(May 29, 2021): First, this update on
the story that follows:
NBC
News THINK (Michael Conway, former counsel, U.S. House Judiciary
Committee) with this headline:
“Why Trump's claims of presidential
immunity in Capitol riot lawsuits cannot be allowed to stand.”
The Supreme Court left a narrow window open to hold presidents accountable for acts committed in office unrelated to the office. Trump wants to close it.
The Original Post Follows Below:
Ladies and Gentlemen: I present the biggest hypocrite ever
in the United States Senate, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Cite this story from The AP (February 14, 2021) on the
Senate floor with this headline:
“GOP’s McConnell: Trump morally responsible for January
6 attack”
WASHINGTON (AP) — On the Senate
floor, GOP Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered a scalding
denunciation of Donald Trump, calling him “morally responsible for the January
6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
But just minutes earlier on the Senate vote on Trump’s second
impeachment (concluded on January 13, 2021), McConnell stood and declared: “Not
guilty” adding that a former president could not face trial in the Senate.
Washington’s most powerful Republican and the Senate’s
minority leader (since 2007) used his strongest language to date to excoriate
Trump just minutes after the Senate acquitted the former president, voting
57-43 to convict him but falling short of the two-thirds majority (67 votes)
needed to find him guilty. Seven Republicans voted to convict.
Clearly angry, the Senate’s longest-serving GOP leader said
Trump’s actions surrounding the January 6 attack on Congress were “a
disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.”
He then noted that even though Trump is now out of office,
he remains subject to the country’s criminal and civil laws saying: “He didn’t
get away with anything yet.” It was a stunningly bitter castigation of Trump by
McConnell, who could have used much of the same speech had he instead decided
to convict Trump.
By voting for acquittal, McConnell and his fellow
Republicans left the party locked in its struggle to define itself after
Trump’s defeat in the November 2020 election.
Fiercely loyal pro-Trump Republicans, and the base of the
party they represent, are colliding with more traditional Republicans who
believe the former president is damaging the party’s national appeal.
Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA),
one of the House impeachment managers said on ABC’s “This Week: “It was powerful
to hear the 57 guilty votes and then it was puzzling to hear and see Mitch
McConnell stand and say not guilty and then minutes later stand again and say
he was guilty of everything. History will remember that statement of him speaking
out of two sides of his mouth.”
An impeachment guilty vote by McConnell likely would have
brought some other Republicans along with him, but it would have marked a more
direct effort to wrest the party away from Trump, and that could have prompted
2022 primary challenges against GOP incumbents, complicating Republican efforts
to win the Senate majority by nominating far-right, less-electable candidates.
McConnell has spent years fending off such candidates.
Sen. Chuck Grassley
(R-IA) when asked about the party’s course said: “Time is going to take care
of that some way or another. But remember, in order to be a leader you got to
have followers. So we’re gonna find out.”
Related: Sen. Majority
Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (R-NY) remarks following the GOP blocked January 6
commission vote seen here from Reuters with a short video.
Related: Excellent letter to the editor of the Buffalo (NY) News – it makes perfect common sense – must read.
My 2 cents: The only way
to stop this Trump-directed and controlled GOP madness, i.e., blame DEMS for
everything, while never accepting culpability themselves is to have a strong voter
turnout in 2022 to ensure the GOP stays in the congressional minority.
Having said that, with the all the laws and rules they are changing at the state levels since they lost in 2020, that is the only way they think they can again gain and keep power.
With this GOP in power we will
cease to be who we were established as in 1776 – now nearly 245 years ago. Who wants
that? Apparently, they do or at least they seem to.
The GOP says we are losing
now due to the DEMS. I say again that most of them fail to admit it is due to
their now on-doing stunts to change election laws and rules to ensure they
never lose again.
Is that the kind of America
the vast majority wants? I don’t think so.
However, these days with this “new Trump-run GOP disinformation and wild conspiracy campaigns” running overtime, who really knows, right?
Thanks for stopping by.
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