Jesus you're fucking stupid. Like reading the Breitbart comment section.

I don't know what you're talking about.

I'm speaking of the diplomats. Given the context of the situation they were in, it's completely understandable that, since Trump was withholding a meeting as leverage to get the Ukrainians to open investigations, they would think that withholding aid is yet another quid pro quo.

It's somewhat of a hole, but if we take your point on Trump and his administration being incompetent and chaotic, it doesn't rule it out. Especially given the other evidence(like the rough transcript). I don't think Trump gave this a ton of thought. His personal lawyer and diplomats were leaning on the Ukrainians to open investigations, and one day Trump said, "fuck it, if you aren't going to play ball, let me hold this aid".

Of course, the cult isn't going to buy the theory unless some transcript gets released of Trump explicitly saying "we're withholding aid until they open investigations". And then you'll all go right into "doesn't matter anyway lulz".

And like I said days ago... whether the aid for investigations quid pro quo can be established or not, an American president pressuring a foreign leader to investigate a political opponent is worthy of impeachment and removal.

This post was edited by IceMage on Oct 5 2019 04:24pm

Totally worth the 10 minute suspension XD

And yet it doesn't mean that Trump actually was withholding a meeting as leverage. They could be mistaken about Trump's intentions, or acting under a false assumption, or just aware of the fog of uncertainty in their largely redundant positions when Trump sets policy by tweet.
Its even possible that his diplomats made explicit quid pro quo offers to their Ukrainian counterparts by misreading Trump in a 'troublesome priest' scenario, whether that was his intention or not. In that event, this impeachment could go really crazy



Its possible, but its also unlikely given the evidence. It simply doesn't make sense given both Trump's brash precedent and willingness to take controversial positions openly even if democrats will scream its illegal, nor does it make sense given that massive logical hole of the leverage being pointless if Ukraine doesn't know what's going on. And consider also that Trump would easily 'justify' such a position by pointing to Joe Biden doing the same thing to coerce Ukraine in the first place. Why bother lying about it? Democrats clearly don't care whether there was a quid pro quo or not, they're going to pursue impeachment either way, they made that abundantly clear. And I can say with certainty that in any reasonable, evenhanded reading of the law, its not illegal in either case- an inconvenient fact to politicians of both parties, the IC and FEC and DOJ who all settled on screaming about foreign election interference being illegal even tough there's no such laws (look at the shitshow of a trial of Concord Management, trying to get them for 'being anonymous online' in a blatant prosecutorial overreach)

The point being, to figure there was a quid pro quo requires us to believe in uncharacteristic coordination and conspiracy by Trump for no real purpose and with no need to lie about it. 99.99% of the time, conspiracy theories turn out to be false and the truth is just mundane. And Trump has been on the receiving end of those theories with the same result over and over again, and the few times there actually was substance to a secret story- Stormy Daniels for example- he just evaded and issued nondenials and plead ignorance and finally copped to it, like a true snake of a politician would. I'm disinclined to believe any of the wild theories without wild evidence, whether its cultists screaming about a deep state or qanon or just democrats going on about russia & ukraine.



The democrats already said it doesn't matter anyway so it would just be even footing at that point.

Two things...

1. Biden is not YET Trump's political opponent. He's currently no more than an ex-VP that broke the law....and admitted he did so... on tape.
2. As Goom said... No one can claim there was any quid pro quo, if the Ukraine didn't KNOW there was aid being withheld.

Do you really believe either of those statements?

Trump lies about everything, big and small, all the time. He'll deny a damaging media report, and then a day later confirm it in a tweet. So the idea that this quid pro quo is the only example where it's obvious Trump would just tell the truth about is absurd. It's clear to everyone, especially Republican politicians, that withholding military aid in order to get Ukraine to investigate the Bidens is a significant escalation of this scandal. Right now they can play stupid and pretend there's no good reason to believe that's what Trump was doing.

Of course, Trump's immoral, chaotic and incompetent nature can always be deployed as a defense for suspected wrongdoing.

As for whether it's criminal, that's not all that relevant. He can't be indicted, and the conspiracy theorist at DOJ doesn't want to investigate his pal anyway. An abuse of office doesn't have to be criminal.



No. They've said the quid pro quo isn't a necessary bar to impeach. Not that it doesn't matter.

This post was edited by IceMage on Oct 5 2019 05:09pm

Doubting a conspiracy theory that has major holes in it shouldn't require an affirmative belief, rather its the opposite.
Although that's for point #2. For point #1; Joe Biden didn't break the law because there's simply no such law. He's free to coerce foreign countries, even for corrupt self-serving purposes, as long as its through official US policy through his capacity as VP.
Logically, impeachment would be the constitutionally prescribed recourse for any such abuse of office.
But if impeachment is driven by non-criminal misconduct and abuse of office, the judgment has to be one of value, morals and ethics, which calls into question the distinction between 'corrupt financial motive' and 'seeking to expose the wrongdoing of others for political gain', one of which would be unambiguously a violation and the other a shade of grey or justifiable or positive. Begrudging Trump for doing what Biden did in an attempt to expose what he did, is going to strike most people as 'what goes around comes around'- a hypocritical push by the democrats to hold Trump to a standard they wouldn't hold themselves. But in the absence of that quid pro quo extortion, Trump doing nothing but politely asking- it becomes a joke.



I'm not sure I get how it can be an escalation of the scandal if that was the original accusation on day 1, and we've had the national media dancing around that point getting debunked or not for the past month.
It would only be an escalation in the sense of a roller coaster going down and up again



And impeachment could be for Trump using Russian salad dressing if they really wanted, but it does make a difference in whether their impeachment can go anywhere, and a farce along partisan lines would die in the senate and a joke of an impeachment farce would lose in the house as moderates defect to save themselves.



This post was edited by Goomshill on Oct 5 2019 05:15pm

We're in weird times, where the president has a devoted propaganda network, and the Republican party is willing to endorse whatever he says. But withholding military aid(from an ally fighting Russia on it's eastern territory) as a way to leverage them investigating his likely 2020 opponent is such a blatant abuse of power and violation of his oath of office that I think Republicans would remove him.

Lol. Just kidding of course. They wouldn't do shit.

Only in your delusional mind is that what happened.