Encouraging a violent attack on the US Capitol building seems like a pretty good excuse to impeach.
And the implication that there's more to come if the machinery of government isn't handed over in full to the leader of the insurrection.
However, if the question is about impeachement: Yes. There's more than enough reason to go through with it. In the broader context of how the President has been lying to his supporters about election fraud, telling them to stop the steal, and that he will never concede. The President is on record trying to strong-arm election officials in Georgia to find him 11,780 votes, the exact number that would overturn the state.
No, he does not say that they need to investigate. He wants them to find him the votes because he knows he won it. And that is just what has happened in the past week.
It's not just Twitter claiming Trump bears responsibility, it's Mcconnell, Pence, Murkowski, WSJ, and other former Trump allies. It's the perpetrators themselves claiming fealty to Trump.
Feel free to point us to where rioters took over downtown Portland at the behest of and in allegiance to Mayor Wheeler.
There's a difference between encouraging joining a peaceful protest, and having tweeted for weeks about 6th of January going to be big, getting the crowd mad by telling them for 70 minutes how they've been defrauded, and then telling them where to go and what to do:
"So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we're going to the Capitol and we're going to try and give... The Democrats are hopeless, They're never voting for anything, not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don't need any of our help, we're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."
Of course he didn't explicitly say "Go there and break the windows, beat some cops up and threaten our lawmakers with violence", but geez, he basically said "let's intimidate them".
Yeah yeah, of course you Trump defender are going to say "He didn't say anything bad, it's not his fault that his followers interpreted things differently...".
Yes, if you view everything he says with the benefit of hindsight and the most uncharitable context possible, which has pretty much been the strategy from day one, you can interpret it that way. And whatever happened to the BLM riot days, where a minority of the protestors caused violence but oh no, we can't paint everyone with the same brush. You may be shocked to realize this but only a minority of the protesters actually went in to the capitol. Apparently the vast majority of the protesters weren't able to decipher Trump's coded language like seemingly everyone else can. That's really strange.
> There's a difference between encouraging joining a peaceful protest
But here's the problem: when there are repeated instances of peaceful protests devolving into looting and rioting, isn't there some point at which you should know that encouraging yet another BLM protest makes you responsible for what it turns in to?
And you kinda sidestepped the question about CHAZ. When the mayor rejects the president's offer of the National Guard to control the, ya know, illegal occupation of several city blocks and lets CHAZ continue after repeated acts of crime in the area that culminated in two deaths... why aren't they held responsible? Why is THAT considered some unforeseen consequence of protesting but Trump's is an open-and-shut case of "he knew it would happen and wanted it to"?
The mayor of Portland also rejecting Trump's NG offer and allowed rioting to continue for two months. At what point -- maybe day 35 of 60? -- does the mayor become responsible for what happened by rejecting the initial NG support?
I'm hoping you understand what I'm getting at, it's that certain people get very charitable interpretations of their actions while certain others don't.
That's what you're doing isn't it. MAGA riot? "Ooh it was just a minority...". "Oh let's view what Trump said with a charitable context" Despite the context of 4+ years of him lying, defending white supremacists, and stoking misinformation and keeping his supporters pissed off.
Well, it's useless to debate with you, you're brainwashed. Sure, on the other hand you can say I'm brainwashed, go ahead and go and claim you won in this debate.
Part of me agrees with you that there is no point at this point and it'll just anger his base. The other part remembers just how much power the president has and thinks at this point worrying what his base thinks is pointless. Anyone left can't really get any more riled up.
At this point: What's the difference?
They're convinced democrats are blood-drinking satan-worshipping pedophiles, and that the election was fraudulent because the ghost of Hugo Chavez activated The Algorithm on the Dominion machines which moved votes from Trump to Biden through a server in Germany and a satellite in Italy.
> Anyone left can't really get any more riled up.
Exactly.
The president incited a violent insurrectionist mob to storm the Capitol, forcing the lawfully elected government representatives to flee and postpone their duty. He refused to call in the national guard to secure the Capitol, and published a video saying he loves the rioters instead.
And then people are arguing that you shouldn't go ahead with impeachment because of political calculations that it might fail.
What is the thing for if not exactly this?!?
You're leaving out that politicians who have encouraged people to attend BLM protests often encourage people to assembly peacefully but to make their voices heard. I haven't seen anywhere prior to the attack on the Capitol building where Trump urged his followers to be peaceful. He has done the opposite, which allowed his followers to infer that he would support acts of violence.
Secondly, the real point of impeachment probably isn't to remove, so much as it is to give the Senate a credible threat to use to rein Trump in. I opposed impeachment (both times --- on the politics, not the merits) but seen in that light it makes a lot of sense.
So day 1 was an exaggeration but yeah, the House could indict a president much earlier on if ultimately the point is to let the Senate keep the reigns on him for everything thereafter.
And in addition to the fact that this aught to be illegal, I don't think it makes sense as a scenario. With this House/Senate/Presidency, the same threat of conviction by the Senate is always there, because as soon as the Senate signals they'll convict Trump the House'll impeach Trump.
And also the fact that all the other plans to "reign Trump in" over the years led Senate Republicans to exactly where they were on Wednesday, with Trump sending rioters to their chamber, gallows erected outside and a neo-Viking sitting in Pence's chair. If they're not going to acquit again then I don't understand why they wouldn't just be done with Trump and convict him on this rather than something later in the week.
Worse, the old tenant has the nuclear codes.
I wanted to ask what if something big happens now, like an ISIS attack, but I suppose this administration has been so dumb the last 4 years, someone else lower in the chain of command can deal it it.
On the topic of chain of command, from Obama's latest book:
> What I was quickly discovering about the presidency was that no problem that landed on my desk, foreign or domestic, had a clean, 100 percent solution. If it had, someone else down the chain of command would have solved it already. Instead, I was constantly dealing with probabilities: a 70 percent chance, say, that a decision to do nothing would end in disaster; a 55 percent chance that this approach versus that one might solve the problem (with a 0 percent chance that it would work out exactly as intended); a 30 percent chance that whatever we chose wouldn’t work at all, along with a 15 percent chance that it would make the problem worse.