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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told CNNs Jake Tapper that President Donald Trump should not be impeached because Trump is dedicated to rooting out corruption, and his motives for holding up the military funding to Ukraine were centered around those concerns. In his response, however, Tapper schooled the congressman in the facts.

Tapper asked Paul, So youre saying that you think that President Trump was actually doing this because he was combating corruption?

Paul replied, Well, yes, there are all kinds of accusations that Burisma and Hunter Biden and the company were corrupt and the founder of the company was corrupt.

Tapper then went in hard on the senator, listing the absurd amount of corrupt former aides and associates that the president seemingly had no problem surrounding himself with.

But this is a president whose former personal attorney Michael Cohen, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, former campaign adviser Roger Stone, former deputy campaign chair Rick Gates, former associate George Papadopoulos, all of them have been convicted of federal crimes, Tapper said.

The host continued by citing a corrupt business and charity that donned the Trump name, In addition, last year, Trump University settled a $25 million fraud lawsuit. Last month, President Trump admitted misusing his own charitable foundations money, was ordered to pay $2 million.

Tapper then drove home his point, asking, You really think President Trump is concerned about rooting out corruption?

Instead of answering the question, Paul pivoted and spoke about former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Republicans have seized upon this argument in defense of the president since the Justice Departments Inspector General report, released last week, concluded that the FBI made significant errors when surveilling Page in 2016.

So, Tapper put the focus back on his point and said, It was the Trump Justice Department that put all those people in prison or sentenced all those people. Its not me.

Again, Paul returned to Page, but Tapper replied, That doesnt absolve Paul Manafort of money laundering.

Tapper added, Im asking you about President Trump and corruption. I just listed a number of close associates of President Trumps who are either in prison or facing sentencing.

Paul replied by sounding a familiar note in our current political environment where seemingly everyone chooses their own facts, Right. But I think its based on opinion, Paul said.

Link:
Rand Pauls Defense of Trump on Corruption Goes Down in Flames During Contentious Interview - Rolling Stone

David Shulkin, the former Secretary of Veterans Affairs, talks about Washington - and being fired by Tweet. USA TODAY

WASHINGTON He had been on the bubble with the president for more than a month. The White House was an enigma.

Entreaties to President Donald Trump and his chief of staff were met with reassurances, up to a fewhours before he was fired. In a tweet.

When it happens, not only is it a surprise, but its painful, David Shulkin, Trumps first secretary of Veterans Affairs, said about being axed in March 2018.

He was not the first and far from the last member of Trumps administration to be unceremoniously dispatched that way.But Shulkin is the first former Cabinet member to pen an insiders account.

The physician and one-time hospital administrator told USA TODAY he wantedthe public to know what its like to serve in Washington.He wanted to lay out the lessons he learned and the plans he left unfinished.

"Nobody asked me, What were you working on, did you have a plan? Was there a formula that was working?' Shulkin said. "I felt like I had spent three years learning and failing and learning and failing, and yet there was nobody to share that with."

Then-Veterans Affairs secretary David Shulkin appears before a congressional committee on March 15, 2018 in Washington, DC.(Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images)

His account, "It Shouldnt Be This Hard to Serve Your Country," is a mix of policy discussion, legacy preservation and score-settling. (Shulkin blames a group of political appointees for undermining him and ultimatelygetting him fired.) And of course there's a sprinkling of scenes with Trump.

During Shulkins interview for the Cabinet post at Trump Tower, he wrote,the president-elect remarkedthat hes a "good-looking guy." Trump sought advice onShulkin'shiring from Marvel Entertainment chairman andMar-a-Lago member Ike Perlmutter.

In a chapter titled "Team Chaos," Shulkin recountsOval Office meetings and nighttime phone calls in which Trump askedabout topics Shulkinhad no expertise in, such as what to do about North Korea or whether he should movethe American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. (He did.)

"He would talk about what was on his mind. Sometimes it would relate directly to the area that I had responsibility for, but oftentimes it was about world events or things on his calendar or schedule," Shulkin said in an interview last week. He said he had to get used to the "free flow of conversation."

Asked for comment, the White House referred to a statement provided to The Washington Post before the books release in October, criticizing Shulkin for profiting off his time in office and sharing "outlandish" claims about conversations with Trump.

For his part, Shulkin wont say what he thinks of the president, his fitness for office or whether he should be impeached."I do dance around this because Im trying to reserve my personal opinions,"he said.

Shulkin was the only holdover from the Obama administration in Trumps Cabinet. He became undersecretary for health at theVA in 2015 after runninghospitals in New York and New Jersey.

During his time at the VA, he increased the agencys capacity to treat veterans by expanding remote health careand instituting same-day services for urgent needs. He also increased transparency by posting wait times for VA facilities and comparisons to non-VA care.

Among the lessons Shulkin said he learned at the VA was thatthe way to make big changes in Washington is to publicly declare your intentions before checking with others, including Congress, the White House or even agency employees charged with carrying them out.

Thats what he said happened in 2016 with same-day services, whichinitially triggered pushback from outsideand inside the agency, where employees saidit couldnt be done.

The VAis "almost set up for a system to stay exactly the way it is," Shulkin said.

The White House soured on him when he didnt move quickly or farenough to expand veterans options for taxpayer-funded health care outside the VA, Trump has said. Shulkin maintains he was fired because he opposed privatizing the agency, which he said otherpolitical appointees were pushing.

Tensions escalated in early 2018 after the VA inspector general concluded Shulkin had misused taxpayer money on a European trip.

In his last phone call with President Trump, hours before he was fired, Shulkin said, they discussed the changes underway at the agency. Among those left unfinished were an overhaul of veterans disability benefits and a reorganization of the VA.

Then came the tweet.

"Not having a lot of time to prepare for that certainly not having a lot of time to make sure that you appropriately transition your responsibilities is not an ideal way to leave the government," Shulkin said.

While he wont take a position on impeachment, he said the process has laid bare the political divide inthe country.

"Im sad to see that the countrys going through this," Shulkin said. "The fact that people are viewing this through very different lenses is showing why its so difficult for us to make progress on the difficult solutions, on the difficult problems that are facing the country."

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David Shulkin speaks out about his time in Trump's Cabinet and being fired by tweet - USA TODAY

The closest thing to a shout-out to trade policy came from Sen. Bernie Sanders the sixth and final candidate to speak who asserted he would stand up for workers abroad and stand up for workers in the United States of America.

Its par for the course in the Democratic primary. If the presidential contenders say anything at all about trade policy, its typically criticism of Trumps go-it-alone approach in fighting China, a passing acknowledgment that farmers are hurting from the presidents approach or a caution that the replacement deal for NAFTA needs to be strongly enforceable.

They arent even tackling the issue in their broader messaging. Out of the dozens of television ads Democrats have taken out in Iowa, not a single one has focused on trade.

Trump, meanwhile, has made trade a central focus of his presidency. The self-styled Tariff Man characterizes his fight against China as a wildly successful move that has crippled its economy, and lauded his own efforts to fix the long-criticized trade deal with Mexico and Canada as huge accomplishments enabled by his deal-making savvy.

Just this week the president, who argues his confrontational approach is ending the war on American workers, announced a preliminary trade deal with China. And his administration landed a deal with House Democrats to replace the 25-year-old NAFTA.

The Democratic field has been noticeably quiet on both issues here, leading some Iowa Democrats to worry it could cost the party here and in the battleground states they hope to claw back from Trump in 2020.

Its certainly a missed opportunity, Sean Bagniewski, chair of the Polk County Democrats, said.

I think trade is the area to show you care about whats hurting rural voters. But now with the caucus less than two months away, you could say the cake is already in the oven, Bagniewski added. Its a little too late.

Trump has imposed tariffs on more than $360 billion worth of Chinese goods, a move that resulted in harsh retaliation from Beijing, particularly on U.S. agricultural products like soybeans and pork. The pain has been felt acutely in Iowa, the nations number one pork producing state and second-leading soybean producer.

Iowans are quick to acknowledge that sales are down and farm communities from farmers to equipment manufacturers to the banks they put their money in are struggling due to Trumps actions.

But in countless trips to Iowa by 2020 Democrats, they arent spending much time talking in depth about an issue thats essential to the health of the state economy.

Wed expect them to speak up more, said Quentin Hart, mayor of Waterloo, Iowa.

Democrats at the local level, ranging from state and county leaders to Reps. Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne, have made trade a more central issue because they know Iowans are hurting, Hart said.

Its particularly important in places like Waterloo, but it hasnt been a main leading point in these conversations, Hart said recently after his city hosted a presidential forum attended by five candidates, none of whom mentioned trade policy.

At the Iowa Farmers Union annual meeting in Grinnell in early December, it was a similar story: Democrats made quick references to Trumps trade wars, without offering much detail on what their approach on trade would be.

Donald Trump is treating farmers like poker chips in one of his bankrupt casinos, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said to an audience of more than 100 farmers and agricultural industry members.

Klobuchar is often credited on Capitol Hill as one of the most trade-savvy lawmakers given that she represents Minnesota, a farm state that largely relies on trade, particularly with Canada, its neighbor to the north. Klobuchar is also a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, where she has been vocal in pressing the Trump administration to expand U.S. exports abroad.

Still, Sen. Elizabeth Warren is the only major candidate to roll out a comprehensive trade plan, which in some ways more closely resembles Trumps agenda than Barack Obamas. Her plan would overhaul how Democratic administrations have handled trade in the past and create a list of nine separate criteria a country would have to meet before negotiating a trade deal with the U.S

For decades, big multinational corporations have bought and lobbied their way into dictating Americas trade policy, Warren wrote, calling the policies across Republican and Democratic administrations a failed trade agenda.

But after announcing her vision days before the July Democratic debate in Detroit, Warren rarely makes reference to her grand plan for trade.

It would be a good thing for her to emphasize more, said Jeff Link, a longtime Iowa-based Democratic strategist.

Link pointed out that trade policy is coming up a lot more in congressional races, such as in Iowas 4th District where Democrat J.D. Scholten is running for Rep. Steve Kings seat. But he noted that stems from Scholtens ability to travel to towns with less than 1,000 people and really pick up a lot of material on trade from speaking to small towns.

Some Iowa Democrats believe candidates are steering clear from talking about trade because its a complicated subject and they dont want a blunder on the campaign trail to get amplified on social media. (Trump, by contrast, never shies from talking about trade at rallies.)

Theres a palpable fear of saying something wrong, Bagniewski said.

Democratic strategists argue that its likely trade policy will loom larger once the crowded field of candidates shrinks and the prospect of confronting Trump directly draws nearer.

Link observed that Buttigieg has more recently weaved trade into his stump speech in Iowa a move that comes as he has surged in the polls in the Hawkeye state.

Its an unavoidable issue because its a signature issue for Trump, said Bill Reinsch, a former Clinton administration official and trade expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Theyre going to have to deal with it, and they would be smart to practice in Iowa, but guess not.

Maya King contributed to this report.

Follow this link:
Why Trump is winning on trade in Iowa - POLITICO

Maybe, in some alternate universe, on the second day of the House Judiciary Committees hearing about the Democrats articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, Republicans on the committee would have presented a detailed and painstakingly constructed argument to show why the evidence doesnt support the charges against the President. But, in actuality, the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee spent much of their time talking aboutyou guessed itHunter Biden.

During the morning session, the committee voted along party lines to reject a G.O.P. effort to strike the first article of impeachment, which accuses Trump of abusing his Presidential power by pressuring the President of Ukraine to dig up dirt on his domestic political rivals. After that, Representative Matt Gaetz, a Republican whose district is in the Florida Panhandle, introduced a separate amendment. This one would have struck the reference to Joe Biden in the first article of impeachment and replaced it with a reference to his son and to Burisma, the Ukrainian company that added Hunter to its board for a time.

Gaetz, a Trump berloyalist and an N.R.A. favorite who once introduced legislation to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, began by rambling on about what Hunter Biden did or didnt do for Burisma. Then he brought up the younger Bidens history of drug problems, reading a passage from a lengthy Profile of him, by The New Yorkers Adam Entous, which describes how on one occasion a white powdery substance was found in a rental car he had driven. I dont want to make light of anybodys substance-abuse issues, Gaetz said. But its a little hard to believe that Burisma hired Hunter Biden to resolve their international disputes when he could not resolve his own dispute with Hertz rental cars over leaving cocaine and a crack pipe in the car.

Even by the base standards of todays House G.O.P., which often resembles a ragtag protest group more than a government party, this was a slimy effort at diversion. This is about distraction, distraction, distraction, the veteran Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee, of Texas, accurately pointed out. But it was left to Hank Johnson, a seven-term Democratic congressman from Georgia, to deliver the most effective put-down of Gaetz. The pot calling the kettle black is not something that we should do, Johnson said. I dont know what members, if any, have had any problems with substance abuse, been busted in a D.U.I.I dont know. But, if I did, I wouldnt raise it against anyone on this committee. The titters that went around the hearing room as Johnson was speaking indicated that at least some of those present knew what he was referring to.

Late one night in 2008, a police deputy stopped Gaetzs car, for speeding, not far from the congressmans home. In his incident report, the deputy said that Gaetz smelled of beer and that his eyes were watery and bloodshot, and he swayed and staggered when he got out of the car. The deputy arrested Gaetz and took him to a police station, where he was booked and photographed. For reasons that have never been entirely clear, the charges against Gaetz were later dropped. But, in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times, in 2014, Gaetz acknowledged that he had made bad decisions that resulted in an arrest and added, That is sort of something that we all live with.

If you think, for a moment, that Johnsons rebuke was sufficient to shame Gaetz into silence, you havent been paying attention for the past few months. In their fealty to Trump, many members of the House G.O.P. are entirely shameless and more than a bit bonkers. Given a second opportunity to speak, Gaetz brought up Hillary Clintonwhy not?and said he was just glad that the country now had a President who is concerned about corruption.

He wasnt the only Republican to speak in favor of his amendment, of course. Another was Louie Gohmert, the Texan who once issued a dire warning about terror babies and who, on Wednesday night, as the hearing started, read out the name of an official who has been identified, in some reports, as the intelligence whistle-blower. In weighing in on Gaetzs amendment, Gohmert followed his example and brought up Clinton. He also offered a novel theory that she was somehow responsible for the Democrats impeachment of Trump. What we continue to see is projection, Gohmert said. Someone on their side engages in illicit conduct and that is what they accuse President Trump of doing.

Within the confines of a supposedly serious congressional hearing, there is no wholly effective way to counter the sort of slime and gibberish that Gaetz and Gohmert were promoting. In any case, it wasnt directed at Americans who are undecided about the merits of impeaching Trump, if any such people exist. Its only purpose was to fire up the Trump faithful, go viral on right-wing Web sites, and, perhaps, even get picked up on Fox News. In other words, it was part of politics as a tribal ritual rather than politics as rational discourse, and, therefore, it was largely immune to rational counter-argument.

Some of the Democrats on the committee tried their best, anyway, to remind people why Joe Bidens name was the one included in the first article of impeachment. In doing so, these Democrats focussed on the actual acts at the center of the impeachment investigationacts that most of the Republicans on the panel had assiduously avoided or deliberately downplayed.

Jackson Lee pointed out that Trump had put aid to Ukraine on hold despite the fact that the State Department and other U.S. agencies had stated that the country was already in compliance with anti-corruption directives. Hakeem Jeffries, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus, read out a list of the names of witnesses, Trump appointees all, who confirmed that the President had pressured a foreign government to target a U.S. citizen: Biden. Zoe Lofgren, who represents a district in Silicon Valley, said that, although the behavior of Hunter Biden and of Trumps sons and daughters were things that voters could consider in a general election, here we are talking about the abuse of Presidential authority.

That final statement was a bit incomplete. In referring to we, Lofgren should have made clear that she wasnt including the Republicans on the committee. If there was one thing they were determined not to talk about, it was Trump abusing his power or doing anything wrong.

Read the rest here:
The House Republicans Slimy Defense of Donald Trump - The New Yorker

Bill and Hillary Clinton arrive for the inauguration ceremonies of Donald Trump in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., January 20, 2017. (Rick Wilking/Reuters )

Making the click-through worthwhile: How the Clinton Foundation casts a shadow over impeachment and helps explain why Republicans feel so little pressure to turn against Trump; House Republicans gain a new member with a really unexpected voting record, speculating on the final vote in the House and an examination of the grand reversal of the parties from twenty years ago.

Republicans Look to Clinton When Evaluating Trump

Why do so many grassroots Republicans shrug at President Trumps efforts to strongarm Ukraine into investigating the Bidens? Because they believe, with some compelling evidence, that this is how the game is played that powerful figures in government blur their personal interest and the national interest all the time, with no consequence. The stories about the Clinton Foundation percolated and bubbled up for years but only at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign did most of official Washington notice, or even begin to object. The Clintons never believed the rules applied to them, and they shamelessly defied of previously agreed transparency and disclosure rules.

January 4, 2012, an emailfrom Doug Band to John Podesta: The investigation into [Chelsea Clinton] getting paid for campaigning, using foundation resources for her wedding and life for a decade, taxes on money from her parents . . . I hope that you will speak to her and end this.

December 2012: Huma Abedin is simultaneously employed in four different jobs official State Department employee, adviser to Teneo consulting, contractor to the Clinton Foundation, and privately-paid personal secretary to Hillary Clinton. This made it impossible for subsequent investigations and reviews to determine and verify what purpose and in what role Abedin was in when she met with associates relating to Clinton.

February 18, 2015: Many of the [Clinton Foundations] biggest donors are foreigners who are legally barred from giving to U.S. political candidates. A third of foundation donors who have given more than $1million are foreign governments or other entities based outside the United States, and foreign donors make up more than half of those who have given more than $5 million.

February 25, 2015: TheClinton Foundationaccepted millions of dollars from seven foreign governments during Hillary Rodham Clintons tenure as secretary of state, including one donation that violated its ethics agreement with the Obama administration. Foundation officials acknowledged they should have sought approval in 2010 from the State Department ethics office, as required by the agreement for new government donors, before accepting a $500,000 donation from the Algerian government.

April 23, 2015: As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium Ones chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors.

April 30, 2015: The foundation also acknowledged this week it did not disclose 1,100 mostly foreign donors to the Clinton-Giustra Enterprise Partnership.

August 17, 2016: Hillary and Bill Clintons ties to two influential Lebanese-Nigerian businessmen are raising fresh questions about whether the State Department showed favoritism to Clinton Foundation donors.

August 20, 2016: The Clinton Foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars from countries that the State Department before, during and after Mrs. Clintons time as secretary criticized for their records on sex discrimination and other human-rights issues. The countries include Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Brunei and Algeria. Saudi Arabia has been a particularly generous benefactor. The kingdom gave between $10 million and $25 million to the Clinton Foundation.

September 6, 2016: State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman gave the Clinton Foundation a pass on identifying foreign donors in its charitable filings making it impossible to know if it got any special favors while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, according to a report Tuesday.

October 26, 2016: Bill Clinton is enjoying the private residence above his presidential library in Arkansas at the expense of taxpayers and his charity foundation a potential violation of nonprofit regulations. The 5,000-square-foot penthouse which sits atop the William J. Clinton Library in Little Rock is largely funded by the National Archives in Washington, which pours nearly $6 million into program and maintenance costs for the entire institution every year . . . Costs are also offset by a $7 million endowment from the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

November 4, 2016: The Clinton Foundation has confirmed it accepted a $1 million gift from Qatar while Hillary Clinton was U.S. secretary of state without informing the State Department, even though she had promised to let the agency review new or significantly increased support from foreign governments.

The Clintons insisted that the large donations from foreign governments and donors had nothing to do with influencing U.S. policy. However, once Hillary Clinton was defeated, donations dropped like a stone: The Clinton Foundations $30.7 million revenue last year is less than half the $62.9 million it raised in 2016 as Clinton was at the height of her presidential campaign. Each of the two years since Clintons loss in the 2016 election has seen the organizations revenue drop to record lows, raising less than any fiscal year in more than a decade a sharp contrast to the $249 million raised during Clintons first year as secretary of state.

Perhaps you think that losing the presidency is sufficient punishment for Hillary Clinton.

But many Americans believe the evidence indicates that the Clinton Foundation offered the worlds wealthy a secret way to buy access to the Secretary of State and potential future president, in hopes of influencing current or future U.S. foreign policy, and that sleazy deep-pocketed power brokers from all across the globe homed in on it like moths to a flame. Whats more, just about all Democratic legislators, the rest of the Obama administration, the foreign policy professionals and think-tank types and a big chunk of the media pretty much just accepted it. Maybe they didnt like it; maybe they occasionally offered on or off-the-record quotes about how the optics looked bad or some other wet-noodle tsk-tsk. But almost no one in official Washington looked at the Clinton Foundation and saw it as an unacceptable form of corruption.

All of it was legal, or legal enough, or in a gray area, and not something any prosecutor wanted to waste time on. (How many juries would convict Hillary Clinton?) No one got arrested, no one got charged with crimes, and Bill and Hillary Clinton got away with it, other than the admittedly significant consequence of losing the presidency that she wanted so badly.

In this light, Trump fans find it easy to shrug off all kinds of allegations from trying to bring the G7 to his own resort, to foreign governments staying in Trump hotels and then gushing on Twitter to suck up to the president, to big checks to Stormy Daniels, to having a bunch of shady felons working on the campaign, campaigns and party committees spending millions at Trump businesses, to allegations of using his personal foundation to promote his own interests . . . all the way to everything with Ukraine. Every Trump fan can easily fall back on, hey, its no worse than what the Clintons were doing, and nobody even bothered to investigate them. Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate Biden, while the Clintons just wanted cash.

Do two wrongs make a right? No, not at all, and I would prefer a world with institutions that rebuked conflicts of interest wherever they found them in the Republican Party and in the Democratic Party, in Chappaqua and Mar-a-Lago, in the Clinton Foundation and the Trump Organization. But as long as grassroots activists feel like one side has gotten off scot-free for unethical behavior, they will convince themselves what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Theres just that lingering problem of whats actually good for the country.

Huge Supporter of Socialist Policies Switches Sides

Rep. Jeff Van Drew endorsed Cory Booker to be president, and he votes with the Trump administrations position a whopping seven percent of the time. He voted to overturn Trumps emergency declaration for border wall funding, to condemn Trumps statements about the Squad as racist, to create a path to citizenship for those who came to the U.S. illegally as children, to block the Trump administration from granting waivers to states regarding the Affordable Care Act, to restore Net Neutrality regulations, against a ban on transgenders serving in the military, to require the president to disclose his tax returns and for government funding bills that did not include wall funding. A month ago, the National Republican Congressional Committee called Van Drew a huge supporter of socialist policies.

And now hes a Republican, apparently almost entirely because he doesnt want to vote for impeachment. No doubt the president loves the symbolism of a Democrat switching sides and the NRCC loves the fact that they dont have to spend money to win back a top-tier swing district in 2020, but . . . how much did the GOP get with this flip?

How Many House Democrats Will Defect on the Impeachment Votes?

The impeachment vote is Wednesday; obviously Van Drew remains opposed and the other House Democrat who voted against starting the inquiry, Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, told reporters Saturday he will vote against impeaching President Donald Trump. Peterson said he expects four or five other Democrats will do the same.

As of this writing, 60 House Democrats and one House Republican Tom Rooney have not stated publicly whether they will vote for the articles of impeachment.

If that comes to pass, it will be a small victory for President Trump and opponents of impeachment, but youll hear a lot about it. From the Democrats perspective, the impeachment hearings went about as well as they could have hoped but it will leave them with probably 228 or 227 votes to impeach, after 232 Democrats voted to start the inquiry. (Note that Elijah Cummings death and Katie Hills resignation leave two previously-Democratic seats open.) That handful of Democrats who voted for the inquiry but against impeachment think theyre saving their careers, but its easy to imagine that on Election Day 2020, the Republicans in their district are still mad as heck about the vote to start impeachment and at least a handful of Democrats will be still irked about letting the president off the hook.

As noted last week, if one of the aims of the impeachment hearings was to strengthen public support of impeachment, they failed. This morning, the FiveThirtyEight aggregation of public polling finds 47.6 percent support removal of the president, 46.2 percent do not about where its been, or perhaps a little tighter, for the past several weeks.

ADDENDUM: Over in the Article, I note that the parties have really switched sides on impeachment from 1998.

See original here:
Echoes of the Clinton Legacy in Trumps Impeachment - National Review