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White House tells House Democrats in eight-page letter it will not comply with impeachment inquiry, calling it "illegitimate and unconstitutional"
- Thread starter chadskin
- Start date
I believe what everyone is trying to say is that upon being elected President all powers transfers over.
Per Wiki: The actual transition phase begins immediately following the presidential election (barring any electoral disputes) when a sitting president is not re-elected or is concluding a second term, as election day marks the beginning of the end of their presidency.
An entirely plausible scenario resulting in a situation in which Trump refuses to leave office, is that something stupid fucky happens with the election and the results are disputed.
What's the mechanism for an election where the results are disputed? Fraud.
All we need to see for a nightmare scenario is a few key counties in toss-up states where the results are wildly off the historical patterns or exit polls, and when a recount is ordered we find out the votes that were stored electronically have been corrupted. It doesn't even have to be an actual attack, it could just be a bad machine in the wrong place, and suddenly no one trusts the results.
Look at this thread. Trump wins a historically blue county by a dozen votes and the machine breaks and there's no papertrail, who here is gonna take that as legitimate, even if it is?
What's the mechanism for an election where the results are disputed? Fraud.
All we need to see for a nightmare scenario is a few key counties in toss-up states where the results are wildly off the historical patterns or exit polls, and when a recount is ordered we find out the votes that were stored electronically have been corrupted. It doesn't even have to be an actual attack, it could just be a bad machine in the wrong place, and suddenly no one trusts the results.
Look at this thread. Trump wins a historically blue county by a dozen votes and the machine breaks and there's no papertrail, who here is gonna take that as legitimate, even if it is?
Ladies and gentlemen: one of those farmers and townsfolk with their hands up giving Goku power to do the Spirit Bomb except way sadder cuz they're giving power to a narcissist's desperate attempt to create a last-ditch delusional construct.
Call your congresscritters, stump for some dems, or stop contributing to the already dangerous chaos one.
I know, I was just joking around and being sarcastic.
I was trying to make the point that people aren't actually thinking about how this would theoretically be achieved and is mostly based in fear.
I have no idea how any of you can have such high confidence that the institutions that are supposed check presidential power and stop them from breaking the law are gonna do their job. They have done shit and all so far.
This is how democracies fall, and in every country where it happened people always assume that "the law will protect us", and "surely, if he does this, his own people will turn against him".
Ask yourself this, how many times in the last 2 and half years you said to yourself "surely, that's a line that even he can't cross", and then he did. And then nothing happened.
Historically their have been parallels with the rise of fascism where the Nazi's did use the direct outlets of mass media communications with film reels and the new technology of radio broadcasting . It's kinda why coups have traditionally relied on physically sizing radio and TV stations to control the narrative. On balance in spite of being republics Weimar Germany and the USA the former fell after many shenanigans in feeding power to the executive which in spite of the political struggle occurring in the US has not actually occurred and this may have had a greater affect in resulting in a facist "coup" than nearly being good a new mass media technology.
How will Trump not let it happen.
Explain how.
Nobody needs to come to any "realization" here because it's FALSE. If Dem President X wins in 2020, that Dem is the next President. Bills go to that president. That president picks their cabinet. Trump has no power whatsoever in that regard.
Trump has no power to cancel elections. Trump has no power to remain in office should he lose the election. If he stays there past Dem President X's inauguration date, the capital police, military, secret service, drag him out of there and put him in prison for trespassing on the White House.
These are not hypotheticals. These are facts.
Because they have worked so during this administration. He has been doing legal awful things, and when evidence of actual crimes were committed as President, he mechanisms to address that came into play.
The rule of law has not been abandoned. We are not nearly at that point.
Ain't that the truth, lol. (It's because as much of a cynic as you tend to be, you are smart and not super reactionary.)
I think you need to take a break from the Internet. Go outside, take a walk, pet a dog, I don't know.
The only thing to watch would be any fuckery with the electors of the Electoral College. 2016 already had more than usual break their commitments- against a Dem. In a close election, that could be catastrophic if electors on the Dem side aren't fully in line for whatever reason.
My point is pretty simple. Trump can literally get on the shitter at 3am and pull out his phone and suddenly call whoever he wants a traitor and you got like 50 million people instantly digesting that without any journalist in the media etc filtering it. He could hold his own facebook livestream or whatever and do that as well. Back in the day, the simple fact of having to prepare and gather multiple technical people to arrange a message to the people, added an extra weight of gravity to whatever moment it was and 'cleaned' things up a bit. What we have now is just pure unfiltered insanity sent straight into a large chunk of homes at any time, constantly in fact. That's my point, and why it's true. I don;t know how this turns out, but dismissing it like process and business as usual is the type of dangerous shit that leads to a 2016, where people just assume Hillary is gonna get it. Let's not even mention the whole foreign interference.
You really think Trump didn't break the law?
You honestly don't think his cabinet knows that?
And the rule of law is not "abandoned" until it is, and you're putting a whole lot of confidence in people who were appointed by Trump to the right thing.
Maybe you're right, I hope that they do, but I think it's really dangerous to assume it 100% will be the case.
That made me laugh out loud, but this shit is deeply concerning. And I'm not even American.
He can't overthrow the government of the US secretly, so it doesn't really matter what he gets away with in the shadows.
The federal nature of our government would make any sort of forced takeover of the government via denying election results to be uh, kind of difficult. And not just for lack of willingness, but logistically, given that it would require 50 different governments to play ball and just let it happen because reasons.
Nah, the ground just gets out of his way because it's fake ground.
Again the Nazi's literarily invented and polished the entire milieu of properganda, but with the difference of being compatent, the gaslighting and full spectrum dominance by the nazi's in mass media is not anywhere near to what's occurring now, where media go over his tweet's and call him a lier, never mind the number of people that reply to him with criticism. Trump does not have a republican milita loyal to him because he murdured all his political opponents. I think the US and it's citizens are in a stronger position relative to the world wide and national historical experiences.
While you are correct you are missing a growing media bubble where people only watch Fox news and have the ability to ban what they dont like to view from their eyes. They can customize their twitter feed to only be Trump sycophants and can ignore users on their favorite forums. It's just looping back around itself to be another case of the old days where all that criticism literally never reaches their eyes.
It's not overthrowing, again, look at the history of other countries.
If congress tell him he's out and he says no, every federal employee still have the same boss and they still answer to them.
Are some of them gonna quit?
I'm sure.
Are they gonna organize to physically remove him for office?
Possibly, but I have no idea how can anyone be sure as to how it will play out. This is seriously uncharted territory, and it's almost certainly gonna be messy. There are plenty of Trumpers in the federal government.
I think you need to be prepared for these outcomes, because if again look at the history of the world, when that shit happen that people need mobilize quickly.
This is just pure crazy. Regardless if the Trump Administration facilitates the transition and stays in the Whitehouse, the inauguration will go on as planned. The President-Elect will be sworn in by Chief Justice Roberts. At that moment, no matter what Trump does, he no longer had any authority over the executive branch or the military.
This shit better not repeat in other impeachment related threads.
I get what you're saying, and the actual real threat to elections in this country is at the County level. That's something that requires serious attention to prevent fuckery. I'm not going to dispute that part of it, because it's a genuine concern and there's evidence this has already happened.
In the case of electing the President (and only for electing the President), if the Electors cast more votes for one candidate than the other, and the House counts and certifies those votes, then it doesn't legally matter if there were irregularities at the county level or if machines or voter rolls were tampered with. It's a political problem to be sure, and among other things, should demonstrate the fundamental threat facing us is the integrity and accuracy of the election process at the County and State level. But it's not a Constitutional crisis for this specific thing. The Supreme Court is not going to declare an Electoral winner certified by the first branch of government invalid because Trump or anyone else cries about it on Twitter. If he loses, then on January 20th, 2021, he doesn't leave office; the office leaves him.
But what if there were irregularities that call into question votes from a specific State? Then there's a legal remedy for that:
I'm not talking about an election here, I'm talking about a scenario where Trump is being removed from office by congress (and remember, this is just a vote in the senate) and he says "no, this is illegal bullshit".
For the record, I don't think it's terribly likely he will be removed in office, but I think people in this thread are putting waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much confidence in institutions that have not shown the ability or will to stop his criminality and in processes that have never been tested.
I think that's a dangerous mindset, and one that people in pretty much all counties that slid out of democracy had.
If he's convicted from the Senate and removed from office, then all powers associated with that office are immediately assumed by Pence. Do you think Pence cedes Executive authority? He'll immediately pardon Trump to get him to shut up and sulk in Mar-a-Lago to tweet all the livelong day.
Living in a "bubble" was true even in the 60s, going back to an earlier post of mine when Nixon resigned several decades prior to twitter and Fox news (the latter literally a creation by Ailes in response to the Media landscape where truth was a thing), he had 17% of republicans wanting to impeach him. Now even with Fox news and Facebook bubbles, 20% of Republicans want him impeached after two mere weeks of revelations.
That would be a fools strategy as it would not shut up Trump, and as you said he'd be tweeting non-stop and even though pardoned would probably try and implicate Pence. Better to let him go to prison where they'd take his phone away.
Yes well we will see, but we are in uncharted waters, which was my point. Nixon's crazy shit was at least hidden until it wasn't. Trump's is now a very public, mass produced slow burn of normalization.
If we're at the point where the Senate is willing to convict and vote in favor of Trump's removal with a 2/3 majority, then no amount of Trump claiming "this is illegal bullshit" is going to do anything.
The only reason he's been able to scrape by with as much blatant horseshit as he has so far is because he knows that the Republican Senate (McConnel in particular) has been willing to cover his ass for him and has basically pushed back against any form of scrutiny. Except in your own scenario you're concocting here, he's already lost that support. If Trump claims it's illegal, well, you could say that his "veto" of his removal has already been overridden. If he tries to use the DoJ and Barr to cover for him, then the Senate could approve removing Barr as well.
I still don't expect the Senate to actually remove him, but unless we reach another point like the 2000 election where the result more or less comes down to a couple of particular counties, I don't think there's really going to be any recourse for Trump or the GOP to fight the results in a way that would really mean anything. It's up to Dems to actually show up and vote, and make sure the discrepancy in votes is obvious enough to not even try and dispute.
As I said, I think if it even comes close to a possibility of him being removed from office, the GOP will negotiate a pardon in exchange to resignation, Nixon style.
But I don't know, and you don't know either, and fuck, no one should feel good about the future of American democracy hinging on Mike fucking Pence doing the right(ish) thing.
Again, the main point I'm trying to get across is that a vote in the senate is not magic, and it doesn't make Trump go poof. I don't know how many times people need to see the checks and balances of the American government fail before they stop putting such high level of faith in them.
Do people even understand that The secret service is controlled by that homeland security which is apart of the executive branch?
The capitol police doesn't even have clearance to step on the white house lawn. Let alone try to arrest someone in there.
The capitol police doesn't even have clearance to step on the white house lawn. Let alone try to arrest someone in there.
If Trump does not want to move out of the White House and hides behind the Secret Service just send in Gerard Butler.
They don't have the jurisdiction or authority. Just because they are controlled by congress doesn't give them power to do what ever they want.
So what happens now?
The White House is going to just ignore the subpoenas.
This is going to go to federal court.
The courts are stacked with Trump stooges.
The courts will likely (or possibly) side with Trump.
Impeachment stops?
The White House is going to just ignore the subpoenas.
This is going to go to federal court.
The courts are stacked with Trump stooges.
The courts will likely (or possibly) side with Trump.
Impeachment stops?
The courts can't stop impeachment. They could rule against certain things coming from the process like subpoenas or attempts at enforcing inherent contempt but nothing we've seen from any of these court cases suggests judges are partial to this administration. Bad arguments lose and good arguments win.
What the hell have I been reading the past few pages? Jesus Christ people, take a breath. This level of panic and chicken littling, while amusing, is deeply troubling.
My head is kind of spinning by some of the conspiracy theories I'm reading from some of you. Amazing.
My head is kind of spinning by some of the conspiracy theories I'm reading from some of you. Amazing.
It's like Trump's doo-doo brain has a AOE that diminishes other's reasoning skills.
Jesus Christ, people.
Welcome to era where the points are made up and logic doesn't matter.
