God dammit, Iām now in the position of defending Huffington. I didnāt want to be here.
Okay, @angrybell ā¦ actually, @ literally everyone who reblogged this uncritically as a tacit endorsement and agreement. Such as @the-critical-feminist that I reblog this from.
My first question has to be: are you serious? Donāt read that with a tone, donāt read that as an attack. Thatās my first question: Are you asking a serious question about what high crimes or misdemeanors Trump has perpetrated? Are you asking a sincere question or is this the sort of rhetoric that doesnāt translate well into text?
And, if you are actually asking this question, are ou going to hear the answer or are you going to immediately start concocting your counter-argument because you just know in your heart that anyone who disagrees with you must be wrong, so you start formulating a plan to prove them wrong before you actually hear what they have to say?
Next: did you read the article that was posted in the link you responded to? Because the author of that article does a reasonable job of explaining their thought process behind the headline. Or did you lash out before you read the article?
Okay, presuming that you did read the article in good faith, evaluate its points, perform the follow-up research to understand context, and still disagree with the central tenets and simply believe that the authorās reasoning does not hold up for whatever reasons you have chosen not to state, and you believe their source information is falsified for whatever reason you have chosen not to state, I will move on. After I have given you and yours every conceivable benefit of the doubt and every charitable assumption.
Because if the article itself doesnāt convince you, thereās the fact that Donald Trump has broken literally every federal law against corruption and conflict of interest. Not one or two, not most, not all but a few. Literally every single law we have against corruption, from the Constitution to the informal guidelines circulated as a memo from the White House ethics scholars. Heās broken literally every one of those rules. Heās openly traded favors for money and favors for months now. Hell, that Chinese influence-peddler that paid him off for sixteen million dollars should have been enough to get him convicted of treason. Sharing code-word level classified information with a government on the opposite side of an ongoing military conflict isnāt *necessarily* treason, unless the information was part of a share program with an allied nation and wasnāt his to distribute. Thatās aiding a foreign aggressor at the expense of a military ally, and thatās treason. Giving aid and comfort to enemies of the nation. Obstruction of justice is pretty clear-cut, thatās an impeachment, except that the justice in question is also a matter of national security, so thatās treason. Again. Defaming the former president? Misdemeanor, impeachable. The way he drags his heels nominating posts in Justice and State could be prosecuted as dereliction of duty. If he has tapes of Comey, heās on the hook for contempt, if he doesnāt then heās on the hook for witness tampering. Hell, deleting the covfefe tweet is destroying federal records, which is a misdemeanor, and impeachable. The man doesnāt go a week without bringing on an impeachable offense. Strictly speaking, every time he goes to Mar-A-Lago heās committing grand larceny by fraud, because heās taking millions of dollars of American funds for his own benefit, after promising not to do that.
There are dozens, hundreds maybe, of impeachable offenses already in this 140 days, āhigh crimes and misdemeanorsā. Actual counts of treason, punishable by death by hanging, is probably only five or six counts. Only five or six counts of high treason by our sitting president.
His job does not put him above reproach. His job is to *be* above reproach. And heās failing that job.
