Franklin Graham on impeachment: ‘Our country could begin to unravel’
“Graham, a staunch Trump supporter, said the impeachment inquiry about Trump’s interactions with the leader of Ukraine was a political move by a party that refuses to accept Trump’s election victory three years ago.” - RNS
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It’s a bit late to get concerned about unraveling. Should have been asking “Will a man of such poor character unravel the country?” back in 2015 and 2016.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
… . as opposed to asking “Will a woman of such poor character unravel the country?”
I could deal with Christians saying something like “Look, Trump is a horrific person. He lies constantly, he is dishonest, he abuses his power, he uses the Presidency for personal gain. He does not deserve to be President; he in fact deserves impeachment. I will not defend him. BUT, in spite of that, I have to vote for him because the other option is worse.”
What I can’t deal with are these Christians like Graham who defend him and in the process become liars and crooked too. It is mindnumbing that Christians have stooped to this.
Worth noting is that the “whistleblower” complaint that got all of this started was not written by a CIA employee. It was, rather, written by a Democratic Party lawyer with the full knowledge of a number of people in the Party, and brings to mind a couple of questions:
1. Why are we so worried about an obvious setup which is contradicted by the transcript of the call?
2. Given that the allegations are likely at least very sensitive, if not confidential, information, precisely who interacted with this before it was released?
I am no fan of Franklin Graham, and understand fully concerns about the moral state of the President, but unless the State Department was intentionally falsifying the transcript (and Mike Pompeo is blatantly violating the USMA honor code he promised to keep), what we’ve got here is a political “hit” led by the same people leading the impeachment inquiry, one that exposes the “hitters” (Schiff, Pelosi, etc..) as liars. It’s also one where those involved have some very real questions about their pledge to keep confidential discussions confidential.
The logical conclusion of this matter is that a number of people need to lose their jobs—but Donald Trump does not appear to be among them in this case.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Motives again… I don’t doubt it’s politically driven. Let’s make that a given and move on to more important questions like what did the President do and is that/should that be allowed?
(There is so much energy going into irrelevancy in this whole thing… if we could somehow harness the red-herring energy in all this, we could power North American industry for a couple years on it.)
… . as opposed to asking “Will a woman of such poor character …
Everybody was asking that. Also a given. When we were looking at nominees, the question that wasn’t properly thought through was, “What if we nominate someone who’s just as bad, only in different ways, and what will it do to the soul and integrity of the party if we bet everything on someone who is so profoundly inappropriate, just to ‘win’?” Guys like Franklin Graham helped that nomination happen.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
[Bert Perry]Worth noting is that the “whistleblower” complaint that got all of this started was not written by a CIA employee. It was, rather, written by a Democratic Party lawyer with the full knowledge of a number of people in the Party, and brings to mind a couple of questions:
1. Why are we so worried about an obvious setup which is contradicted by the transcript of the call?
2. Given that the allegations are likely at least very sensitive, if not confidential, information, precisely who interacted with this before it was released?
I am no fan of Franklin Graham, and understand fully concerns about the moral state of the President, but unless the State Department was intentionally falsifying the transcript (and Mike Pompeo is blatantly violating the USMA honor code he promised to keep), what we’ve got here is a political “hit” led by the same people leading the impeachment inquiry, one that exposes the “hitters” (Schiff, Pelosi, etc..) as liars. It’s also one where those involved have some very real questions about their pledge to keep confidential discussions confidential.
The logical conclusion of this matter is that a number of people need to lose their jobs—but Donald Trump does not appear to be among them in this case.
Agreed! What the Democrats are doing is creating a non-crisis crisis and throwing enough manufactured dirt around, hoping enough of it sticks to influence the American public to vote Trump out of office. After the Russia investigation fiasco and the repeatedly exposed as completely fake Kavanaugh “allegations,” how can we trust the Democrats & media on this next issue???
But sure, let’s keep saying Trump is THE liar and immoral (insert other list of vices here) while failing to acknowledge the bigger picture.
It’s a bit late to get concerned about unraveling. Should have been asking “Will a man of such poor character unravel the country?” back in 2015 and 2016.
You mean back when VP Biden was using foreign aid to coerce a foreign government to do something? You mean back when the Executive Branch was using the power of federal government in the FBI and CIA to investigate a political opponent? You mean back when a political party was asking for and accepting foreign intervention in the electoral process against a political opponent? You mean back when the federal government knew that a foreign government was trying to interfere in the election and didn’t tell the parties involved and take steps to stop it but instead tried to entrap them? You mean back when the federal government was using documents it knew were questionable at best and likely completely false in order to pursue a political opponent?
Because of Trump using his executive power in such a shady way, I think it is appropriate to look into impeachment (I’m not saying that Trump should be impeached, but what he did was shady, although no more shady than what Biden and his cronies did). My feeling is that Trump frequently pushes the limits of his executive power, which then leads to overreactions of the liberal left, creating a victimhood culture for the Republicans that Trump and his supporters embrace when they are constantly attacked by the left, which raises tons of money for them. Victimization is a brilliant strategy to galvanize your base and raise funds and now the Republicans (through Trump) are doing it too. If Trump is whining and complaining about always being investigated, then he needs to stop pushing his executive powers beyond the constitutional limit. I am getting sick of each President that we’ve had in the past 30 years (Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr, Obama, and now Trump) making the executive branch more and more powerful than the other branches. What’s more, is that whoever follows Trump (most likely in 2024 and most likely a progressive liberal) will go even further with their executive power. Do you remember in the last Presidential debate, Senator Harris promised to use her executive powers to ban guns and etc….? That’s even more scary. Checks and balances are essential for our government to function well.
Also, which party will show enough integrity to stop the blame cycle of “the previous President abused power and got away with it so that gives me the right to do so too.” I don’t care what the situation is and what happened. “The Ends Do Not Justify the Means.”
Very helpful piece at NR on the impeachment process
There are two layers: constitutional requirements and self-imposed rules by the House and Senate.
Technically, impeachment has occurred when the House brings a formal charge against the Pres. Then it goes to the Senate to bring the matter to some kind of close.
Constitutionally, the Senate has a lot of flexibility on what it does with the House’s impeachment. But under it’s current self-imposed rules, it has to have a”trial” and do it promptly.
As they say, read the whole thing.
….
On Joel’s comment, one thing I find comforting is that if a future leftist Pres tries to ban guns by executive order, there will be lawsuits, and the Supremes can declare the EO unconstitutional (or possibly even a circuit court could do it). Also, if Congress had a mind to, it could pass legislation contradicting the EO. So…, it’s not as easy to defeat the checks and balances as it may sometimes seem.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
You mean back when VP Biden was using foreign aid to coerce a foreign government to do something? …
No, I’m pretty sure Graham was not in favor of lots of things that went on during the Obama administration. Not in any way relevant to what he should have done about Trump in 2016.
… but that’s really pretty obvious, isn’t it?
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
….than even executive overreach is bureaucratic overreach, IMO. There is a tremendous amount of leeway given to bureaucrats to “codify” laws, and that power leads to a tremendous amount of “extension” of the law to areas the writers would not have contemplated. And when people push back at extending code far beyond what the law’s writers would have ever imagined, then the bureaucrats start quietly or loudly sabotaging the effort. A lot of what we read in the papers is precisely that, really. In this case, it’s the intelligence community inspector general quietly (a) removing the need for firsthand knowledge and (b) changing the reports in response to the complaint against Trump. In doing so, they, again, shared a lot of fairly sensitive information with Democratic Party staffers.
Not that presidential overreach is a small deal, but it’s nothing compared to bureaucratic/swamp inertia. And regarding Presidential overreach, one good thing about Trump is that in many areas, he’s actually kicked things back to Congress. Not that he doesn’t overreach, but IMO it’s nowhere near the problem it was from 2009 to 2016.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Just a few years ago, Ted Cruz was asked why not impeach Obama…. (Bulwark)
Cruz’s response: “It’s a good question.” The only reason not to impeach Obama, he said, was purely tactical: Not enough votes in the Senate. A few months later, Cruz sat down for an interview with Newsmax and was asked about impeaching Obama again. He ducked and swerved. He said that Obama’s “lawless” behavior was “deeply dangerous.” But he wouldn’t say, No. This is stupid. You don’t impeach presidents just because you dislike them.
Cruz now on impeaching Trump:
Two weeks into the first revelations of Trump’s actions regarding Ukraine, Cruz is comfortable declaring that the House impeachment inquiry is merely an attempt “to find any reason under the sun to impeach the president and undo the results of the last election.”
This is happening all over on the right. Very interesting.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
You know what concerns me? All this examination into Ted Cruz quotes and accusations that unless you are against Trump you have compromised yourself, but little comment and concern about the outrageous accusations from practically every Democrat party leader! Shoot, they’ve managed to make Pelosi sound almost reasonable. No comment from the never Trump crowd though…
Edit: To put it another way, my support of Trump is not in a vacuum. In 2016 I supported a few others until Trump was left. Then the choice was him or Hillary Clinton. Now, you have the same kind of stark choice. You either support Trump or you bow to the absurd, over the top, elitist, deep state, good ole boy club, stuff the establishment crown in Washington DC is slinging at him. Then you add in the shocking overt socialism of most of the Democratic presidential field, and whew… You can’t stand on the fence and complain about “your team.” You go to war with the army you have.
[GregH]What I can’t deal with are these Christians like Graham who defend him and in the process become liars and crooked too. It is mindnumbing that Christians have stooped to this.
GregH. see, I reject the claim that Trump is a liar and crooked. Is he perfect? No. Is he more honest than most politicians? Yes.
[Mark_Smith]You know what concerns me? All this examination into Ted Cruz quotes and accusations that unless you are against Trump you have compromised yourself, but little comment and concern about the outrageous accusations from practically every Democrat party leader! Shoot, they’ve managed to make Pelosi sound almost reasonable. No comment from the never Trump crowd though…
Edit: To put it another way, my support of Trump is not in a vacuum. In 2016 I supported a few others until Trump was left. Then the choice was him or Hillary Clinton. Now, you have the same kind of stark choice. You either support Trump or you bow to the absurd, over the top, elitist, deep state, good ole boy club, stuff the establishment crown in Washington DC is slinging at him. Then you add in the shocking overt socialism of most of the Democratic presidential field, and whew… You can’t stand on the fence and complain about “your team.” You go to war with the army you have.
Agreed 100%!
Someone posted above something to the effect that they felt the pro-Trump crowd would be more credible if they weren’t so fan-boy over him, while ignoring his clear & obvious flaws. Those flaws do make it a challenge for many Christians to support him personally. That is true. I do acknowledge that fact. I cringe too often at much of his behavior.
But, I also think the never-Trump crowd, including some on this thread, would have more credible arguments if they acknowledged as much about the gargantuan & appalling flaws of the Democrats as much as they rail against Trump.
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