[rmk]

He violated campaign finance laws, but there was not enough evidence to support the charge of misuse of office in a treasonous manner.

You may personally be convinced of the President's wrondoing, but to try a sitting President for what is a grave offense, there are much higher standards of evidence and procedure.

The whole impeachment was an exercise in power from day one, but Democrats made a huge fuss about a similar exercise in power by Trump: appointing a Justice t the Supreme Court in an election year. Both were actions that where the actors were entirely within their rights (The lower house has the right to impeach, and the upper house has the right to try the President; similarly, a President absolutely has the right to appoint a Justice of the Supreme Court for as long as he is President.), but the President made no bones about what the whole thing was, while the Democrats tried hard to couch their act in moral and ethical terms. Judging by the way the election went (razor thin margins at almost every level with 70+ million popular votes for Trump), the public were having none of it.

[yongjik]

> You may personally be convinced of the President's wrondoing, but to try a sitting President for what is a grave offense, there are much higher standards of evidence and procedure.

Some of us remember the good old days when a (Democratic) president almost got impeached for lying about getting oral sex from an intern, so I'm not really convinced about your argument here.

[xdavidliu]

nit: Nixon did not get impeached, but Clinton _did_ get impeached: he just wasn't convicted in the senate.

I agree with your point, still.

[kortilla]

But he admitted to lying. That’s pretty rock solid evidence.

[sagarm]

There are tapes of Trump sounding like a two-bit mobster. The GOP did not dispute the evidence, they just refused to convict because it wasn't "serious" enough.

If Trump had backed down that might have made sense, but instead it emboldened his lawlessness. We're now at the point where his undermining of the voting process is entirely expected and hardly even noteworthy.

[kortilla]

What the fuck crime is “sounding like a two bit mobster”. Is that walking around saying “yous guys”?

[rmk]

Disputing the vote and questioning results is very common in elections. Don't pretend like Trump is the first to do this, or the first to insinuate that fraud has influenced the result. It's pretty run-of-the-mill politicking. Here's Hillary doing the same thing, except she's blaming nefarious foreign actors instead of the local machine:

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/18/hillary-clinton-tr...

The simple fact is that Hillary simply couldn't believe she was defeated, and did as much or more disputing of results. That doesn't make her an enemy of democracy, and neither does Donald Trump's caterwauling. But if you read the recent news reporting or watched the current President-elect's speeches, you would think that the very foundations of Democracy are shaken. Utter hogwash.

[amykyta]

It was not campaign finance laws that’s incorrect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Donald_Trump?wp... Charges were abuse of power and obstruction of investigation. That Democrats were itching to impeach him doesn’t change the reality that he abused his office to advance his own political interests.

[rmk]

I'm aware of what the charges were. I'm referring to the original investigation of Muller's that had these findings.

[haberman]

We will never know whether any of Trump's wrongdoing rises to the level necessary to convict, because the Senate decided not to call any witnesses or subpoena any documents.

[afjl]

I think the Supreme Court Justice issue is way more complicated than that. When going down the nuclear option, both Reid and McConnell knew this was going to happen, it was just a matter of who ended up on top.

There was always going to be a scramble for one side to change the rules, get a leg up, and pull the ladder up behind them. I suppose that's endemic to a 2-party system, but that's what happens when hard-earned consensus is destroyed. Not blaming Dems/GOP here, I'm just saying this was the inevitable consequence and it's more complicated than you're letting on.