The
Wall Street Journal, in an editorial of Aug. 24, “The Forbidden ‘I
Word,’” asserted that Democrats want to hide their only agenda for 2019: the
impeachment of President Donald Trump.
“Whatever
else you do, please don’t mention the ‘I word’ between now and November. That’s
the public message from Democratic leaders and most of their media friends this
week after Michael Cohen’s guilty plea and his criminal allegations against
President Trump. Between now and Election Day, ‘impeachment’ is the forbidden
word.”
Cohen,
the president’s former lawyer, revealed in court that Trump asked him to pay
hush money to women who alleged they had affairs with Trump. These were
criminal violations of abstruse and complicated campaign-finance laws. He was
also charged with tax evasion and bank fraud.
Almost
simultaneously, Paul Manafort, a former Trump campaign chair, was found guilty
of tax and bank fraud.
Should
Trump be impeached and removed from office? I know I speak for very few
Canadians, and probably not more than half of all Americans, when I say no.
We know
Trump is a liar and a loutish man. I, an American citizen, didn’t vote for him
in 2016. But so were Bill Clinton and Lyndon Johnson. Nevertheless, he did win
the election and nothing he has done so far merits removal from office.
Actually, from the very minute Trump was elected, the political
establishment (aka “deep state”), through its media agencies, political police,
and judiciary, set out to remove him.
It’s a shame the term deep state conjures up images of sinister
conspiracy. Properly used, it simply refers to those who, though often
unelected officials, wield tremendous influence and political power.
The editors of the New York Times
and Washington Post, for example, are
two examples; billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a one-man alternate
“State Department,” is another.
President Dwight Eisenhower on leaving office in 1959 warned about the
“military-industrial complex” – just another name for it.
Whispers
about impeachment, the most familiar constitutional procedure for removing a
president, began to circulate even before Trump had taken the oath of office.
Remember the marches and calls for “resistance?” They began the very day
of his inauguration. And he’s been under siege ever since.
His enemies have even turned a porn actress into a savior of the
republic! You think I jest? A New York
Times opinion article of Aug. 26 by Jill Filipovic was titled “Stormy
Daniels, Feminist Hero.”
The Manafort and Cohen trials, as well as the ongoing Robert Mueller
investigation of alleged collusion between Trump and Russian President Vladimir
Putin to win the election – still completely unproven and considered by many a
“witch hunt” -- are politically motivated.
No one would have ever gone after those two men had Trump not become
president, because such white-collar crimes rarely lead to indictments.
“I really
don’t think it’s about justice,” maintains the left-wing journalist Glen
Greenwald, in an interview in the Sept. 3 New
Yorker. “I think the people who are doing this are genuinely offended by
the entire Trump circle,” and “they’re just using the law as a political weapon
against Trump.” This is more persecution than prosecution.
The current hysteria over Russia’s “meddling,” were it not a weapon
against Trump, would hardly have made the news. Added Greenwald, “anyone who
criticizes the Democratic Party or its leaders is instantly accused of being a
Kremlin agent.”
What are the “high crimes and misdemeanors” they’ll get Trump for?
Technicalities, mainly, which in other circumstances have largely gone
unnoticed.
Up until
now neither the establishment nor the mainstream media has made a case for
anything other than their dislike for an anti-establishment outsider.
Impeachment
should require direct and undeniable evidence of specific criminal acts or
abuses of power tied directly to Trump himself — not just to people around him.
Trump’s real “crime” was winning the election against the candidate of
the political class that rules America. He is, in their eyes, an illegitimate
president. This couldn’t be allowed to stand.
This was evident in the spectacle that followed Senator John McCain’s
death, when they closed ranks to vilify Trump.
What the
Democratic Party doesn’t realize is that they are making it the “new normal” to
investigate, interrogate all known associates and acquaintances and relatives
of an incoming president, to destroy that person.
Removing
a president should be done through the ballot box, by the American public -- or
American democracy will never be the same again.
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