“Danger danger danger” Trump’s lead lawyer, Jay Sekulow histrionically warns as he closes his defense of Trump.
Sekulow contends that Trump’s impeachment is really only about a “policy disagreement”. Which it’s not. But it’s kind of interesting since we hadn’t really heard that argument much before and now all of a sudden it’s front and center. So anyway, Sekulow wraps up like this:
“If partisan impeachment, based on policy agreements–which is what this is–and personal presumptions, or newspaper reports and allegations in an unsourced ‘maybe this is in somebody’s book who’s no longer at the White House’, if that becomes the new norm, future Presidents: Democrats, Republicans, will be paralyzed the moment they are elected.
Of course, the “unsourced…maybe…book” refers to Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s soon-to-be published memoir, which appears to directly contradict the President’s version of what he did and said. Not clear at all yet whether the Senate will vote to hear Bolton, although he’s said he’ll talk.
Back to Sekulow. A few minutes earlier, he’d said:
“Danger, danger, danger. The next President or the one after that, he or she will be held to that same standard.”
Absolutely hold future Presidents to that same standard as Congress is holding Trump. Because a future President being “paralyzed”, is not the inevitable outcome of watchfulness. And it’s certainly not the chilling upshot of refusing to give Presidents carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want under any circumstances. Whether or not the Senate ultimately votes to remove Trump. Which we still can’t see happening, even if Bolton (and others) end up testifying.
Anyway, the President does not have that power to begin with, nor that level of immunity. That’s a king.
And we’re not saying there won’t be payback. There’s always payback for anything. There will be even if Trump isn’t convicted. But worrying about payback isn’t a reason not to do something that should be done.
Anyway, this “policy disagreement” includes this President using private muscle in the form of Rudy Giuliani and a couple of henchmen—none of whom actually work for the U.S. government—to attempt to consummate a shady deal of the President’s inception with a foreign government for his personal benefit.
Giuliani and his squad got paid for their dirty work by God-knows-who. Not the President. Which sounds better at first, but when you stop to think about it is actually a lot worse. Their work included intimidating some of the people who actually did represent the U.S. and the Executive Branch, to the point the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine was forced to flee her official position.
Trump and his people, if you haven’t noticed, always like to take things to extremes. For instance, it’s the President’s view that virtually all regulation is over-regulation. We happen to agree with him that many things in this country are over-regulated by the government. But we also know a lot of that regulation is there because without it, people behave very very badly.