Over at National Review the question of the day is whether President Biden will be impeached:
Rich Lowry: So let’s go to you, Phil Klein. Give us percentage odds Republicans will impeach Joe Biden one way or the other.
Phil Klein: I’d say about 70 percent that they’ll impeach him.
Charlie Cooke: I think it is slightly lower, maybe 60–40.
Michael Brendan Dougherty: 65 percent.
Lowry: Yeah, I think we’re all circling the same area. I might say 60 or 65.
Shazam! But why will he be impeached? The NR folks seem less interested in that, but a little earlier Cooke took a stab at it and the answer is.......surprise! It's all about Hunter Biden and his miasma of sleaziness:
I would just ask the question that I've asked before: Why? Why do we have a network of shell companies moving millions of dollars between them, with the president or his family as the ultimate destination? Why do we have pseudonymous email accounts exchanging emails with Joe Biden's son and his foreign business partners? What is the possible innocent explanation for that? I'm genuinely open to it. But I can't see one.
Cooke says he is genuinely open to innocent explanations, so here goes:
- I don't know why Hunter Biden used offshore companies to handle his finances, but lots of people do. Who cares unless Joe Biden was involved with them?
- "The president or his family" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. There is zero evidence to suggest that Joe Biden was the recipient of any money from these accounts. The recipients were "his family," not "the president or his family."
- White House folks have routinely used pseudonymous email accounts for years. They explained in 2013 that this was a way of having email channels that weren't instantly clogged with hackers and spam. Barack Obama had one too.
- These private accounts have no impact on FOIA. The National Archives has repeatedly explained that they scan all email accounts belonging to a person when they get a FOIA request.
- One of the emails allegedly informs Hunter of a phone call that Joe Biden has scheduled with Ukraine's president. But this is no smoking gun. In reality, it's an email from a White House aide that has Joe Biden's daily schedule attached. This schedule includes an entry for Biden's return to Wilmington for the one-year anniversary of Beau Biden's death. It's only a coincidence that it also happens to include a phone call with Ukraine's president.¹
- Some emails from Hunter's firm have been released that include requests for White House tours. That's as scurrilous as it gets. There are no emails between Joe Biden and Hunter's "foreign business partners."
So that's it. Innocent explanations all around.
¹The call was about a Ukrainian pilot being held in Russia. It had nothing to do with Burisma or anything else related to Hunter.
But why will he be impeached?
Um ... because the House Republican caucus -- like very many of their national- and state-level colleagues -- are not at all interested in -- indeed are dismissive of -- the pertinent "facts" of the situation, or in fact of any matters of actual governance, and instead are wholly -- wholly -- focused on performance.
"We're gonna stick it to the libz, wooo! Impeach!"
They are as children. Their followers are as children. Think primary-school playground and you will understand current Republican politics.
Sadly true, in addition to the part about our never-ended Civil War.
All this, after thier impeachment of Clinton worked out so well. Brings to mind the difinition of insanity: doing the same thing over and expecting a different result.
The act alone is enough. "You impeached u-u-us, so we impeached you-u-u, ha ha haha ha!"
They seriously think it will be the same as democrats did to Trump. They can't comprehend that Democrats might do things because they think its the right thing to do.
It is imperative for dull, right-wing thugs to believe that Biden is approximately as corrupt as the scam artist (whose company and CFO were convicted of tax fraud, and whose sham “university” and “foundation” have been shut down) whose daughter and son-in-law—while working out of the West Wing—wheedled valuable trademarks out of the Chinese Communist Party and squeezed Qatar and Saudi Arabia for three billion dollars to bail out a catastrophic real estate failure and to start a “hedge fund” for a lackwit with zero investment experience.
(Does anyone seriously think the “Big Guy” didn’t get a cut of that three large?)
There was a game show on BBC Radio a long time ago that went something like this: the usual panel of celebrities would be given a set of facts and asked to assemble them into a work of fiction. For example, the game might start with this scenario: "Lord Dalrymple-Farnsworth's butler has been arrested following the discovery of his lordship's blood-stained body in the family library. Police are believed to be in possession of several important clues, including a woman's red slipper, a half empty glass of whisky, and a small statuette of the Hindu god Ganesha." Thirty minutes of hilarity would ensue as the panel tried to craft a narrative that explained how the police knew the butler did it, with additional information being injected by the host at frequent intervals, such as "it's been learned that Lady Dalrymple-Farnsworth returned from a visit to the couple's estranged son shortly before the estimated time of his death".
It occurred to me that's exactly what Republicans have done with their "investigations" into the Bidens. They've told Comer and Jordan and the rest "The House will impeach Joe Biden for taking bribes. You can start with Hunter on the Burisma board, lots of financial transactions, a video of Joe claiming he got a prosecutor fired, and a hard drive purporting to be from Hunter's laptop. Do the best you can to make a story out of them. You can add extra bits as you go, like IRS ratfuckers and testimony that Joe used to call his son on speakerphone."
They call it "joining the dots", when actually they started with a complete drawing and began to look for dots to attach to it. It will be the first impeachment in history that not only has no evidence, but fails to describe a crime with any coherence. But Trump has ordered it, and they will obey.
Do you remember the name of that BBC show? It sounds a bit like a mystery game called "Foul Play" from the 1990s hosted by Simon Brett, but that one was not quite as you describe. And they might have done similar things on the parlour game show "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue." But I don't know of one exactly like you are describing.
It does sound more like a slightly garbled version of Foul Play to me.
I wonder if old recordings of the show are available on the web...
Hunter Biden = Pepe Silvia
https://youtu.be/1NBfZcNU4O0?si=ciScl6q58kXRhizZ
"Why" is simple. "They impeached our guy, twice, so we've got to impeach their guy three times".
Questions of evidence or justification simply do not arise.
Say all of the 11 year old bullies masquerading as congress people. They all need a time out, out of congress.
Will Biden be impeached? Almost certainly, yes.
But he will not be convicted in the Senate, because the nutzoids (FKA Republicans) won't get to 66 votes, even with the almost inevitable defections of Manchin (in the name of "bipartisan comity") and Sinema (to prove her mavericky independence).
I expect the D reps to vote unanimously against impeachment, and there are enough "moderate" R reps in swing seats who know that voting for a completely unjustified impeachment will probably cost them their seats that I don't think an impeachment resolution will pass the House.
Possibly, but if the the "moderates" don't vote to impeach, they risk being primaried out of existence.
Proceed, GOP.
If it makes the ‘moderates’ squirm, they’ve earned that discomfort by their cowardice and stupidity. They had many chances to oppose the direction their party has taken; to define a course with broader appeal. They kept their heads down.
we're talking a relative handful of republicans who might be considered moderate, certainly not enough to sway the direction of the party but enough to kill an impeachment resolution give the Rs wafer thin majority. if they do vote against it, will be due more to self preservation than moderation or the desire to do the right thing.
McConnell is openly discouraging the move to impeach. If it happens the Senate trial would be an absolute farce, and I would expect several Republican senators to vote 'present' or for an acquittal.
There won't be a Senate trial.
I would expect that, if McConnell were still in charge, the Senate would not even take up the Biden so-called "impeachment" brought by wackadoo members of his own conspiracy party.
But Schumer is a Democrat. Gotta play by the rules, even (and especially) when the rules unfairly disadvantage our own side.
McConnell isn't in charge, Shumer is. My guess is a majority of the Senate, including a few Republicans, will vote for acquittal.
i don't know that the senate can just ignore an impeachment resolution. if mcconnell couldn't do it when he had a reupblican majority, i doubt schumer can with a democratic majority.
won't get to 66 votes, even with the almost inevitable defections of Manchin (in the name of "bipartisan comity")
I hope you're right Manchin has the opportunity to cast a symbolic vote to make Kamala Harris POTUS if that means keeping that seat for Democrats. I doubt it makes a difference, though. I personally see no way Manchin out-polls Biden by the full 20-odd points he'll need to to defeat whichever product of inbreeding WV Republicans nominate next year. West Virginia is lost for several decades (perhaps by the 2060s the expansion of DC's western suburbs will have proceeded enough to make a material difference). Even if Manchin performs really well, it'll be something like Trump over Biden 70-30, and GOP Senate nominee over Manchin 54-46.
I'm old enough to remember that a JFK victory in a WVa primary made him the inevitable Democratic nominee. He then beat Nixon with about 53%.
No. The 1960 race was silly close, Kennedy won by 112,000 votes nationwide.
No, I meant in just the state of WVa.
With their record of effectiveness it's almost certain the articles won't pass bureaucratic muster.
I’m so sick of this crap. If anything makes me leave the Republican Party this will be it.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Dude. If you haven’t left the Republican Party by now, you’re gonna die in it. Seriously, all the racism and the fascism and the Christian hypocrisy and the moral bankruptcy hasn’t pushed you out the door yet, but *this* is the last straw?
Trying to steal a presidential election didn't do it? That seems worse to me although both are despicable and fly in the face of representative democracy.
You mean you're still there?
Things don't happen overnight. Some of us have witnessed how the Republican Party, through its past actions, has inexorably arrived at its current state of complete dysfunction.
But better late than never.
If one is currently still a member then it's never.
On the one hand I'm thinking they won't impeach him because the press, for "balance", will be set free to write endlessly about Jared Kushner, and that won't be good for GOP business. I suspect the GOP is smart enough to know they will be stepping into a lot of doo doo if they impeach. Memories of Bill Clinton and the 98 election etc.
On the other hand, the argument K. McCarthy has been making ("the only way to do the investigation that's needed is to impeach") suggests that he thinks this train cannot be stopped and he's desperate for a Fox-worthy cover story.
So I dunno. I tend to assume the GOP is somewhat rational and then I'm always proven wrong. So if I had to bet money, I'd bet they'll impeach. Trump will want them to do so so that he can claim all the charges against him are retribution.
>>>I tend to assume the GOP is somewhat rational and then I'm always proven wrong<<<
Republicans are usually eminently rational on an individual basis (avoiding primary challenges), but irrational in terms of collective party self-interest.
Yes, good point.
But as an example I don’t understand how the money people behind the GOP tolerate Trump, since he keeps losing elections for them.
Even there though there’s a “rational” explanation, which is that if they forbid him from running as a Republican he might run as an independent, split the R vote, and then the GOP would do even worse. So I guess they figure the best strategy is let him win the nomination, but don’t let him choose/support Senate candidates etc.
But as an example I don’t understand how the money people behind the GOP tolerate Trump, since he keeps losing elections for them.
They believe, rightly I suspect, that if they moved openly against Trump, he would sabotage them in the general election, thus guaranteeing a victory for Democrats, and thus likewise guaranteeing little progress on tax cuts or other policies friendly to plutocrats and big business.
Trump hasn't been very politically successful for them, as you point out, but it's hardly the case that he's guaranteed to lose next year if he's the nominee. Trump has a very plausible shot at victory in our 51-49 polity!
If there were a way to deny Trump the nomination quietly, without anybody noticing, GOP elites would undoubtedly do that. But there isn't. Both parties long ago (foolishly, in my opinion) ceded too much candidate selection influence to their respective bases.
1. trump doesn't need the big donors. he makes tons fleecing the small-money sheep. 2.where are the big money people supposed to go? desantis, the closest thing trump had to a rival, at least at the start of the campaign, had his sugar daddy, spent his money on private jets etc. and only sank in the polls.
". . . but irrational in terms of collective party self-interest"
Thats what happens when you have a party made up of narcissistic sociopaths. When Bobby Jindal asked them if they wanted to be the "Stupid Party", their response was an overwhelming yes.
????
One story I've seen says McCarthy is trying to buy off his numbnuts caucus from shutting down the government by dangling this chance to chase impeachment-- he'll trade them the chance to impeach for averting the disaster of shutdown. He probably suspects, and hopes, impeachment will ultimately fail, because he can see it would at least cost him the House.
Sooner or later one of those lamebrains will get fed up with McCarthy and decide to derail what little business gets done there by actually moving to vacate the chair. Maybe they'll even seize it in the next few weeks in order to force a de facto shutdown-- it would tie things up completely for at least a while, and I can't deny that's what they seem to want. And all it takes is one.
It is indeed a very interesting game theory question all around.
They all know Trump is poison but no one wants to be the one who pointed that out publicly and lost any hope of a sinecure at AEI or Heritage or the oil lobby — sorry, the American Petroleum Institute. Chris Christie is willing to blow the whistle because he knows his pursuit of Kushner’s pop has already put him outside the safe zone anyway. And he’s living proof that if you call out Trump publicly.it doesn’t gain you much support.
McCarthy wants to do an impeachment investigation, not necessarily an impeachment. I suspect he's thinking of just keeping the investigation going for the rest of the term and never having a final report or a vote on an impeachment resolution.
Benghzi 2.
to date, charley has spoken of impeachment inquiry, not full-blown impeachment. but with mtg whispering sweet nothings in his ear and charley's lack of backbone and strategic smarts, it's not hard to see an impeachment resolution coming to the floor sooner or later.
AIUI, he doesn't have the votes to even open and impeachment inquiry. Because of this he is looking at letting little Margie and her buddies start an inquiry w/o a vote approving it.
The media push for "balance" only applies to finding some minor Democratic faux pas to balance actual crimes and atrocities by Republicans. If a Democratic president is in the cross hairs (these days, that's actually literal), the media will all pile on. Because... well, Trump has been such a criminal, so it's Biden's turn??
Even when he's acquitted he'll be tarred with the same brush as Trump was. He won't be any more "innocent" than Trump was. Totally vacates the validity of those two impeachments. No, not IRL, not by any sort of logic -- but it's good enough for them. Stupid useless effort, but they get to point and giggle, and that's what matters.
But even a small backlash among ‘swing’* voters will be bad for the Republican ticket, which already faces a backlash regarding women’s right to choose.
*As always, my view is that ‘swing’ precincts, districts, counties, states are those where the parties are evenly matched; but, as everywhere, lots of voters ‘swing’ between voting their preferred party, and neglecting to vote. And a few actually do swing from one party to the other. But winning is mostly a matter of getting your own ‘iffy’ voters to the polls.
When you consider that Trump is currently under indictment for crimes associated with his second impeachment and that the only "evidence" they have is associated with the full court press on Ukrainian officials and persons described in his first impeachment, it is sort of hard to believe this. But this is the USA in 2023 and stuff is real, real weird.
It would obviously be better for the country if Republicans, like Democrats, were a serious, policy-oriented political party comprised of sane adults; but as long as they remain a nihilistic cult dedicated to weakening the country, it is best for all of us that they remain committed to doing things that hurt themselves politically. Bullshit impeachment inquiries constitute just such a thing.
At the risk of sounding glib, I hope they do take that vote to impeach and win.
Marcy Wheeler's been tearing apart Comer's investigation. It seems likely that if forced to testify under oath, some of these witnesses will end up (a) pleading the 5th; (b) perjuring; (c) contradicting Republicans.
It'll be a real shit show for Republicans, particularly for those who represent Biden districts, caught between MAGA threats and diminishing hopes of holding onto those purple seats.
But yeah, I think the odds are high that Republicans impeach Biden -- but then get embarrassed and walloped in 2024.
YEP, I hope they do impeach. AND, I hope they get walloped in 2024, and they likely will, but it will be another "stolen" election in their minds. The only good thing the GOP can do is go the way of the Whigs.
Then the pundits can argue about whether the walloping was the result of impeachment or the Dobbs decision and subsequent hare-brained GOP bills to criminalize traveling while pregnant.
Don’t forget d) getting dismembered by Democrats pointing out that much of their ‘evidence’ is hearsay from unreliable sources, some of whom are wanted suspects.
Do any of these folks at NR have any self awareness? Do they know every Real Estate Company uses LLC's for each project? TFG and his family and SIL family have multiple LLC's and shell companies,
.
I doubt that if you asked Trump to name all the business entities that make up his shambling empire he'd be able to recall more than a small fraction of them.
A good rule about the gop hotheads is that they have no imagination, so all they can come up with as accusations against Ds are things they're doing themselves. Which means that if you want to know what they're up to, all you have to do is look at what they accuse Ds of.
Or as Frum puts it, "every accusation a confession."
That is why the FBI and friends were so surprised on Jan 6. The Republicans never claimed that the Democrats want to storm the Capitol.
lol! And I did, literally
"Cooke says he is genuinely open to innocent explanations"
Bullshit. He could have written yours.
True, but it is even worse than that as Cooke doesn't even bother to consider what act President Biden took in exchange for all this supposed largess heaped upon him. We know what Harlan Crow, Singer, et al got and continue to get for their money, where is the quid pro quo for Biden?
They always bring up the trip to Ukraine by then-VP Biden, who conveyed a message that the Obama Administration wanted Viktor Shokin removed as Prosecutor General of Ukraine, for failing to pursue corruption, including at Burisma, on whose board Hunter Biden sat. The GOP’s alternate facts suppose that Shokin was actually investigating Burisma; that VP Biden was making, not merely conveying, the US policy position; they omit that opposition to Shokin was the policy also of the EU, the IMF and the World Bank; and that Shokin’s removal was accomplished by an act of the Ukrainian Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, not a Saturday Night Massacre.
Meanwhile, let's have a real impeachment trial starting next Tuesday and rid ourselves at last of Ken Paxton.
The H.E.B. Christmas cake scandal showed that, for Paxton, no grift was too small.
https://apnews.com/article/texas-ken-paxton-impeachment-perks-travel-cake-97f8ef6ab925785977ff54b796f6c4f9
They have to impeach him for something. anything. And they really ought to shutdown the government too. This is why they were put into congress… to blow up the country. I’m writing my republican congressman (who I did not vote for) and demanding he do both. In the long run, it’s for the best. They must be understood as being a threat and they aren’t today.
McCarthy, in one of his more beclowned moments the other day, actually tried to reason with his restive Freedumb Caucus by suggesting that if they allow a government shutdown, it would impede their ever-so-important investigations of the Bidens. Of course they didn't give a shit because these aren't real investigations anyway.
Why? Why do we have a network of shell companies moving millions of dollars between them, with the president or his family as the ultimate destination?
Because the Bidens' business is international "strategic consulting", you know, advising domestic and (gasp!) foreign clients on various business ventures and all that and, moreover, *that's how rich people run their businesses in our modern, neoliberal world!* you numbnuts. You want to ban shell corporations, offshore accounts, and all that other hinky shit the world's economic elites use? Be my guest!
This whole thing is so idiotic. It's clear they all know it's performative bullshit. They're not even pretending any of this is remotely serious.
This is the part I love about this. Any effort to clamp down on stuff the Hunter did would boomerang back on their biggest donors 100-fold.
As a wise man once said: You have two do impeachment with the evidence you have, not with the one you wish to had...
These jokers sure aren't working too hard to approach the problem realistically. But perhaps that's not how they see their job; they have to accommodate the fantasies and delusions of their readers (delusions these authors may share anyway). Anyway, most House Republicans would surely vote to impeach Biden for having gray hair or selling "Dark Brandon"-themed coffee mugs. But McCarthy needs virtually all Republicans to support him to impeach Biden, and there is the small matter of the ~20 Republicans representing districts that Biden won; many of those wish to keep their jobs. So I'd put the chances of the House successfully passing articles of impeachment against Biden at "significant" but under 50%. Maybe 25 or 30%.
I told Joe, OVER and OVER, not to put a family member in charge of dealing with the Saudis, taking their money, etc. But would they listen? No. Now they'll pay the price.
Seems pretty clear that a vote on this would be political suicide for a sizeable fraction of the GOP in swing districts, so I don't actually see this happening.
The base will be happy just with talk of doing it, much like the Qanon crowd happily pushes off The Storm time and again.
The GOP is much better at getting elected than at governing, and an impeachment based on nothing but innuendo will lose them votes. They won't do it.
Yes Hunter Biden is a scumbag but then so are most of the Trump kids and they weren’t the reason Trump was impeached twice.
Our once sacred traditions are melting away. Our congress is open to bribery by the highest bidder since the money= “free” (sic) speech judgment. Lies and lying used to be once in a while events are now commonplace and in the Republican Party, the norm. Science isn’t accepted in America—established fact is overturned when political points can be made. Our judiciary is openly politicized and doesn’t hesitate to stray from judicial norms.
So yes in the America of today impeachment will become a 4 yearly event.
So yes in the America of today impeachment will become a 4 yearly event.
Unfortunately what this politicized routinization of impeachment is leading to is a situation where Republican presidents will simply be emboldened to commit ludicrously corrupt crimes in office, knowing they'll only ever get impeached if there's a Democratic majority in the House, and will have no chance of getting convicted unless there's a 2/3 Dem majority in Senate, which we will probably never see in our lifetimes. Meanwhile, Democratic presidents will face impeachment for hanging the toilet paper the wrong direction in the WH residence or whatever.
Republicans are now the party of Party Over Country -- no matter what.
This was the fallout -- and perhaps the intent -- of the Clinton impeachment.
Go forward with a risible impeachment, that even your own Senators won't support at the trial stage.
To turn impeachment into a joke. So when next you need it, when you do something that really is 'high crimes and misdemeanors'-level stuff, people just roll their eyes.
And it worked.
US and Philippines in plan to annoy China,
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4985923
It seems to me that Trump's criminal difficulties are not yet having any affect on Trump's poll numbers. If anything, looking at them today, just the opposite.
While I think that Joe Biden has done a helluva job, it appears that the American electorate expected more. The idea that Biden is too old has gotten considerable, if not overwhelming traction.
I'm hoping that in the next few months, Biden will announce that he will not seek nor accept the Democratic nomination for president.
On this site, I was a rare voice in favor of Biden's 2020 nomination. If he gets it this time, it is likely to be a crazy close election against Trump, especially in some swing states. In my old age, I am tired of suspense. Let some new blood do the job and give Joe a well-deserved rest.
‘some new blood’
Name, please. I keep reading commenters on NYT and WaPo sites calling for a younger Democratic nominee, but almost nobody seems to know any good prospect.
Joe Biden beat TFG by over seven million votes. Has TFG done anything to broaden his support since?
A rematch won’t be close.
There are lots of prospects. Harris, Newsom, Whitmer and Buttigieg spring immediately to mind.
Democrats picked Biden over Harris and Buttigieg once already. Newsom partied at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. During Covid. Whitmer is impressive but doesn’t have much national recognition.
If the economy holds up, Biden can point to that, the infrastructure bill, and the re-forging of alliances among the democracies against the hostile actions of Putin and Xi; and he will have the incumbency advantage.
Rationally, Biden can point to lots of achievements. But this isn't a rational country, if it ever was. It's an emotional one. They just don't like old Joe very much. Too boring.
I am thinking about Newsom. I think he can handle being seen at a 3-Michelin star restaurant, if that's all the R's have. I'm sure they will come up with more slime, that's what they are "good" at. But he is 55, a fighter, and likely can give at least as good as he gets.
Only Joe can open the gates for someone like Newsom. He doesn't need to do it immediately. But if his polls remain bad, I trust he will do what's best for the country. He's already cemented his place in history as the Trump-killer we needed at the time.