RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/in_her_postsotu_and_acquittal_press_conference_pelosi_lied_about_trump.html

Thursday was a day in which President Trump and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi engaged in a war of words. His attacks were based upon the non-stop efforts Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, have made to overturn the 2016 election. Hers were based upon the fact that Trump’s policies have been wildly successful, while the Democrats have achieved nothing other than banging their heads against the brick wall that is President Donald Trump.

The setting for Pelosi’s ferocious verbal attack against Trump was her weekly press conference. The reasons for her anger and disconnect from reality were twofold:

First, on Tuesday, Trump gave a State of the Union speech that was magnificent. In the first part, he recited his accomplishments, all of which have benefitted the American people, especially the 99% (unlike Obama’s “presidency for the 1%”). He then outlined plans that will bestow even more benefits on Americans, while introducing individuals who embody America’s greatness.

Pelosi, on the other hand, engaged in petty pantomime, capped by her ripping up her copy of Trump’s speech. It was juvenile and offensive.

Then, on Wednesday, the Senate acquitted Trump of the impeachment charges the House Democrats had brought against him. The outcome was preordained, but it was still a slap at the Democrats and a triumph for Trump.

It was against this backdrop that Pelosi dropped any pretense of respect for the President or his office and went crazy making things up:

As you know, this week we had the State of the Union.  As required by the Constitution of the United States, the President is to submit in writing or in person, his statement of the State of the Union.  What happened instead was a President using the Congress of the United States as a backdrop for a reality show, presenting a state of mind that had no contact with reality whatsoever.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/schiff-bolton-refused-to-submit-affidavit-amid-trump-impeachment-trial_3229640.html

House impeachment manager Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Wednesday said former national security adviser John Bolton wouldn’t submit a sworn affidavit amid the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump after the Senate voted to reject witnesses.

Schiff, speaking to MSNBC, said Democrats approached Bolton’s lawyers to see whether he’d be willing to provide a written statement in the trial that would describe “what he observed in terms of the president’s Ukraine misconduct, but he refused.”

During the trial last month, The New York Times published a report that contained allegations from a manuscript of Bolton’s upcoming book. In it, the former ambassador reportedly claims that Trump told him he was linking military aid to Ukraine and politically advantageous investigations, which Trump and other senior White House officials have repeatedly denied. The alleged conduct was at the center of the first article of impeachment against Trump, abuse of power.

As a result, House impeachment managers made references to the NY Times report and attempted to pressure the Senate into calling witnesses, but last Friday, that push ultimately failed when the Senate voted down a resolution—setting up the president’s acquittal on Wednesday. House managers complained the trial was unfair and rigged in favor of Trump after their witness push was rejected.

In early January, Bolton said in a statement on his website he would be willing to testify during the Senate’s impeachment trial if he was handed a subpoena. It came after House Democrats attempted to call him to testify in the impeachment inquiry before withdrawing their subpoena, saying that it would lead to a lengthy court battle that would slow down their impeachment process.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/481787-impeachment-is-over-or-is-it

If you think the Senate’s vote on Wednesday to acquit President Trump ends the impeachment saga, you haven’t been paying attention.

Congressional Democrats never believed they could actually remove Trump from power over anything as specious as the Ukraine kerfuffle. No more than they expected that the collusion caper — which was already known to be an investigative dry hole by the time of Bob Mueller’s May 2017 special counsel appointment — was a viable vehicle for ousting the president.

Impeachment has always been a partisan pretext. A third-order pretext, as I explained in “Ball of Collusion”: (1) The counterintelligence investigation launched by the Obama administration was a pretext to monitor Trump’s campaign while conducting a criminal investigation without the necessary criminal predicate; (2) the criminal investigation, formally launched on the ludicrous fiction that Trump’s constitutionally appropriate firing of FBI director James Comey could be an obstruction crime, was a pretext for packaging an impeachment inquiry for House Democrats (since the bureau didn’t have a crime but knew that impeachment does not require a crime); and (3) the impeachment drama has been a pretext for what all along has been the goal — to tumble out enough unsavory information over a long enough time that Trump is rendered unelectable by the time we get to the stretch-run of the 2020 campaign.

This is not to say, of course, that congressional Democrats would not remove the president if they could. The fact that House Democrats hauled out and formally voted two articles of impeachment, rather than contenting themselves with a long-running impeachment inquiry spiced up by the occasional, damning public hearing, shows that if they thought there was any shot at defenestrating Trump, even a remote one, they would take it.

https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2020/02/05/meanwhile-americans-optimism-personal-finances-surges-time-high-new-gallup-poll/

A friendly reminder amid all the impeachment hubbub today that Trump’s probably getting reelected and the political shiny object du jour will have little or nothing to do with his odds.

Neither the Reagan era nor the Clinton era, both famous boom times for America, produced quite as much financial optimism as the Trump era has. Remember that other poll that Gallup released yesterday showing Trump’s job approval at a personal best 49 percent? Now we know what’s driving that number. With economic enthusiasm like this, if Trump were a little less … Trump-y his job approval might be north of 55 percent. He’d be a near-lock for a second term.

But there’s more. Gallup also asked a question with lots of resonance for the 2020 election: Are you better off financially then you were a year ago?

Nearly six in 10 Americans (59%) now say they are better off financially than they were a year ago, up from 50% last year…

The current 59% of Americans who say they are better off financially than they were a year ago is essentially tied for the all-time high of 58% in January 1999. That was recorded during the dot-com boom, with conditions similar to the current state of the economy — a stock market rocketing to then-record highs and unemployment at multidecade lows — though GDP growth was higher at that time.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/05/a-week-of-political-karma-for-the-democrats/

President Trump now stands acquitted. The Democrats must confront the debacle that is their presidential primary field and run on a nonexistent record of achievement as the 2020 campaign season kicks off. Karma, indeed, is a bitch.

Donald Trump couldn’t have scripted it better himself: The Democratic Party’s karma knocked them right on the head this week as their countrymen watched in disgust—some, admittedly, in delight.

After three years of deception, gaslighting, and public temper tantrums, these power-hungry partisans finally got their comeuppance. An assembly of agents provocateurs, motivated by an insatiable amount of contempt not just for the president but for Americans in general, who gambled on a farcical impeachment crusade rather than build a persuasive policy case to win over voters this year, are ranting and pouting and tearing up stuff because . . . well, because they are losing. If Nancy Pelosi could have thrown a pacifier from her Capitol high chair Tuesday night, she would have.

The past several days have been filled with delightful metaphors: The president gave a lengthy interview before kickoff on Super Bowl Sunday, touting his achievements and mocking his political foes. A team from a pro-Trump red state faced a team from a Trump-hating blue state, which was favored to win. The San Francisco 49ers, based in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hometown, had a 10-point lead going into the fourth quarter.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/trump-wins-again/

Trump broke Pelosi. Or maybe she just broke herself.

Trying to dislodge a president whose approval ratings have been stuck well below 50 percent for virtually his entire presidency, in an atmosphere of economic effervescence, Democrats would be smart to signal voters that they won’t bring about major policy shifts but will restore decorous behavior.

Instead, they’re doing the opposite.

George W. Bush inspired Charles Krauthammer to coin the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” President Obama likened his opposition to a “fever.” But no president has ever done what President Trump is doing to his ideological adversaries, which is to cause them to lunge uncontrollably around the political stage like so many kittens chasing the dot made by a laser pointer.

Behold: Nancy Pelosi, she of the tight self-control and the 32-year run in Congress, threw a hissy fit on live television and ripped up the State of the Union speech. The silky slalom schusser tumbled over her skis and planted her face in the side of the mountain. What she probably thought would look like a gesture of aggression and defiance instead looked more like petulance and frustration. Trump not only gave a great speech, he gave great television, which is far more important. “A master showman at his best,” declared Norah O’Donnell, the CBS Evening News anchor. The effectiveness of the SOTU made Pelosi mad. Trump’s discipline made Pelosi mad. His obliteration of the impeachment drama by not even dignifying it with a mention made Pelosi mad. #PelosiTantrum and #NancytheRipper were top trending topics on Twitter. Democrats think they’re going to rage their way into the White House. Maybe you can try that when the country’s on fire. It isn’t.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/trump-impeachment-what-acquittal-means-for-rule-of-law/

It will go on. Meanwhile, Congress ought to get back to its business.

I n Wednesday’s final impeachment vote in the Senate, only one Senate Republican, Mitt Romney, crossed party lines to vote to remove Donald Trump from office. No Senate Democrat bucked party-line discipline to vote for Trump’s acquittal. This followed last Friday’s 51–49 vote to conclude the trial on the basis of the evidence heard in the House, without live witness testimony. Only two Republicans (Romney and Susan Collins), and no Democrats, crossed party lines in that vote.

There has been a great deal of hand-wringing about what it means that Senate Republicans kept enough of a united front to dispose of the charges against Trump without even a full trial. In fact, acquittal is a reasonable political judgment by Republican senators that reflects the preexisting standards for presidential impeachments, rather than a change to them.

Impeachment for abuse of power is political. A great deal of the commentary and political argument on impeachment takes a wrong turn from the very start. The mistake is treating presidential impeachment as a purely legal question in which it is somehow inappropriate to consider politics. Taking this view, Democrats argue that if any impeachable “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” are proven, there is a solemn duty to remove the president, and it is a violation of the senators’ oaths and an offense against the rule of law to acquit. The president’s defenders, for their part, argue that no impeachable “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” are even alleged, and therefore the entire process amounts to an assault by the House on the rule of law and something like a coup. Both views are wrong.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/mitt_romney_gives_a_disgraceful_display_of_petty_vindictiveness_on_impeachment.html

Mitt Romney was a staunch, aggressive NeverTrumper, right up until he needed President Trump’s endorsement when he ran for Senator in Utah in 2018. Despite Mitt’s nastiness, Trump gracefully gave him that endorsement. Mitt responded like the scorpion he is, immediately turning around and stinging Trump during the impeachment process.

The first Article of Impeachment against Trump was for the hitherto unknown wrongdoing called “Abuse of Power.” It represents no legal standard and the proceedings in the House made it clear that “abuse of power” really meant that Trump was conducting foreign policy in a way that offended Democrats. Investigating criminal wrongdoing by a past Vice President is not an impeachable offense, even if it involves wrongdoing in a foreign country. Still, that wasn’t enough for Mitt.

Nor did it matter to Mitt that, just a week ago, he insisted that there was not enough evidence to convict Trump unless he was able to hear from additional witnesses, especially Mitt’s partner-in-spitefulness, John Bolton.

“I, of course, will make a final decision on witnesses after we’ve heard from not only the prosecution, but also the defense,” Romney told reporters. “But I think at this stage, it’s pretty fair to say that John Bolton has a relevant testimony to provide to those of us who are sitting in impartial justice.”