Moscow Mitch's impeachment rules are designed to keep the trial out of public view

ChristianProgressive

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By truncating the time to make their cases, by timing the hearings so that much of it falls out of prime time, and by making sure the Senators cannot communicate to the public what is happening.

This is a whitewash. A coverup in real time, as multiple media observers are pointing out.
 
As Schumer said, a trial that does not permit witnesses, the evidence already presented in the House can't automatically be admitted, and no new evidence wll be heard isn't a trial; it's a cover up.

Trump likes to call it a 'hoax' and 'sham'. He's right. McConnell has turned it into a hoax and sham of a trial.
 
Considering the way that stupid, idiotic, lying Mitch McConnell stalled that an Obama Supreme Court nomination in order to get a Trump nominee into the Supreme Court, then I am no longer surprised at anything that stupid, idiotic, lying Mitch McConnell may do with his senatorial powers.
 
Justice Roberts may decide to force the issue and override Mitch?

I mean, the way things are going, Mitch seems determined to cut out all the components of a trial per se - no witnesses, no evidence, no time... Why stop there! How about no prosecution senators, discard all prosecution documentation and do away with having a judge in charge! In fact, do away with even having to turn up in the Senate. Make it so that only Mitch can decide the issue on his own. And thus the case can be adjudged and dismissed in five minutes without any further fuss, bother or cost.
 
Was it mentioned Moscow Mitch also wants the witnesses behind closed doors and then there will be some kind of filtering as to what Mitch thinks he can allow out of the Cone of Silence.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Was it mentioned Moscow Mitch also wants the witnesses behind closed doors and then there will be some kind of filtering as to what Mitch thinks he can allow out of the Cone of Silence.
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Only a person with less than half a brain can't see Mitch and the other Trumper senators are scared to death of what witnesses will say. They are desperate to prevent them from testifying, especially Bolton and Mulvaney...the people they claim themselves can exonerate Trump. That makes sense only to those who know that what those witnesses would say under oath would condemn Trump.
 
Stacyhs said:
Only a person with less than half a brain can't see Mitch and the other Trumper senators are scared to death of what witnesses will say. They are desperate to prevent them from testifying, especially Bolton and Mulvaney...the people they claim themselves can exonerate Trump. That makes sense only to those who know that what those witnesses would say under oath would condemn Trump.
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What they REALLY don't want is for Trump himself to testify. For obvious reasons.

Donny has been screeching on about "not being allowed to testify" for months. So a case can be made that he should be allowed to personally "take the stand" or whatever the process is for this sort of thing. And he would do it too, believing in his tiny and irrational mind he could talk his way out of all this trouble because he is "The Great Negotiator!!!"

Mitch knows damn well that if Donny is let anywhere near testifying, even indirectly via his emissaries, Trump will go to jail, Mitch's career is over on the spot, and the GOP will not attain government for the next half century at the earliest. And worst of all, Putin will unfriend them.
 
Stacyhs said:
Only a person with less than half a brain can't see Mitch and the other Trumper senators are scared to death of what witnesses will say. They are desperate to prevent them from testifying, especially Bolton and Mulvaney...the people they claim themselves can exonerate Trump. That makes sense only to those who know that what those witnesses would say under oath would condemn Trump.
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We need a campaign: What are you afraid of Mitch?
 
Roger Ramjets said:
A sham trial with a foregone conclusion, arranged by the perp and his supporters in government?

Awesome! Another step towards destroying everything we hold dear.
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And the Right will still deny that they are veering the country towards a dictatorship.
 
I can see deposing witnesses privately, but to then censor their public testimony? If both sides agree that some lines of questioning are unnecessary, then fine, omit those from public questioning. If certain public testimony would threaten national security, have a procedure for keeping that off the record. But the depositions themselves need to be entered into the record, barring classified information.

I think there needs to be a pressure campaign NOW aimed at GOP senators in purple states. Not demanding conviction, but telling them that rolling over for Mitch's whitewash will damage them in November. There's a senator in my state who fits the bill. Acquittal might be acceptable, but rigging the process is in a way worse. Any chance that state Democratic parties are thinking like this?

ETA: Ads like this: "Let your senator know that you expect them to vote for a fair, open process. Your constituents deserve to know the truth." Followed by contact info.
 
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From Trump supporters, it was never about whether Trump was guilty or not.
It was whether he can get away with it yet again.
THAT is what his fans admire about him most of all: to make massive mistakes and even crimes and not be held accountable.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
From Trump supporters, it was never about whether Trump was guilty or not.
It was whether he can get away with it yet again.
THAT is what his fans admire about him most of all: to make massive mistakes and even crimes and not be held accountable.
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As long as they get their tax cut and anti-abortion legislation.


Oh....and stick it to the libs.
 
ChristianProgressive said:
By truncating the time to make their cases, by timing the hearings so that much of it falls out of prime time, and by making sure the Senators cannot communicate to the public what is happening.

This is a whitewash. A coverup in real time, as multiple media observers are pointing out.
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I hope you're not surprised.
 
Belz... said:
Don't you think you're exaggerating? If not, you have no idea what a dictatorship is.
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No, I am not exaggerating. I know my history, and what Trump and the GOP is doing mirrors almost exactly what happened in 1930s Germany and Italy.

Recent events are the "Me ne frego" moment in history that proves it.
 
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Stacyhs said:
As Schumer said, a trial that does not permit witnesses, the evidence already presented in the House can't automatically be admitted, and no new evidence wll be heard isn't a trial; it's a cover up.
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Indeed.

We're being given a show trial and we're not even getting a show out of it.

Now, in complete fairness, I've always said that the whole impeachment process is its own unique thing. It's sort of a trial, it's sort of a disciplinary review board, it's sort of a lot of things but not exactly any of those.

So I'm not as hung up on whether or not any specific thing happens exactly as it would in a trial. I'm fine (in theory) with the impeachment process being tailored in a way that doesn't check all of the "Well in a trial you do this..." boxes.

I'm just not okay with how it's being tailored.
 
ChristianProgressive said:
No, I am not exaggerating. I know my history, and what Trump and the GOP is doing mirrors almost exactly what happened in 1930s Germany and Italy.
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If you had said that it's on the path to becoming one, I wouldn't have said anything. It clealry isn't a dictatorship now, first of all because Congress still has lawmaking power and Trump is not always getting his way, and second because in a few months Trump will, at best, get elected for the last time.
 
We're no more in a dictatorship now than we were from 2009 to 2017 when the Republicans were claiming it. The difference is that this president actually WANTS to be a dictator.
 
Trebuchet said:
We're no more in a dictatorship now than we were from 2009 to 2017 when the Republicans were claiming it. The difference is that this president actually WANTS to be a dictator.
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I don't see any evidence that Trump wants to be a dictator. As best I can tell, his biggest failing along those lines is that, like most Americans, he thinks the presidency holds a little more power than it actually holds.
 
Belz... said:
If you had said that it's on the path to becoming one, I wouldn't have said anything. It clealry isn't a dictatorship now, first of all because Congress still has lawmaking power and Trump is not always getting his way, and second because in a few months Trump will, at best, get elected for the last time.
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Dictators take power LONG before anyone tends to notice their dictators. People BS-ed the notion that Hitler was a dictator until he Blitzedd Europe.
 
ChristianProgressive said:
Dictators take power LONG before anyone tends to notice their dictators. People BS-ed the notion that Hitler was a dictator until he Blitzedd Europe.
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So I assume you're stockpiling weapons and ammo to start the resistance movement and not, for instance, whining about your treatment on Twitter, right?

The people who call Trump the new Hitler the loudest always seem rather hesitant to put their money where their mouth is.
 
ChristianProgressive said:
Dictators take power LONG before anyone tends to notice their dictators. People BS-ed the notion that Hitler was a dictator until he Blitzedd Europe.
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Get a grip, man. Hitler became a dictator when he passed the Enabling Act.

You can't call Trump a dictator when he gets almost nothing done because he actually doesn't have that much power.
 
JoeMorgue said:
So I assume you're stockpiling weapons and ammo to start the resistance movement and not, for instance, whining about your treatment on Twitter, right?

The people who call Trump the new Hitler the loudest always seem rather hesitant to put their money where their mouth is.
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Gotta have money first. But I do know people who are doing just that.
 
ChristianProgressive said:
Dictators take power LONG before anyone tends to notice their dictators. People BS-ed the notion that Hitler was a dictator until he Blitzedd Europe.
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I don't know who these BS people were, but they would have been against the grain of history. If not the enabling act, then for certain after Hindenburg's death in 1934, when Hitler outlawed all political parties, he was acknowledged as an absolute dictator. That was five years before any blitzkrieg.
 
Belz... said:
Get a grip, man. Hitler became a dictator when he passed the Enabling Act.

You can't call Trump a dictator when he gets almost nothing done because he actually doesn't have that much power.
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Then why isn't he in jail for the crimes he has already committed?

Hitler was de facto a dictator long before the Enabling Act.
 
People are nearly as blinded by the Hitler comparison as they are by the Nixon comparison and neither of them really work on Trump and not that doesn't mean I'm support the BAD ORANGE MAN, I understand the the ORANGE MAN IS BAD.
 
ChristianProgressive said:
Then why isn't he in jail for the crimes he has already committed?
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Because the opposition party is a bunch of spineless, Milquetoast goobers who couldn't win a political debate with a potted plant and are too interested in eating their own young in the primaries?
 
carlitos said:
I don't know who these BS people were, but they would have been against the grain of history. If not the enabling act, then for certain after Hindenburg's death in 1934, when Hitler outlawed all political parties, he was acknowledged as an absolute dictator. That was five years before any blitzkrieg.
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And people were still treating him as a legitimate head of state in 1938 (cf. Chamberlin)
 
JoeMorgue said:
Because the opposition party is a bunch of spineless, Milquetoast goobers who couldn't win a political debate with a potted plant and are too interested in eating their own young in the primaries?
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That doesn't help, but the GOP has already seized control or neutered the power of any government branch or agency that might oppose it. Congress has been rendered impotent by GOP domination of one house. The Judiciary has been packed with reactionary ultra-right judges, and Trump appointed the worst sort of partisan hacks to head our regulatory agencies and law enforcement.
 
ChristianProgressive said:
That doesn't help, but the GOP has already seized control or neutered the power of any government branch or agency that might oppose it. Congress has been rendered impotent by GOP domination of one house. The Judiciary has been packed with reactionary ultra-right judges, and Trump appointed the worst sort of partisan hacks to head our regulatory agencies and law enforcement.
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*Shrugs* Then like I said start the revolution don't waste time making excuses for why you are doing anything and instead are just whining on a message board.

Things suck right now and yes Trump has stacked the deck to a terrifying degree, but either (crap) or get off the pot with the "All is lost" talk.
 
Politics has really become a depressing place to come. It's either "The Dems are pussies, they don't do anything, and they're useless", or trash talking Trump, or trash talking how the Dems aren't doing anything about Trump.

I mean, damn. To listen to some of this **** you'd think there's absolutely no ******* light at the end of the tunnel and it's depressing as **** to come around here.

Jesus.
 
plague311 said:
Politics has really become a depressing place to come. It's either "The Dems are pussies, they don't do anything, and they're useless", or trash talking Trump, or trash talking how the Dems aren't doing anything about Trump.

I mean, damn. To listen to some of this **** you'd think there's absolutely no ******* light at the end of the tunnel and it's depressing as **** to come around here.

Jesus.
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Because "I think things will get better eventually but I have no idea how bad they are going to get before then" is hard to put into the discussion within the two allowed sides.

The country will survive Trump. I've never doubted that. There's not going to be a revolution, there's not going to be a coup, we're not going to have to destroy the entire government and rebuilt it from scratch.

There's a huge grey spectrum between "All is lost" and "Goddamn how did we let it get this bad."
 
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