SIO189: Impeach the Motherf*cker

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 189, I'm your host Thomas Smith, and wow, late episode as you maybe have noticed, you might also know that my wife and I had a baby boy on Monday in the early AM and so I'm exhausted, it really is a lot harder having two, That's that's all true. And I'm sure there's only more of that to come. But we're we're absolutely ecstatic. We're so lucky. Healthy, healthy baby. That's the most important thing.

And we are so lucky that everything went about as well as it could go, so that's all great, thanks everybody for the nice messages and comments and all that, but, you know, so I was a little delayed because of that, and of course, it actually turned out okay, because the Mueller Report came out, and I would have already come up with an episode and then had the Mueller report come out, now, of course a lot of this stuff I leave over to Opening Arguments, you now, because Andrew's more of an expert on everything legal and even probably most stuff political, but you know, this is one of those times where I have a lot, I have a lot of thoughts, and I want to come at it actually kind of using some of the expertise that Andrew delivered to us over on Opening Arguments, go check that out if you haven't, we there's still so much more to come on that, of course, we did like a 90-minute episode, but it was within hours and there's so much to read, so much for to digest, all that stuff, but I wanted to talk about some of the politics involved and some of, I don't know, moral reasoning involved, political reasoning involved, because that's something that, I think I can lend some clarity to.

I've thought a lot about this and I've actually kind of changed my mind on it, so I want to talk impeachment, I want, I want to talk about what I believe Democrats should do and what morally is right and all that stuff.

0:02:19 Thomas: First off, OK, so all that being said, I want to kind of complete a rant a little bit, maybe maybe some repetition, but it just needs to be emphasized. I did a little 20 second rant on opening arguments this week about Loretta Lynch versus Bill Barr, and I just bears repeating.

And, you know, I've got a few more details to add into it because I just want to remind everybody, the year is 2016. The year is 2017. Hillary is under investigation for her email server, of course, which turned out to be a fat, complete nothing, and by the way, quick reminder that there's all these times when people in the Trump administration have used their private phones, private, you know, email, all this stuff, same stuff, doesn't matter, nothing seems to matter, but anyway, gosh, I'm going back and forth as to whether I want to try to keep this episode clean, I am going to go ahead and say no, because I don't know how much it matters, I feel like, you you know? Yeah. I feel like it's not going to matter too much. People are okay with curse words these days. It doesn't really matter. So sorry if you're, maybe your kids are listening. I think I'm going to go ahead and let loose on this one because this is maddening.

So the year is 2016. Loretta Lynch is the attorney general. For those of you not familiar, this attorney general is the same position that Bill Barr occupies right now. And there was a complete scandal. There was a, and I will say a pretty bipartisan scandal in that Bill Clinton, who, in case you don't know, used to be president, was president back in the day, but not anymore.

0:04:04 Thomas: This wasn't in the year 1997. This was in the Year 2016. Bill Clinton is the husband of presidential candidate, you know, and, and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. And he was, uh, happened to be on the same tarmac as Loretta Lynch.

0:04:23 Thomas: You, you fill in the rest. Like I, I, it's funny, I'm looking into this, this blew up. This was a huge thing. Republicans made a complete fucking deal about this. It was wall to wall scandal. Oh my God. What did they, they talk about, this is, I mean, with Hillary Clinton under investigation and Loretta Lynch meeting on the, it was, happened to be on the same tarmac as Bill Clinton. This is a catastrophe.

And Trump himself, of course, the candidate at the time, the Republican candidate, made hay out of this as well. Say, oh, can you believe it? This is so corrupt. This is all corrupt. I'm realizing now, as I read about this again, I'm kind of refreshing, refreshing, I'm, I can't even imagine what, what is, what is the, uh, conspiracy, like what even is the issue, Bill Clinton, I'm pretty sure could have, like, called or emailed Loretta Lynch, right? I mean, is there a law against that or something? I mean, Obama could have met with Loretta Lynch a thousand times, and, and, uh, if there was going to be some cover-up, some corrupt Democrat cover-up of this, but the, but the theory is, I guess, that they needed 30 minutes alone in an airplane, a private aircraft, to commit all the crimes of, by the way, Bill Clinton, who has no political power. He's not in any position. This isn't a, you know, he doesn't have any authority here. This is just Bill Clinton. Ex-president, husband of candidate, talking to Loretta Lynch.

0:05:56 Thomas: And contrast that, contrast that. We're so stupid. We are able to, and I'm hoping this will happen less, but back then, Democrats included, are able to let a Fox News fake outrage machine generate controversy where none exists, and we kind of let it spill over. You know why? Because we want to be reasonable. It's a good impulse. We want to police our own. We we want to be reasonable. We want, well, that does appear to be maybe improper. So what Loretta Lynch did, by the way, was say she didn't quite recuse. I thought, I thought she, I remembered that she had, but I actually remember it incorrectly. She didn't quiet recuse herself, but she did say, I will just go with whatever the FBI recommendation is for this investigation.

0:06:45 Thomas: So that's, I mean, it's kind of like, it is the same as recusing, really. I mean if you are just saying, uh, I'm going to let whatever the FBI recommendations are. That's what we'll do. So that's, I think that's why I thought she recused herself because I don't know functionally, maybe Andrew could explain it, but I don't know functionally, what difference that makes, you know, it sounds kind of exactly the same as recusal, but I guess without the technical work.

So this was such a scandal that she was in the same place as a person. It does all what, what, what would happen? Bill Clinton says, Hey, please, please. You know, even though this case is fucking nothing, God, that's another part of it. The case was fucking nothing. The FBI found that there was nothing, nothing to charge, you know, Comey found there was something to charge.

So there was no ever, never going to be any controversy, but anyway, uh, nevermind all that Bill Clinton could have like, you know, uh like, uh like worm tongue from Lord of the Rings could going to whisper to Loretta Lynch, don't charge Hillary Clinton, you know, and then that would have been, it just would, everything, even though the FBI would, I guess on this timeline, on this alternate history, the FBI Would have found all this guilty conduct by Hillary. And then Loretta Lynch would have said, well, we're not charging though. There's a, you can't, whatever. So put that on one category. That's, that was, it was such impropriety that they were in the same place for 30 minutes. Fast forward a couple years now, three years or so, and Bill Barr is Attorney General. The same position.

0:08:18 Thomas: That's the same position, there's not, I know, it's, it's hard to believe, and Bill Bar is hired for the job because he wrote in his free time, you know, I brought this up, we talked about in Opening Arguments, it's free time, he wrote a, what was it, 14, 17 page memo about, about how presidents can't even obstruct justice, and essentially trying to earn those brownie points to maybe get appointed to something by Trump. And we learn he's coordinating with Trump on the release of the Mueller report. He briefed the Trump White House first. He's out there lying about what the report contains. He is out there spinning the Mueller Report ahead of time. This is the same position.

0:09:03 Thomas: The idea that this is okay in any way, shape or form, it is not okay. And it's another reason in the humongous line of reasons that we do not need to listen to Republicans anymore. We do not needs to listen to Fox News anymore. We just don't. We don't need to do it. I'm going to talk more about that later, but they, they are, they don't have their, their, their ethos is power. They, they want to be in power so they can make Republican stuff happen in the courts and so that they can own the libs. That's what they want. They want power. Now, of course, a lot of Democrats are also interested in power. But I also think there are a lot of good people who want to make change happen, who want to give people health care, want to do good things. And they actually care when somebody, when a Democrat even, is doing something wrong, doing something illegal, doing something untoward.

0:09:57 Thomas: But anyway, that's Bill Barr. Bill Barr is spinning. And by the way, not only did he spin the Mueller report, and it turns out, listen to the Opening Arguments for this, but it turns out he was spinning it. He was quoting it like incompletely to try to say that there was no collusion, no obstruction. Well, we come to find out, that's not what was said in the report, what was said was, was there was an awful lot, there was an awful lot of suspicious activity going on with Trump and Russia, with the Trump campaign and the Russians, but due to possibly, you know, a combination of maybe they technically didn't do this, like, coordination thing, like this rigid definition of what would be a legal coordination.

0:10:44 Thomas: And by the way, not just that, also some obstruction of justice, some possibly successful obstruction of injustice that is lying, that is destroying evidence, that is not talking to the investigators, not answering questions, stonewalling. Due to all that, they couldn't quite prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump criminally coordinated with the Russians. But nevermind, Barr's out ahead of it, describing that as, oh, they found no collusion. And that, that was the less bad lie. The more bad lie was on obstruction, as we all know by now, where, where Barr said, yep, they, they've found no obstruction. Had nothing to do, by the way, with the, the, The Office of Legal Account, whatever, the OLC, I think it is, memo stating that you can't indict a sitting president.

0:11:36 Thomas: That has nothing to with that. They They just found no obstruction. Turns out, no, it has everything to do with that. He lied. He's out there lying and misrepresenting the Mueller report. He died and he spun it and he was really successful at it, by the way. I think it's going to eventually blow up in his face, I hope. I really hope. But he was successful. He had the media eating itself, being like, wow, how did we get this so wrong? Oh man, we were all just lying about all the Russia meetings. Nope, you see the the Mueller report. Turns out all that stuff was right. Everything was reported pretty much right on. You know, you can find some bad examples here and there. Of course, you know, of course, there's going to be examples of people exaggerating stuff, but largely the reports were right on that these meetings happened. They happened. It pretty much all happened. Maybe it doesn't rise to the exact level of Trump asked, dear Vladimir Putin, please hack the DNC servers and email me the the results.

0:12:32 Thomas: Signed, Trump. Like, because it didn't rise to that cartoon level of villainy, you know, it's not quite maybe the letter of the law criminal corruption, but, or, you know. Collusion or whatever. I'm trying to use the right words because collusion isn't the right word. Cooperation, I guess. Conspiracy, I suppose, would be another proper word. Not only that, this flew under the radar a little bit, I know a lot of you listeners didn't miss this, I think I had some people who tweeted this at me at the time, but a few, this is what, about a week ago, a little over a week, Bar is out there spinning lies about this spying narrative. He's absolutely nothing but a political hack, he's made a disturbing joke of the Office of Attorney General.

0:13:17 Thomas: He said, oh, I, I think spying did occur against the Trump campaign. So he's feeding that right-wing Fox News storyline that, oh, Obama spied on the Trump campaign and then they did all this illegal stuff to make the Mueller investigation, Mueller probe happen and all that. He said, I think spying did occur. And then he was pressed by Democratic congressmen later and he's like, do you have any evidence of that? Oh, no, I don't actually mean any of that.

Like he gave them the soundbite they needed, which was, oh, I think spying happened. And then they, they pressed him on it, this guy is really savvy, this, this Bill Barr is a savvy asshole, like he's really good at being evil, he's one of the, that's disturbing, sometimes you get the, you know, like Trump is full of, the Trump team is full of incompetent evil, we'll get to Trump Jr. in a minute, uh, that he was saved by his own stupidity, but Bar is not that, Bar is really smartly evil, uh, and he's, which, who knows, maybe he'll get away with all this crap because of that, but he gave them, he gave Republicans the sound bite they needed, oh, they're spying, spying occurred, and they asked him, like, what, what happened, what do you mean, oh, well, I mean, I don't have any evidence of that, but, uh, you know, it's, yeah, we're gonna look into it, he said I do have questions about it, you know, I, spying did occur, and he's like, well, the question was, was it adequately, uh, predicated, meaning whether or not it was illegal, which of course, of course it was.

They had a warrant, they had a FISA warrant to, to monitor Carter Page, because he was doing a bunch of stuff, because illegal stuff was happening, but he's talking, anyway,

0:14:55 Thomas: Okay, so I got to move on, but I just have to, I just have to say, like, contrast the reaction to a 30-minute meeting that doesn't even make sense, he could have, if the goal was to do an evil democratic conspiracy thing, Clinton could have just, like called somebody, emailed somebody, or Obama could have done, it doesn't make any sense, it It doesn't make any sense. And contrast that with what Barr is doing. It's absolutely an insult. Okay, I need to get to impeachment. I have, I would say, I've never been positive on this, but in talking about impeachment of Donald Trump, there, you know, there have been legitimate concerns about this, whether it's worth it, whether it makes any sense, what history tells us about it.

0:15:43 Thomas: It's almost never been whether or not he deserves it. He deserves to be impeached, unquestionably. But there have been, I think, good arguments that I'm ultimately now going to go back and say I don't agree with. I do think, given the title of this episode, Impeach the Motherfucker, we need to impeach him. But there are, there are not bad arguments for why maybe we shouldn't try to do it, and I want to talk about that, but I've changed my mind on that, but let me just go through quickly why he should be impeached. The moral argument for impeachment, regardless of the sort of political and procedural arguments about it, let's just talk about in a nutshell, you know, if, if you and I were just in charge of, like, does person X deserve impeachment, forget all the political, you know, know, surroundings of it.

0:16:34 Thomas: I think Elizabeth Warren put it really well, so I'll just, I'll just read her tweets here. She's come out in favor of impeachment. She is my, right now, I'm not saying it's guaranteed she will always be, but right now she is my choice for the top 2020 Democratic candidate. I will be, as of now, we'll see what happens, whether it's another year or whatever it is, but as of know, she would have my vote in the primary. Mary.

She says, the Mueller report lays out facts showing that a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help Donald Trump, and Donald Trump welcomed that help. Once elected, Donald Trump obstructed the investigation into that attack. Mueller put the next step in the hands of Congress.

Congress has the authority, this is a quote from the report, Congress has authority to prohibit a president's corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice, end quote, the correct process for exercising that authority is impeachment, continues, to ignore a president's repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into his own disloyal behavior would inflict great and lasting damage on this country, and it would suggest that both the current and future presidents would be free to abuse their powers in similar ways. The severity of this misconduct demands that elected officials in both parties set aside political considerations and do their constitutional duty. That means the House should initiate impeachment proceedings against the president. And that's Elizabeth Warren again.

I would also add, by the way, to that, and I'm sure that's not meant to be an exhaustive list. I think it just puts it very succinctly. I agree. I mean, it's as simple as that. Foreign power, hostile foreign power, hacks our election. Trump says, oh, cool. Let me use that.

0:18:16 Thomas: Coordinates. And then when the investigation happens, tries to obstruct a ton. He wasn't entirely successful, and that doesn't matter. It's not the crime of obstruction isn't, well, did you successfully obstruct or not? Because like if you, you know, if you try to kill someone and you fail, it's all good. Everybody agrees that's all. That's all Good. I would add a couple things. So I'm in thinking about impeachment, you know, a there's just a catch all of this man is an insult to the office of the presidency. And you could come up with a lot to go into that catch all now, whether or not that legally translates into something that'll. Well, I said legally, it doesn't really matter. The impeachment clause is so vague. It's just high crimes and misdemeanors, which are whatever Congress thinks they are.

0:19:03 Thomas: But anyway, I you know there's a ton you can come up With that. But I would, I would add to what Elizabeth Warren said, you know, getting around a Jeff Sessions recusal by firing him and appointing a new AG who is nothing but a political stooge. That seems impeachable to me. You know, in addition to obstruction in the form of firing James Comey, of course, that's impeachible. Of course, of course tries to fire James Comey. He tells us on TV, he does fire James Comey. He tells us on TV, it's about the Russia thing, which we come to find out is not nothing, is very legitimately an investigation that needed to be looked into. By the way, obstruction doesn't require that you have committed a crime necessarily.

0:19:53 Thomas: Partly, I've talked about before, partly because if you obstruct well enough, we may never have the evidence that you committed a crim. So we might know you committed crime, but you've gotten rid rid of the evidence so successfully that we can't prove it anymore. So you destroy the only evidence, say, hypothetically. Do you think that should be, oh, all good? Do you Think that's how it should work? If you have some illegal substance, you know, I, I was gonna, I could use drugs as an example. I'm not too fond of drugs being illegal, really. So it might not be the best example. But I guess for the sake of argument, let's say you have something illegal, illicit drugs, you You know, maybe it's something pretty, pretty, pretty serious. But anyway, it's against the law and the police knock on your door and you destroy them somehow. You flush them, you do whatever.

0:20:40 Thomas: It's not like, oh, okay, well, there's no crime. We can't prove that you had the drugs here. So you're fine. You won. If you obstruct successfully, then you win. It's all good. No, that's not how it works. Part of obstruction is that you may end up destroying evidence and making it so we can't establish the original crime, which is part of why obstruction should be a crime. It is good that obstruction of justice is a crime But Sessions, Jeff Sessions because he didn't realize the rules didn't apply anymore, weird thing, must be a product of him being old, I think, he didn't realize the rules didn't apply, and so he recused himself from this investigation way back in, I don't know, 17, I guess it would be. And what a dumb thing for him to have done. He really should have known that the rules don't apply anymore. But poor guy, poor Jeffrey Sessions.

He didn't realize the rules didn't apply. And to get around that, Trump fired him, made him quit. I guess it's essentially firing him, but forced him out in order to hire a complete stooge who is spinning for him, who is essentially his PR man. You know, that's impeachable.

0:21:55 Thomas: Impeachable offenses aren't the same as crimes, by the way. High crimes and misdemeanors, you know, abusing your position, that kind of thing. You know, I would put that solidly in the category of abusing your power of doing something that might technically be legal. All that might typically be legal, but was done with corrupt intent, was done for a corrupt purpose and is impeachable. Side note, I'd love a Mueller report on Barr's collusion with Trump. That would be, that would be interesting to me.

Can we, can we do that? Can we do a Mueller investigation? Some sort of, or not Mueller. This is something, gosh, I'm going to talk about this in a minute. But side note, part of comparing the Clinton situation with the Trump situation, you have to realize that Ken Starr was a rabid, rabid Republican, still is, Trump supporter, by the way. Hell-bent on destroying Bill Clinton. Imagine if instead of Bob Mueller, we had Well, anyone I use is going to be, it's going to be insulting to them because Ken Starr is an awful person. He's a Fundamentalist Christian who is hellbent on destroying the Clintons, except then when Trump becomes president, he's all for Trump because, you know, Christianity part is kind of, I guess, optional, I don't know, anyway, any comparison is going to be insulting, but that aside, imagine if it's, you know, instead of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, it's Special Counsel Maxine Waters, you know, that would, it would really be the equivalent and it might even not quite be the equivalent because Maxine Waters would have some, you know, dignity and, and like conscience.

0:23:36 Thomas: But, but that's something to keep in mind when we're making these comparisons, you know, Trump got a Republican. He got, he got, I mean, honestly, Mueller is like, that's a very fair shake, a very fair shake. And, and that's not always that, that wasn't how it was in the Clinton years. It was a, it was again, a Republican Ken Starr hell bent on destroying the Clintons. Back to the moral case for impeachment, you know, how many times do we know, based on the Mueller report, that Trump tried to commit crimes or do otherwise really shady, unethical stuff that I think would be impeachable, but he was saved by either his own ineptitude or people just not following his orders, you know, there's the, I think it's the Don McGahn stuff, there is, I'm not going to go through the report, the report that's not really what I wanted to do in terms of, you you know, this show and analyzing it, but there's all kinds of examples of Trump trying to get people to essentially do a Friday night or Saturday night massacre.

0:24:34 Thomas: I don't know which day it was. I wasn't alive then, but Saturday night massacres, Saturday night, uh, and just the people not doing it and stuff like that. And also here's another part I've already touched on this, but the Mueller report saying that he couldn't quite establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russia. There's a, there's a huge caveat in that, in that he has in the report, Mueller has said that the Trump team did nothing but lie, um, not provide information, destroy evidence sometimes. So like he, he didn't find that Trump was innocent, essentially.

0:25:20 Thomas: Like he He didn't find a bunch of evidence that like, oh, there's actually nothing here. This is all made up. No, nothing happened. He couldn't quite establish that there was a crime.

0:25:30 Thomas: And once again, impeachment is a political remedy. It's exactly the kind of thing you would want it to be, because, you know, if we have, like, Don Corleone on trial, and we all fucking know that he's guilty of crimes, like we all know that, he's the Don, he is the godfather, he, I don't know, you now, he that, that guy, we all now he is, the kingpin, he the one in charge of getting people to commit crimes, we know it, but we can't technically meet the legal burden, because everybody is like all of a sudden quiet about it, or they destroy evidence, or they do, you know, they're protecting them in some way. Sure, it's probably a good thing that our justice system, you know, because we all know the justice system is already too harsh, and so it's maybe it's good that it's not that easy to prove that somebody's, you now, the criminal in this way.

0:26:20 Thomas: But guess what? Impeachment is not that. It might be correct that like, okay, you don't meet your legal burden even though we all now that this person is guilty of something. If you don't meet your legal burden, you don't get a conviction, that's how it goes. And fine, fine. Maybe on Trump-Russia, maybe we will never get a criminal conviction because that's a super high bar. Impeachment isn't that. Impeachment is perfect for this. Impeachment is perfect for, we all know that Trump did this. We all know that this happened. We know that he coordinated with a hostile foreign adversary to help him win in the election, maybe it wasn't a criminal level of that because of the way the statutes are written or the way you need intent or because evidence was destroyed.

0:27:08 Thomas: But impeachment isn't a criminal trial. It's a political one and it doesn't require, you know, technically, legally someone being guilty of a crime. It could be anything. And by the way, I think I've already said it, I just want to say it again, Donald Trump Jr., it literally says in the report that he was essentially, I know I'm taking some liberty when I say, I didn't mean literally, it essentially says he's saved by his own stupidity, he did something illegal, Donald campaign finance law by agreeing to accept, you know, essentially Russian like work product. Yeah. It means he was going to get some illegal crap from the Russians, but, you know, he might not have known that that was against election law.

0:27:57 Thomas: And for some reason, our campaign finance laws require, like, specific intent and require, you know, him knowing, like, setting out in the day's calendar, right? Okay, today I'm going to commit some election crimes, and then, like, you have to tell, like, five people about it. I, yeah, I'm gonna do some crime, I'm going to do some crimes and some crimes, and then you do the election crimes, and then that way they can prove that you intended in your heart of hearts. I don't know why it's written that way. Maybe it's because, you know, campaign finance is messy and and there's accidents that could happen, and maybe you'd want people to be able to be like, oh crap, I didn't know that was a crime, sorry, whatever, I, I guess, you know, I guess that's it. But but really, Muller did say in the report, court, we couldn't, we're not going to charge Trump Jr. because we wouldn't, he might be able to raise the defense that he was ignorant of the law.

0:28:45 Thomas: And that's the only reason. Not, oh, we're now going to judge him because he didn't do anything. He just might be able to raise a defense that is just too dumb to know he was breaking the law, too incompetent. You know, I have to say, and finally here, I keep trying to form hypotheticals along the lines of of, like, imagine if Hillary Clinton had won and then we come to find out that she had done so with the help of a foreign adversary. And then I try to find, like, oh, what's the Democratic equivalent of, you know, and then this, and then I realized there isn't one, because Russia was that. Like, because Republicans hated Russia for a thousand years and Russia was the enemy forever, and Hillary was going to do the Russia reset button. Oh, can you believe how soft she is on our adversary, Russia?

0:29:32 Thomas: Russia. And so like, I can't, it's hard to even find the equivalent, but the best I can come up with is imagine that Hillary won the election. And then you come to find out that Hillary's team worked with Iran, you know, and, and Iran hacked the RNC and they, they were ready. And Hillary was ready with like a, you know, press packet the day that the, the emails were going to go public that Iran, you know, the Shah or whatever the heck it is like had, you imagine that, imagine, imagine. That's what happened. We know that happened. It's just that technically, if Hillary didn't like order Iran, like say, hey, you guys go commit the crime of hacking and then give me the result. That is the technicality that we are talking about here.

0:30:18 Thomas: You know, this can't be merely summarized as no collusion. That is a spin job. So I'm sure there's more, and I'm sure as the weeks go on and we get more and more expert analysis and time with this 400 plus page document that there will be more. For now, that's, that's the main stuff I'm coming up with for impeachment. For me, it's it's pretty no-brainer. But I want to talk about now the argument against impeaching, and it's it's a, I think it's one I take very seriously, and I want to say this, there are people who are incredibly hostile, there are Democrats who are incredible hostile toward any Democrat, like, say, Nancy Pelosi, who has said, oh, impeachment isn't on the table, back months ago. They're very hostile. And I'm not that way. I don't really, I think that's, we need to realize who our real enemies are.

0:31:05 Thomas: And I think there's a good argument. Here's the good argument is, remember back to the Clinton years, remember what happened with Bill Clinton. Impeachment was a disaster for Republicans. They lost the next election because of it. They didn't get conviction in the Senate because, Because, you know, it takes 66 senators to get the conviction. That's going to be impossible. No chance on party line vote. So you try to impeach Trump. You fail. Maybe you impeach him in the House, obviously. But in the Senate, you fail. And therefore, it's seen, and again, I'm summarizing the argument. Therefore, it is seen as exoneration. Trump exonerated. Clinton was able to bounce back. His reputation back in 2000 bounced back.

His approval ratings when he left office were sky high. So imagine if we did that with Trump, he's reelected, it's seen as though essentially he can get away with anything. That would be horrible. So that's the argument. I take that argument very seriously. I take it very seriously, the possibility of... And the reason I take het so seriously is because Because he absolutely will not get convicted in the Senate. He just won't. You're not going to get whatever, 15, 17, 18, however many Republicans you need. 20? You need a lot. You know, we don't even control the Senate by any, we're behind, you know, Democrats don't control it at all. They need 66 votes, maybe 67, depending on the two thirds.

0:32:41 Thomas: I don't know if they round the two-thirds, whatever. The point is you need a lot. It doesn't even matter, 66, 67, it doesn't matter. You need more votes than we're going to have. And so fast forward to that happening, you know, impeached in the House and then essentially not convicted, found not guilty in the Senate. What does that look like politically? It's something I take very seriously. And I think I even have said that it might not be worth it.

Like we should just, it's possible my position was that we should just vote him out in 2020 and that's that. Another word on the Pelosi thing and some others, I want to also separate this from the position that Democrats in Congress were taking, which was impeachment is not on the table right now, you know, because the Mueller report wasn't out yet, because they had just taken back the House, they haven't had the chance to do all the investigations they want to do, and that's also a separate stance, which I think is totally valid, which is, you you know, let's not look like our only goal is to impeach President Trump. Let's look like, you know, which is the right thing to do. Let's say we are going to investigate, which they have been, and there's still a lot to investigate. Let's says we're going to do it. We're going do investigate, we're gonna await the results of the Mueller report, which, you know, they did.

That was a perfectly valid stance in, especially, you now, from November to now, I think. It was very valid to say, there's a lot we need, we don't know. We're going to investigate, we're not just going to impeach right now, we're not going to start that process, there's still a lot to do, that was valid, I think it still is valid until now. I think I've kind of changed how I'm looking at this.

I think these arguments still apply and they scare me a bit, and I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure that they're entirely wrong, but I think I've changed my perspective enough.

0:34:27 Thomas: I don't know, just kind of reflecting and, and also seeing, you know, just how seeing the Mueller report, you know, I, I feel like I kinda, we pretty much knew all this stuff, but seeing it in print really does just, just tell you how corrupt this guy is. And, And not to mention how many investigations have been referred out. You know, oftentimes we're talking about it as though the Mueller report was the thing. It's like, no, that's a thing.

But it's vastly outnumbered by the other investigations that were referred out, you know, the Trump Foundation, the Inauguration Fund, you know, there's all kinds of stuff, so But one thing I do want to talk about specifically, because I think this, this is something I've realized that I think maybe other people might change their mind about if I make a good argument here, we are, and in some ways it's as simple as this, it's absolutely simple as that, we don't live in 1998 anymore, or whatever, you know, in some way it's that simple, we have been, Trump has shown us in, you know, 2016 or even 15 when he's campaigning until now, that the rules don't apply the way that we thought they did, unfortunately. Now, I want them to apply often. Pretty much all the time I want him to apply. Sometimes, you know if you get rid of an old custom, it's not that big of a deal, whatever. It's just something people did.

But most of the time with Trump, it was something that was a custom. It was a norm for a very long time for very good reasons. And we've learned that, you know, they don't apply. And some things are just ways of thinking about the public that I don't know will apply exactly anymore. Because if you go back to the Clinton proceedings and, you Know, let's take a look at it.

0:36:16 Thomas: The specific articles of impeachment had to do with Bill Clinton lying to the grand jury about the nature and details of the relationship with Lewinsky. Here, I'll just read it out. Prior false statements he made in the Jones deposition, false statements, uh, he allowed his lawyer to make about Lewinsky's affidavit, attempts to tamper with witnesses. And then, uh, you know, there's a, there was another article about encouraging Monica Lewinsky to give false testimony and all that. And, you know, that's obstruction-y stuff. So, we can think about that. But it all had to do with having, you know, kind of an affair. I paused because it was kind of a weird affair. It was, if you've read the details or heard the details, it's kind of bizarre, but whatever.

0:37:05 Thomas: It's an affair with a, what, 23-year-old intern over whom he had authority. Now, here's the weird thing about talking about this now. I 100% think Clinton should have resigned or maybe been impeached on the ground, on the grounds of an inappropriate relationship, sexual relationship with a intern, with a subordinate, you know, like that's an abuse of power, but this was a different time, and you know, even now we sometimes worry that me too is not really applying to all people, you know, like it applies to certain people but not others, unfortunately, um, it just has to do with whether you're Democrat or Republican, seems to be, uh, if you're a Democrat, there might be consequences. Which is good if you're a Republican.

0:37:51 Thomas: Republicans don't seem to care. But anyway, let's, let's judge this on its own terms. We don't live in 1999, but let's, you know, or eight. But let's go back then and forget the fact that I strongly believe that Bill Clinton should have resigned or maybe been impeached on slightly different grounds. For me, it's not exactly the, and this is part of it.

One of the reasons Clinton wasn't impeached was because Ken Starr was investigating, you know, Whitewater and surrounding issues and stumbled on an inappropriate relationship, and back then it wasn't seen as as big a deal as it, you know, might be now, um, and it was, so it was sort of looked at as, all right, yeah, he wanted to lie about it, a kind of embarrassing thing at the time. Again, I'm speaking the words of the time, it's kind of an embarrassing relationship, it's, of course it's wrong, they cheated on his wife, but that is mainly a marital issue, that is not a president of the United States issue, you know, now nowadays, I want to emphasize I don't agree with that, but but that's how, that's how it was treated back then. And so we can compare, and we can see that, as of the kind of cultural attitudes of the time, Republicans overplayed their hand.

You know, they had a guy, and again, they have Ken Starr, this is not Mueller, they had a guy's investigating the Clintons forever, stumbled on an inappropriate relationship and some other stuff. And Bill Clinton tried to misrepresent the nature of the relationship, relationship, and made efforts to get Lewinsky to maybe say, to lie for him as well.

0:39:25 Thomas: So that was that failed in the Senate. You know, it passed in the House, failed inthe Senate, but all charges failed in Senate. No Democrats voted for it. And then, as I said, he left office with like an even higher approval number that also had to do with the economy doing OK, the dotcom boom and stuff. There's, you know, lots, lots of reasons people liked Clinton's presidency. Taking the logic of the time and looking at it that way and seeing what happened, people thought, all right, this is a marital thing, it's not really a president thing. The same thing does not apply to the Mueller report. This is absolutely corruption of the highest order involving his presidency and how he came into office. And by the way, don't forget all the other investigations that are still ongoing that have been referred out.

0:40:15 Thomas: So there's more. And it's not just a lie about an affair that, you know, is kind of embarrassing. You want to cover up, by the way, we also have that in Stormy Daniels and not just the lie. It's even worse. So what Trump did with Stormy Daniels is even worse in terms of the law. I mean, because Trump actually broke the campaign campaign finance law in how he bought off Stormy Daniels at the last minute using campaign funds and all that.

So it's even worst just in itself, Like, just judging the two, like, affairs and the trying to cover it up stuff, like legally, it's way worse on the Trump side. But here's another thing, here's kind of a bigger argument I want to make, we just don't live in the same political environment anymore, you know, I just don't think it'll be the same, we, in so many other ways, we've learned that the old rules don't apply, and this is one that I feel like we haven't learned yet. I feel we're still treating it like, oh, we're gonna try and we're going to fail in the Senate and then it's going to look great for them. I don't, I think we, we all know what's going on, you you know, and that includes everybody. The people on the left know what's going on.

The people onthe right think they know what is going on in that this is a massive left wing conspiracy and nothing we do even matters. Like, it's so rigid that I don't know which swayable voters we're really talking about. You know, there might be a few, but there might also be some voters that are going to feel incredibly alienated if Democrats don't even try to impeach this obviously impeachable, horrible man. What are the numbers going to be? I don't know. It's hard to say. But you can make a strong case if he is not convicted in the Senate, which he won't be, on party lines.

0:42:00 Thomas: I think you can make a very strong political argument then, if you're campaigning for president or if you're campaigning for senate, whatever your statement statement is, you can make a strong political argument that the Republicans protected a horrible, corrupt president for political power and that they don't care about what's right. They don't care about corruption. They don't care about lying. They don't care about any of that. They care about their political power. And by the way, let's remember, impeachment wouldn't mean Democrats take over. Impeachment means Mike Pence. So they cared. So you can't make that political argument.

0:42:41 Thomas: And once that dust settles, once you do your best to impeach him because he deserves to be impeached and it's the morally right thing to do, and we don't always have to do stuff afraid of the, you know, like as though we're in a hostage situation and we're afraid of how Fox News and Republicans are going to react to it. We do it because it's morally right. And when we inevitably fail because Republicans aren't going to grow spines, then we make the argument and we say, look at all the evidence of wrongdoing. Look at all the corruption. Look at the fact that he worked with the Russians. He worked with a political adversary who had hacked, who had illegally hacked the DNC. And yes, he maybe technically didn't order them to hack the DNC, but he benefited from it, coordinated with them. Make the argument and say, look at these spineless Republicans who are willing to look the other way as long as they get their court appointments and their low taxes for the rich.

0:43:35 Thomas: You know, make that argument. You can make it way better than I do. I'm sure people, you know, people who do this for a living, who are politicians for a loving, I'm sure you can make a fantastic argument about how horrible that looks for Republicans. And on a practical note, the impeachment hearings are going to look awful. I mean, they're going to be, they're gonna be very devastating for Trump, to to actually put names and faces and voices to a lot of the characters in this report and actually hear Trump's corruption out loud. That that may really, that may move people, that may remove Republicans for all we know. I don't know. And the other thing is, so at the end of the day, I guess what I'm looking at is gettable voters, you know, like who's really, I guess you could argue there are people on the margins.

0:44:23 Thomas: You know, I just got a haircut today and the person who cut my hair didn't know the Mueller report had come out, you know, because she asked me what I do. Ah, podcast, you knows, whatever. I'm busy lately. Oh, why? The Mueller report came out and she said, what's that? And she's, this is not meant as any insult. She just, this is just not her life. She doesn't live it every day like I do and you guys do. She's not, she doesn't care much about politics. And a lot of people in America are like that. And I don't know what her politics are, but, you know, there's probably people who are not as into this. And I can imagine a marginal voter who, let's say, wouldn't have voted for Trump. Oh, man, can I? I don't know. Let's see. Can I imagine this? They wouldn't have voted for Trump in 2020, but for the fact that impeachment proceedings happened and he wasn't convicted in the Senate.

0:45:16 Thomas: So I guess the counter argument is maybe they thought Trump had done something horribly wrong. And so they're, ah, well, I'm going to sit this one out or vote for somebody else. But then they see Trump's clean bill of health in the Senate and they think, oh, he's actually fine. And they vote for him. Can you conceive of that person?

I mean, I, I I'm, there are a lot of weird people in the world, so maybe, uh, but it doesn't, how many people could could that be? I don't know how you poll that. Um, maybe you can ask some, a series of questions that poll does that maybe we'll look, you know, maybe FiveThirtyEight or somebody will, they don't do polling, but maybe somebody will do a poll or bring a poll to our attention or try to answer that question.

But like how many people that could that and then how many, how many of those people, and I actually can't imagine this person will see that the Democrats failed to even try to impeach this man, someone for whom the impeachment clause of the, of the constitution The Constitution had to have been written.

0:46:14 Thomas: You know, somebody like literally, that's another point I want to make. And another reason I want to impeach the motherfucker is if impeachment does not apply to this president, who does it apply to? You might as well just take some scissors and like you're cutting out a worthless coupon from the newspaper that you're not even going to use. You might just as well cut out that part of the Constitution. It doesn't matter.

It really doesn't matter if it doesn't apply to this president and that it's useless in the face of this level of corruption and working with foreign adversaries and doing all this stuff that is inarguably to a reasonable person impeachable. Then why even have it? Just why have it.

And then when you look at it that way, it's like, then I guess what you need to do is try to do your constitutional duty, which is to hold the president accountable if you are a member of the House and, and drop impeachment charges, you know, you know, like, that's what you have to do. That's your job. And it might, practically speaking, maybe there's some possibility of a blowback, but you know what? We'll just have to risk that, even if it does blow up, by the way. Even if somehow this did lead to Trump getting reelected when he wouldn't have if we didn't do it, it might be, we have to live with that possibility because it is the right thing to do, it is.

It is the Right Thing to Do. So I think we should, we should do it. I think, I think Democrats should run on this. I think they should. I'm glad Elizabeth Warren did. I think that'll probably open the floodgates, you know, that she just announced that as I'm recording, but I think I'll really open up a lot of space. I'm, I'm incredibly glad she did that. I think That'll open up.

0:47:56 Thomas: A ton of space for people on the left to, to co-sign that into, and to carry, you know, I, I that's, that's what I, that prediction, uh, could be wrong, but I, you know, that's what I think will happen. If you want my God's honest prediction, though, if I'm really, you know, taking all this into account, looking at the history, looking what the situation is now, and doing my best to predict, what I think will happen is, if we do drop articles of impeachment, and we won't, it won't pass the Senate, I mean, barring something, you now, game-changing in terms of congressional testimony or something, it's not, they're not gonna do it, they are cowards, they want the power, they don't care. I think it will make no difference. I actually think it'll make almost no difference because we are so partisan now.

0:48:45 Thomas: We're so siloed. Here's the thing. We're all worried about like, oh, is this, if he gets not convicted in the Senate, is it going to mean that people look at him as innocent? People are already saying, people are seeing the Mueller report and saying that it means he's totally exonerated. Things don't mean things anymore. That's the problem. Problem. To a segment on the right, words don't mean words like, they, it just doesn't, the the report says this is not an exoneration, and people like, totally exonerated, completely exonerate, so like what, we can't, we can't live like that, you know, we can't live with the fear of like, oh, will this look like, will we be able to make the argument, just forget it, do what's right. And you know, there's... there's some talk of strategy, of course you're going to try to do your best, but like, stop looking at Fox News and living in fear of it. We have learned that they don't matter.

0:49:40 Thomas: They don't, we should never listen to them again. And you know, you know what, you know why fucking everybody loves AOC is because she's not afraid of anyone. You know why she has so much excitement? She's not scared of anyone, it's partly, you know, it is her progressive politics, of course, that's part of it too, but she's also just doesn't give a shit what Fox News is going to say about her because I I think, I don't know why, but I mean, part of it might be that she's seen it already. She's seen them do everything they can to make her the most evil person in the world. And she's seeing that, oh wait, it doesn't matter. Like, A, I'm in a blue district, so obviously it doesn't matter. A very blue district. But also, they are morally bankrupt. Fox News is morally bankrupt, they shit a brick when Obama wore a bike helmet.

0:50:26 Thomas: They shit a brick when he wore a tan suit. They shit a brick when Bill Clinton is on the same tarmac as the attorney general. Something that doesn't, I don't even understand what the allegation would be. That he would use the force to convince her to just completely remove all of Hillary's charges that didn't exist. It's nonsense. They are nonsense. We don't need to listen to them. But I do want to say this. And let me put a pin in that.

Because one more thing I want to add to this, and I'm going to go even further than impeachment. I want somebody to campaign on and I will vote for, I will consider, even though I'm pretty locked into, to, uh, to Elizabeth Warren, but not a hundred percent. Of course, I will change my mind if something changes, but if someone campaigned on, Hey, here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to encourage my justice department in 2020 to take the charges that were set aside, all the indictments that are just kind of sitting, burning a hole in a desk somewhere that are only not applicable because Donald Trump is the fucking president.

0:51:24 Thomas: So he gets a free crime pass, I guess. And I will make sure that once he no longer has his executive privileges or whatever, his protections, that he's indicted, that we follow up and make sure he does the time for the crimes he's committed. I would love that. And you might ask, someone out there might reasonably wonder, ooh, this sounds too much like lock her up. Isn't this like lockherup? I mean, the president still campaigns on chants of lockher up, even though Hillary isn't even in power anymore. And this sounds a little disturbing. And I, if, if that's, if that went through your head, I respect your, uh, your concern. And I think that's a good thing to, to take a look at. Here's the difference. Um, I am, I would be completely comfortable with the Trump administration locking up Hillary Clinton for however many years of, uh time she should do for the crimes that she's convicted of, which is fucking zero.

0:52:22 Thomas: She didn't do any crimes. That's the difference. I know Andrew would probably be on me right now making an argument of, well, we can't look like we're going after our political rivals. That is bad for the country. All right. A lot of these crimes were from way before he was president. Some of them aren't, but a lot of them were, a lot these financial crimes. And I don't think he should get a fucking get out of jail free card because he's sitting in the Oval Office. You know, in the name of, well, let's heal the country. It's not going to heal shit. Nothing heals anything. We know this now. Nothing heals anything. No matter what happens, the Fox News has radicalized Republicans. That's the reality we live in. And I want crime to matter.

0:53:08 Thomas: I want white collar crime. I want financial crime.I want corruption to matter, so make corruption and white collar a crime again, if it ever was. I don't think it ever was, but just for fun. Neither was America great in the way that Trump thought it was, so it works for the stealing the MAGA slogan. So I am comfortable with any president of any party doing the amount of time that they should do based on, you know, case history, a reasonable, you now, convictions and stuff like that, I don't want to go after Trump for stuff he didn't do, I want to not go after anyone in the administration as the Republicans did with Hillary for fake shit that's not real, that's what I want, and in fact, if in the end he does no time for anything involving Russia, maybe that's the right answer, because technically, you know, you can't meet the burden on the criminal charges.

0:54:01 Thomas: That might be right, but there's plenty more. There's plenty of campaign finance crime. There's funny of other financial crimes involving the Trump Foundation, all this stuff. I want him to do the time that he should do. Same goes for Hillary, same goes for Obama, same for Bush, who, we could probably find some things, same thing goes for Clinton, you know, if Clinton got convicted of one of the couple rape charges, allegations, rather, made against him, I'd want him to do whatever the punishment would be, I don't care that he's a Democrat, this is another thing, I'm really happy with both sides' criminals being outed as criminals, and sometimes even maybe doing time or something. I don't care if it's a Democrat or not.

0:54:49 Thomas: I don't want criminals of any party in Congress or in the presidency. It doesn't matter to me. It's such a weird thing that it shouldn't be a partisan issue. You know, like I understand some there are some marginal cases where like, you know, if a Democrat was in office and that there's some allegations of something and if they were to resign, then like a pro lifer who is going to take away abortion rights would go and like I could imagine a hypothetical where I'd be like, like, you know, OK, maybe unfortunately, for the sake of, you know, the meeting, the will of the voters, this person needs to not resign until the next election. I don't know. I can see there being some edge cases, but that's not this.

0:55:35 Thomas: And for the most part, like I was super depressed. I've talked about it before. Very depressed that Al Franken was turned out to be a creep. But guess what happened? Someone took his place and they're actually pretty badass.

Tina Smith, Democrat from Minnesota, she's voting like you'd probably want her to, probably the same as Al Franken, I don't know, who knows what he would have voted on after he left, but her Trump score is not high at all, so she's great, you know, it's not a big deal. If people are creeps, if people are criminals, I dont care if they're Democrats, I want them out.

All right, thank you so much for listening, I know it gets a little heated, a little, oh man, I really did change my mind on this, I was very worried about the ramifications of, you know, possibly of it going like 1998 or 9 and the election, like the midterms being bad and whatever it is, but I just don't think it's the same actually, I don't that's how it's going to happen, and I think that it's actually true that Democrats are too scared oftentimes. Times. Now, again, I want to separate that from the very reasonable stance I outlined earlier, where it was before the Mueller report and before we had even gotten to do these investigations saying, well, you know, impeachment's not on the table right now. That was fine.

That was a fine political thing to do. It just, there's no cost to it and it makes you look better. And then you can later say, okay, now it's on the tab. But given the Mueller report is out and there's impeachable level offenses in there, I think Elizabeth Warren and put it best. And I really hope the Democratic Congress will follow that example.

0:57:12 Thomas: And I just don't think we need to be worried about it moving voters, you know, the way that maybe back in 1999 with a president in Clinton who was kind of a centrist, who, you know, where things were not quite as polarized as they are now, you know, it might have been a different reality back then. And by the way, not to mention the charges were relative to the mores of the time were for something thing that was not really seen to be part of the presidency. It was seen to be a moral failing, a personal moral failing. And again, I want to emphasize, I think we're different now. I would hope we're different now if a Democratic president was shown to have done the same things Clinton did, I would want them out 100% nowadays. I just want to emphasize that.

0:57:57 Thomas: But comparing apples to apples relative to the times, these were seen to charges that were kind of like, you know, they're making a lot out of him trying to hide personal failings, you know, and, uh, Trump is not that these, the impeachable offenses are not all that. So, oh, all right. I know that's a lot. Um, there's going to be, there's gonna be more Mueller stuff, I'm sure, you know, so stay tuned to Opening Arguments, especially, but hey, please consider supporting the show. patreon.com/seriouspod is the reason the show happens. Uh, you know, I, I really want to thank my supporters so much, uh, share the show if you enjoy it, if you think people need to hear it, and you know, if especially if you can't be a patron, uh, sharing the show is the the absolute next best way to help the show. I really appreciate it. Thank you to my patrons for supporting, and I will see you next week, hopefully on time, unless I, you know, have another baby or something. We'll see. All right, see you then.