Be honest, and I will be, Do you think Trump abused his power in ways that rise to impeachment?

Author: billbatard

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#31
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@billbatard
Appeal to motive is a pattern of argument ...
What was Zelenskys motive for bringing up Guliani and corruption?

Why would Zelensky state many times he was not pressured by Trump?
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#32
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@Greyparrot
As such, this type of argument may be an informal fallacy.
A common feature of appeals to motive is that only the possibility of a motive (however small) is shown, without showing the motive actually existed or, if the motive did exist, that the motive played a role in forming the argument and its conclusion. Indeed, it is often assumed that the mere possibility of motive is evidence enough.


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#33
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@Greyparrot
and mate As such, this type of argument may be an informal fallacy.
A common feature of appeals to motive is that only the possibility of a motive (however small) is shown, without showing the motive actually existed or, if the motive did exist, that the motive played a role in forming the argument and its conclusion. Indeed, it is often assumed that the mere possibility of motive is evidence enough.
Examples

#34
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@billbatard
What was Zelenskys (informal) motive for bringing up Guliani and corruption?

Why would Zelensky (informally) state many times he was not pressured by Trump?

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#35
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@Greyparrot
you dont know and it doesnt matter
#36
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lol
#37
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@Greyparrot
Adam Schiffs quote was thus
Schiff is kind of an idiot. A parady requires it to be for comedy. No one is laughing that the president has betrayed his oath of office. 

Why would Zelensky (informally) state many times he was not pressured by Trump?
Because trump is president and will be until 2020. Ukraine is fighting a war right now against russia. It is in his best interest to say whatever he has to in order to keep the aid flowing. He has nothing to gain by saying anything that trump doesn't want him to. 

Former members of Zelensky's government have said that it was understood a call with trump wouldn't happen if they were not open to investigating Biden. 

It is one thing to say what someone's motive was without evidence. It is quite another to lay out what the chain of events was and find the most logical explanation of it was. 

1) trump cuts off aid to Ukraine. He doesn't tell anyone he has done this and has his agencies lie about what caused the aid to be blocked. 
2) a few days later trump has a call with ukraine where they say they are ready for more weapons, which trump is currently blocking them from getting. 
3) immediately following the ukrainians saying they are ready for more defensive weapons, trump responds with "I would like you to do us a favor though" and then proceeds to ask them to dig up dirt on a political opponent, Joe biden. Incidentally, this was in and of itself a crime
4) Trump sends his personal attorney to Ukraine to push them and dig up dirt. He was not an employee of the US government, he only represented the interests of Trump as his personal lawyer. 
5) After the call the trump government "locked down" transcripts of the call keeping them in a computer reserved for classified information which is a breach of procedure.
6) when a whistle blower reported this, it was determined credible. The trump government then instructed the acting DNI to break the law by refusing to turn over the whistle blower complaint to congress as he was required to do. 

The chain of events suggest that trump cut off aid to pressure ukraine. As he didn't tell anyone else he was doing this, there is no one else he could have been pressuring. He when asked about more weapons, trump made it clear they needed to do him a favor and he detailed that they had to look into his political rivals. 

While we cannot say with certainty yet his motives were to extort Ukraine, the evidence makes that the most likely conclusion. I have yet to hear any other explanation that makes sense. 
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#38
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zalensky looked scared i think trump bitch slapped him before he dragged him in front of the camras
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#39
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i dont think everyone here is being totally honest like i am
#40
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@billbatard
Pelosi is actually honest.

#41
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@Greyparrot
Pelosi is actually honest.
She's right. Donald trump abused the power of his office for his own personal gain. That is exactly the kind of offense impeachment was designed to deal with. Congress can either choose to do the job they were elected to do and impeach him, or they can let him get away with his crimes and set a precedent that presidents are above the law. 

If the american people want to punish congress for doing it's job, then they deserve having a complete moron as president. 

#42
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If the american people want to punish congress for doing it's job, then they deserve having a complete moron as president. 

With a Congress willing to codify his agenda into law lasting long after 2024.
#43
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@Greyparrot
With a Congress willing to codify his agenda into law lasting long after 2024.
Does it not bother you that he is a criminal? Or do you just ignore it and pretend it isn't there?

Even beyond that, for the 1st two years of his presidency they had the house, senate and presidency. they still couldn't get anything done. It isn't democrats preventing trump from accomplishing things. He is so incredibly incompetent that even with the government totally in republicans hands they couldn't get their agenda into law. 
#44
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@HistoryBuff
Not really. I wasn't upset that Clinton committed a felony. It had no impact on my life at all.
#45
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Not really. I wasn't upset that Clinton committed a felony. It had no impact on my life at all.
I don't recall ever seeing evidence that Hilary committed any crimes. And if you meant Bill, then yeah he likely did, but it was about a personal issue. So it was stupid to impeach over.

This isn't just a felony though. He has abused the power of his office to interfere in an American election. He has betrayed his oath of office. He has colluded with a foreign power. This does affect your life. If he is willing to extort a foreign country to protect himself, what other crimes is he committing and/or will he commit? This absolutely affects you and every other american. If this kind of behavior is not worthy of impeachment, then literally nothing is. 

#46
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@HistoryBuff
That's what elections are for, so the people can pick between the least corrupt person assuming both are corrupt to some degree.

I really don't mind the mudslinging "you're corrupt...no you're corrupt"

Gives the voter something to think about.
#47
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@Greyparrot
That's what elections are for, so the people can pick between the least corrupt person assuming both are corrupt to some degree.
There is a difference between a mildly corrupt politician and one that has betrayed his office and his country. Trump has proven he doesn't care what the law is. He only cares about himself. If he needs to rely on Ukraine or Russia to get what he wants that is fine to him. He would turn on anyone and everyone if he thought it would make him richer or more powerful. 

He needs to be removed from office at the earliest possible date. 

#48
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@HistoryBuff
Not in my eyes. What does it mean to "betray your country" anyway in an age of peace and prosperity?

We aren't at war with anyone, so nobody's lives are at stake. We aren't losing jobs, wealth or opportunity to illegal foreign invaders so there's that.

Nation is pretty secure right now, to be honest. It's like people need something to bitch about to get out of the bed.

As far as other nations influencing our elections, Hillary Clinton had glowing endorsements from world leaders all over the globe...and I think that worked against her.
#49
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@Greyparrot
Not in my eyes. What does it mean to "betray your country" anyway in an age of peace and prosperity?
In this context, it means to abuse the power of the office of the president. The president is supposed to be someone who can be trusted to use the power they are given in a manner that is good for everyone. Trump has abused that power the entire time he has been president. For the most part it has been really shitty, but not exactly criminal. Things like diverting federal employees, the military etc to stay at his personal properties so that he can make millions off of the government, assigning wildly unqualified family members and friends to important positions. However in this case, the memo he released is an admission of guilt. Asking the president of Ukraine to help him attack Joe biden is a crime. Full stop. 

Trump has famously said he could shoot a person and his cultists would still vote for him (i'm paraphrasing). If he can release a document confessing to a crime and your response is that you don't care, it would appear that he can commit any crimes he wants and people like you will cheer him on. If the rest of the public is as partisan as you are, then your democracy is doomed. 
#50
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I don't recall ever seeing evidence that Hilary committed any crimes. And if you meant Bill, then yeah he likely did, but it was about a personal issue. So it was stupid to impeach over.
I was referring to Bill who was impeached for a felony process crime. But yeah the same applies to Hillary. Doing shady dealings and hiding the evidence on the personal server really didn't affect my life much or anyone else's.

#51
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@HistoryBuff
 If he can release a document confessing to a crime and your response is that you don't care, it would appear that he can commit any crimes he wants and people like you will cheer him on. If the rest of the public is as partisan as you are, then your democracy is doomed. 
Nah, I don't see democracy doomed at all. People can still freely walk into a voting booth and know their vote is going to be counted. And yeah you can vote for criminals if you know their crimes are bullshit like Bill Clinton's was. It won't hurt democracy at all. In fact, it vindicates it. This is how bad laws get changed-- At the ballot box.

For instance, it's bullshit that whistleblowers right now get protection for hearsay testimony which isn't admissible in any court. So we can have an election that has consequences and say that it is a bullshit law, re-elect Trump, and get the law reverted back to when you had to have 1st hand knowledge of something as a whistleblower.
#52
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@Greyparrot
I was referring to Bill who was impeached for a felony process crime. But yeah the same applies to Hillary.
Agreed, both of them are Neo-Libs who were neck deep in the general political corruption of washington. No more or less so than most of the senior leadership of both parties. 

But Trump has committed real crimes that were actually abusing his power as president. If republicans are willing to accept that the president is above the law and can do whatever he wants, then is it actually a democracy any more? 
#53
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@Greyparrot
I rather enjoyed this forum between you too. Good points all around.  GP please include HistoryBuff in this, I couldn't reply to two people for some reason.  I guess I just don't know how.

However, I am confused about how Trump is "digging up dirt" on a political opponent and how that hurts the country? Trump asks Ukraine to investigate a possible corruption case, which is totally in his power to do so.  To withhold funds for a short time in order to get a phone call is not a crime.  There is a treaty in place with the Ukraine in regards to possible illegal action or corruption that can be brought up and shared between the two countries.  This treaty allows legal inquiries and intervention as well as the sharing of information, one big reason Rudy G. probably got involved. 

If there is something illegal that Biden has done in the past with regards to his son, who has no experience in international anything, and a recovering drug addict, being on the board of directors of a Ukraine company being scrutinized for corruption, he has the right to ask that it be investigated.    http://dcwhispers.com/doh-did-you-know-theres-a-treaty-between-the-usa-ukraine-regarding-cooperation-for-prosecuting-crimes/...  If this was found out to be true, would you want this person possibly running for president, so isn't Trump doing what he is supposed to be doing?  This is no different than Hillary using her office, her contacts, the intelligence commitees, etc.  to help with her election, which you know she did.  The difference is they have people hidden away in the White House looking for anything that might be impeachable to leak.

I'm not saying Biden did anything wrong, but why not investigate it? that is what has been happening to Trump since 2015.  He is not "digging up dirt" and apparently, that is what the Democrats, like Schiff are saying.. Is an investigation  a way to "dig up dirt"?....  that apparently has become synonymous with "investigation" as far as Dems are concerned, he even said it when he addressed the Nation and doesn't even realize it.  They have been saying that so long and doing so much of it that they have forgotten that an investigation is not used to "dig up dirt".  It is used to see if someone actually did something they are accused of.  It is not used to look further into the person in hopes that something else comes up that is criminal.  They have totally forgotten that.

Either way, I am upset at what we have become. I predicted that Trump would win, I also argued with Never Trumpers that would not be a big deal, because when he does win, he will be the most scrutinized President in US History, so if he does something wrong we will know it.  I was right about him being the most scrutinized, but I was wrong about how it would be a good thing. All it has done is held up Congress from doing what they are supposed to do.  

The lying on both sides is reprehensible.  Media is all going to hell, and our pets heads are falling off.

You can see the discourse in the country between what the media portrays, what leadership, congress, and Hollywood portrays. and what the true USA thinks by looking and listening to the reviews of Dave Chapelle's stand up on Netflix.  All critics said it was repulsive, and it is not worth watching, insensitive and horrible.  But the viewers loved it, and it is definitely not as bad as they made it out to be, in fact it is hilarious, I watched it twice.  In fact it is very tasteful for him, and comes across as genuine.  I think everyone would laugh at it if they decided to watch it, no matter your gender, your race, your identity.  Ok Trans people may not like it too much, but you can't please everyone. 
#54
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I read the Ukraine transcript. There was no mention of any funds or money in the call. Trump asked Ukraine to investigate Biden. That's it. Which Trump should be doing by the way, since there are tapes of Joe Biden bragging about getting this prosecutor who was investigating his son fired. That's grounds for an investigation, and both governments should be investigating this. Trump is basically telling Ukraine to do its job. That's not an impeachable offense, it's not even an offense at all. It's just a president acting in the interest of national security, as he should be.
#55
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@DBlaze
If anyone can get this country back on track to when it was great and you were free, Chapelle can do it.
#56
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@Mharman
The issue isn't about money. The issue is the implied leveraging of a weapons deal for political dirt.

If you are willing to give Interpret his words extremely charitably, I can see how you might not see it. To me however it comes across as shady 
#57
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@Mharman
 There was no mention of any funds or money in the call. Trump asked Ukraine to investigate Biden
First off: This came after the Trump administration withheld more than $400 million dollars in aide that was meant to go to Ukraine to help them bolster their resistances to Russian aggression.  

By withholding funding for no given reason whatsoever, and then asking the Ukrainians to do a favor for him that directly targets his chief political adversary, strongly implies that he was using his power as president to try to bend foreign governments to his will to get dirt on a political opponent...... Not only is that beyond unethical, it is almost by definition a fit for the term 'abuse of power', which has been used as an excuse to impeach presidents in the past..... President Andrew Johnson came within one vote of being impeached primarily because he was viewed to have abused presidential power when he attempted to fire the Secretary of War 
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Andrew_Johnson ) So even though there was no explicit mention of the funding, anyone with a brain can reasonably conclude that Trump was willing to use the foreign aide as leverage. 

Second: The whole reason Trump tried to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Biden's was over a theory that was already debunked


The alleged prosecutor that "Joe Biden had forced out of Ukraine to protect his son" is a completely false narrative that was manufactured... Biden was sent there as part of the Obama administration to deliver the message that the IMF and a number of organizations within the EU wanted the prosecutor fired because he was NOT investigating instances of corruption of large companies within the country, including not investigating the company that Biden's son worked for. Ukraine was notorious for corruption just a few years ago which was annoying a lot of powerful people in the western world, so pressure was put on Ukraine to appoint a prosecutor who would really tear in to corruption in the country, which the current person wasn't doing..... This wasn't so much as Biden making a move as VP as it was him just delivering requests from other organizations and administrations. 

On top of that, the guy who ultimately replaced the prosecutor went on and investigated the company that Hunter Biden worked at, and he found that Hunter Biden wasn't doing anything wrong.... Since it was a natural gas company and Hunter Biden has never had any experience in natural gas economics,he naturally wasn't put in charge of anything important and was likely just hired so that the company could have larger name-brand recognition by being able to wave the 'Biden' flag around every now and then. 

#58
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@dustryder
The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you're surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it's very important that you do it if that's possible.
President Zelenskyy: Yes it is very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer. I would also like and hope to see him having your trust and your confidence and have personal relations with you so we can cooperate even more so. I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine. I just wanted to assure you once again that you have nobody but friends around us. I will make sure that I surround myself with the best and most experienced people. I also wanted to tell you that we are friends. We are great friends and you Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly.. That I can assure you.

The President: Good because I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that's really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved. Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it... It sounds horrible to me.

Basically Trump wanted to talk about Crowdstrike, Zelensky wanted to talk about Guliani, then Trump wanted to talk about Biden.
#59
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no 
#60
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@dustryder
I seriously doubt Congress has the power to prevent Giuliani from going to Ukraine and getting the info from the Crowdstrike server along with anything else that Zelensky wants to offer him.