, and of course this thing goes on so long, they still don’t have any idea what the votes are. We still have congressional seats under review. They have no idea. They’ve totally lost control. They’ve used the pandemic as a way of defrauding the people in a proper election.
But when you see this and when you see what’s happening, number one, they all say, ‘Sir, we’ll never let it happen again.’ I said, ‘That’s good, but what about eight weeks ago?’ They try and get you to go. They say, ‘Sir, in four years, you’re guaranteed.’ I said, ‘I’m not interested right now. Do me a favour, go back eight weeks. I want to go back eight weeks. Let’s go back eight weeks.’ We want to go back, and we want to get this right because we’re going to have somebody in there that should not be in there and our country will be destroyed, and we’re not going to stand for that.

For years, Democrats have gotten away with election fraud and weak Republicans, and that’s what they are. There’s so many weak Republicans. We have great ones, Jim Jordan, and some of these guys. They’re out there fighting the House. Guys are fighting, but it’s incredible. Many of the Republicans, I helped them get in. I helped them get elected. I helped Mitch get elected. I could name 24 of them, let’s say. I won’t bore you with it, and then all of a sudden you have something like this. It’s like, ‘Gee, maybe I’ll talk to the president sometime later.’ No, it’s amazing.

The weak Republicans, they’re pathetic Republicans and that’s what happens. If this happened to the Democrats, there’d be hell all over the country going on. There’d be hell all over the country. But just remember this. You’re stronger, you’re smarter. You’ve got more going than anybody, and they try and demean everybody having to do with us, and you’re the real people. You’re the people that built this nation. You’re not the people that tore down our nation.


The weak Republicans, and that’s it. I really believe it. I think I’m going to use the term, the weak Republicans. You got a lot of them, and you got a lot of great ones, but you got a lot of weak ones. They’ve turned a blind eye even as Democrats enacted policies that chipped away our jobs, weakened our military, threw open our borders and put America last. Did you see the other day where Joe Biden said, ‘I want to get rid of the America-first policy.’ What’s that all about, get rid of …? How do you say, ‘I want to get rid of America first?’ Even if you’re going to do it, don’t talk about it. Unbelievable, what we have to go through, what we have to go through and you have to get your people to fight. If they don’t fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don’t fight. You primary them. We’re going to let you know who they are. I can already tell you, frankly.

But this year using the pretext of the China virus and the scam of mail-in ballots, Democrats attempted the most brazen and outrageous election theft. There’s never been anything like this. It’s a pure theft in American history, everybody knows it. That election, our election was over at 10:00 in the evening. We’re leading Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia by hundreds of thousands of votes, and then late in the evening or early in the morning, boom, these explosions of and bullshit, and all of a sudden. All of a sudden it started to happen.

A supporter of President Donald Trump confronts police as Trump supporters demonstrate on the second floor of the US Capitol near the entrance to the Senate [Mike Theiler/Reuters]
Don’t forget when Romney got beat. Romney. I wonder if he enjoyed his flight in last night? But when Romney got beaten, he stands up like you’re more typical. Well, I’d like to congratulate the victor, the victor. Who was the victor, Mitt? I’d like to congratulate. They don’t go and look at the facts. Now I don’t know. He got slaughtered probably, maybe it was okay. Maybe it was that’s what happened. But we look at the facts and our lecture was so corrupt that in the history of this country, we’ve never seen anything like it. You can go all the way back. America is blessed with elections all over the world. They talk about our elections. You know what the world says about us now? They said we don’t have free and fair elections and you know what else? We don’t have a free and fair press.
Our media is not free. It’s not fair. It suppresses thought. It suppresses speech, and it’s become the enemy of the people. It’s become the enemy of the people. It’s the biggest problem we have in this country. No third world countries would even attempt to do what we caught them doing and you’ll hear about that in just a few minutes. Republicans are constantly fighting like a boxer with his hands tied behind his back. It’s like a boxer, and we want to be so nice. We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. We’re going to have to fight much harder and Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us. If he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country because you’re sworn to uphold our constitution.

Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. After this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down. We’re going to walk down any one you want, but I think right here. We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.


We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections, but whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country. Our country has been under siege for a long time, far longer than this four-year period. We’ve set it on a much straighter course, a much … I thought four more years. I thought it would be easy. We created …


Four more years, I thought it would be easy. We created the greatest economy in history. We rebuilt our military. We get you the biggest tax cuts in history. We got you the biggest regulation cuts. There’s no President, whether it’s four years, eight years, or in one case more, got anywhere near the regulation cuts. It used to take 20 years to get a highway approved. now we’re down to two. I want to get it down to one, but we’re down to two. And it may get rejected for environmental or safety reasons, but we got it down the safety. We created Space Force. Look at what we did. Our military has been totally rebuilt. So we create Space Force, which by in of itself is a major achievement for an administration. And with us, it’s one of so many different things.


Right to try. Everybody know about right to try. We did things that nobody ever thought possible. We took care of our vets. Our vets, the VA now has the highest rating, 91 percent, the highest rating that it’s had from the beginning, 91 percent approval rating. Always you watch the VA, when it was on television. Every night people living in a horrible, horrible manner. We got that done. We got accountability done. We got it so that now in the VA, you don’t have to wait for four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, four months to see a doctor. If you can’t get a doctor, you go outside, you get the doctor, you have them taken care of. And we pay the doctor. And we’ve not only made life wonderful for so many people, we’ve saved tremendous amounts of money, far secondarily, but we’ve saved a lot of money.

And now we have the right to fire bad people in the VA. We had 9,000 people that treated our veterans horribly. In prime time, they would not have treated our veterans badly. But they treated our veterans horribly. And we have what’s called the VA Accountability Act. And the accountability says if we see somebody in there that doesn’t treat our vets well, or they steal, they rob, they do things badly. We say, ‘Joe, you’re fired. Get out of here.’ Before you couldn’t do that. You couldn’t do that before.


So we’ve taken care of things. We’ve done things like nobody’s ever thought possible. And that’s part of the reason that many people don’t like us, because we’ve done too much, but we’ve done it quickly. And we were going to sit home and watch a big victory. And everybody had us down for a victory. It was going to be great. And now we’re out here fighting. I said to somebody, I was going to take a few days and relax after our big electoral victory. Ten o’clock, it was over. But I was going to take a few days.

And I can say this, since our election, I believe, which was a catastrophe when I watch and even these guys knew what happened, they know what happened. They’re saying, ‘Wow, Pennsylvania’s insurmountable. Wow, Wisconsin, look at the big leads we had.’ Even though the press said we were going to lose Wisconsin by 17 points. Even though the press said Ohio is going to be close, we set a record. Florida’s going to be close, we set a record. Texas is going to be close. Texas is going to be close, we set a record. And we set a record with Hispanic, with the Black community. We set a record with everybody.


Today, we see a very important event though, because right over there, right there, we see the event going to take place. And I’m going to be watching, because history is going to be made. We’re going to see whether or not we have great and courageous leaders or whether or not we have leaders that should be ashamed of themselves throughout history, throughout eternity, they’ll be ashamed. And you know what? If they do the wrong thing, we should never ever forget that they did. Never forget. We should never ever forget. With only three of the seven states in question, we win the presidency of the United States.

A pro-Trump protester carries the lectern of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi through the Rotunda of the US Capitol Building after a pro-Trump mob stormed the building [Win McNamee/Getty Images/AFP]
And by the way, it’s much more important today than it was 24 hours ago. Because I spoke to David Perdue, what a great person, and Kelly Loeffler, two great people, but it was a setup. And I said, ‘We have no back line any more.’ The only back line, the only line of demarcation, the only line that we have is the veto of the president of the United States. So this is now what we’re doing, a far more important election than it was two days ago.
I want to thank the more than 140 members of the House. Those are warriors. They’re over there working like you’ve never seen before, studying, talking, actually going all the way back, studying the roots of the constitution, because they know we have the right to send a bad vote that was illegally got, they gave these people bad things to vote for and they voted, because what did they know? And then when they found out a few weeks later … Again, it took them four years to devise history. And the only unhappy person in the United States, single most unhappy, is Hillary Clinton because she said, ‘Why didn’t you do this for me four years ago? Why didn’t you do this for me four years ago? Change the votes! 10,000 in Michigan. You could have changed the whole thing!’ But she’s not too happy. You notice you don’t see her any more. What happened? Where is Hillary? Where is she?


But I want to thank all of those congressmen and women. I also want to thank our 13 most courageous members of the US Senate, Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Ron Johnson, Senator Shadowless, Kelly Loeffler. And Kelly Loeffler, I’ll tell you, she’s been so great. She works so hard. So let’s give her and David a little special head, because it was rigged against them. Let’s give her and David. Kelly Loeffler, David Perdue. They fought a good race. They never had a shot.

That equipment should never have been allowed to be used, and I was telling these people don’t let them use this stuff. Marsha Blackburn, terrific person. Mike Braun, Indiana. Disinvested, great guy. Bill Hagerty, John Kennedy, James Lankford, Cynthia Lummis. Tommy Tuberville, to the coach. And Roger Marshall. We want to thank them, senators that stepped up, we want to thank them.

I actually think though it takes, again, more courage not to step up. And I think a lot of those people are going to find that out, and you better start looking at your leadership because the leadership has led you down the tubes. ‘We don’t want to give $2,000 to people. We want to give them $600.’ Oh, great. How does that play politically? Pretty good? And this has nothing to do with politics. But how does it play politically? China destroye

@Strictgram As for white supremacy, recall Trump's support of his white supremacists at Charlottesville ("good people on both sides"), his policy of ripping children from their parents at the border and caging them, his Muslim ban, his description of Mexican nationals as rapists in his campaign announcement in 2015, etc. Everyone who knows him well knows he supports white supremacy, going back to his conviction for minority tenant abuse in the 1970s and his racist statements about the Central Park Five in the 1980s, who were exonerated from the crimes they were charged with, but Trump still wanted them jailed.

@windinhishair I don't see the part about advocating for a violent insurrection or white supremacy. Did you type that all in by hand? You have the record for longest post.

@Strictgram You wanted to read it for the first time, and I am happy to help educate you, should you be willing to learn.