Quote (fender @ Oct 31 2019 10:14am)

keep moving that goalpost in order to justify your blatant disregard for obviously crooked behaviour. partisanship is a powerful thing, but at some point it just makes you look dumb. asking foreign governments to help you with your election is illegal ( https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/52/30121 ) - and trump not only did it during his call to ukraine (as detailed in the official white house 'transcript', which already leaves out some damning passages), but on national television as well - and you all saw it.

just for the record, i clearly stated that i do NOT expect him to get removed from office for this. not because he should not be, not because he hasn't committed plenty of impeachable offences, no, simply because the republicans in congress are partisan shills like you - as long as someone has the magic (R) behind their name and does what the donors want, they could literally rape babies on live tv and you people would find a way not to believe your lying eyes.
that's why not a single republican wants to talk about the substance of the impeachment inquiry, and rather lies about the process being illegal / unconstitutional, or tries to smear the witnesses, who are merely confirming what trump and his lapdogs already admitted on tv...

Quote (NatureNames @ 31 Oct 2019 22:05)

Calm down dude. I wasn't even talking about myself. If you had any reading comprehension you would see I'm talking about the impeachment process from a fairly objective point of view. I'm not a Trump supporter. I'm not a republican. But you're so triggered that you make up what you want to believe. There is something seriously wrong with your logical reasoning.

You didn't respond to a single point I made. You just replied with a rant, again. I'm going to have to ignore you from now on. My time is too valuable to waste it on stupid bullshit.

Quote (Goomshill @ 31 Oct 2019 22:01)

The more muddy issues here are-
Where does the line between personal gain / political gain and furthering American interests get drawn?
Who is conducting the real shadow foreign policy, the unelected bureaucrats opposing the agenda of the elected president, or the unofficial representatives advancing the president's agenda?

Remember, we're only discussing this because people in the intelligence community have been so adamantly opposed to the president on personal, political and legal levels that they'd been trying to undermine and overthrow him in pretty much every way short of assassination. Investigations, leaking, wiretapping, ambushing flynn, whistleblowing, shadow diplomacy, fueling impeachment, you name it. How can we say that in Biden's case its acceptable because whether it was ethical or not, he was empowered to conduct foreign policy on behalf of the Obama administration- but in Trump's case its not okay? I've listened to dozens of hypocritical pundits who will say a bunch of bullshit like how the US shadow intervention in Ukraine is the consensus of the US and her allies and the UN and totally legitimate and all that, and its treason for Trump to oppose it. It boils down to TDS'ers saying Trump is an illegitimate president. He was elected, all these people serve at his pleasure in the executive branch, they're supposed to carry out his policies whether they agree with them or not. If its heresy for Trump to even express skepticism towards our position on Ukraine, then what was the point of holding an election?

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Oct 31 2019 04:50pm)

All good and (imho) persuasive points. One important distinction you're missing, however, is Congressional oversight:

Biden was an official member of the administration, he was answering to Obama and to Congress. Similarly, all the people from Biden-world and Clinton-world who were engaged in this shady "Ukrainian oligarch swap" were tied to the administration and the intelligence community and under their oversight. Guiliani, on the other hand, is only answering to Trump and no one else. The shadow foreign policy he was conducting with regard to Ukraine was removed from oversight by Congress, by the corresponding state and intelligence institutions and by the public.

Quote (Goomshill @ Oct 31 2019 03:27pm)

Were they accountable to congress? I mean, that was kind of the legacy of the Obama years, they just flat out ignored congress when it came to foreign policy (and how!). You could say the IC officials were subject to oversight, sure, but so are all the actors within the IC that have made it their mission to undermine the administration. Even when Republicans held congress, that wasn't really changing anything. And if that was the real complaint, then "Giuliani conducting the president's diplomacy through shadow channels" is hardly an argument for impeachment. Something to be displeased about, something to complain about or demand he stop- but clearly it was a response to the fact that official diplomatic channels have been poisoned by hostile bureaucrats. It just leads back to that circle where the opposition are complaining that Trump is acting in bad faith to get around the way they're acting in bad faith. Like how Ciaramella's whistleblower complaint concerns how the White House put presidential phone calls into a secure system- a precaution they took specifically because of phone calls being leaked... by Ciaramella.

Quote (Goomshill @ 31 Oct 2019 23:27)

Were they accountable to congress? I mean, that was kind of the legacy of the Obama years, they just flat out ignored congress when it came to foreign policy (and how!). You could say the IC officials were subject to oversight, sure, but so are all the actors within the IC that have made it their mission to undermine the administration. Even when Republicans held congress, that wasn't really changing anything. And if that was the real complaint, then "Giuliani conducting the president's diplomacy through shadow channels" is hardly an argument for impeachment. Something to be displeased about, something to complain about or demand he stop- but clearly it was a response to the fact that official diplomatic channels have been poisoned by hostile bureaucrats. It just leads back to that circle where the opposition are complaining that Trump is acting in bad faith to get around the way they're acting in bad faith. Like how Ciaramella's whistleblower complaint concerns how the White House put presidential phone calls into a secure system- a precaution they took specifically because of phone calls being leaked... by Ciaramella.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Oct 31 2019 06:56pm)

Obama was only able to ignore Congress when it came to foreign policy because Congress allowed him to. As you said, even when Republicans held Congress, they didnt really rain on his parade either.

The deeper reason behind all of this is that there is a large, bipartisan coalition in favor of these policies Obama was pursuing in Ukraine; that there is a broad, bipartisan coalition in favor of interventions and arming proxy troops to stir shit up all around the world.
Trump is not aligned with the foreign policy of this 'uniparty', and that's why all the IC and all the bureaucrats, i.e. persons and groups who made a career out of pursuing and being aligned with this uniparty foreign policy agenda, are so adamantly against Trump on these issues. They want to undermine and preferably stop him before he is able to undermine them (and their long-term agenda).

Quote (IceMage @ Oct 31 2019 07:09pm)

I'm not interested in debunking every bullshit talking point presented in this thread... but since when was Trump a dove in regards to Ukraine? He's approved providing more weapons than Obama did. According to many cultists, he's been tough on Russia in many ways. I don't see how there's some clash in foreign policy on this issue. His people were trying to follow through on his policy.

The issue is people pursuing the foreign policy of the United States outlined by the president vs people pursuing the president's personal/political interests. Those things are different. It doesn't take a good faith actor to recognize the difference.