{"id":1315083,"date":"2019-09-27T20:20:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-28T02:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/manieri-column-democrats-risk-credibility-with-impeachment-gambit\/"},"modified":"2019-09-27T20:20:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-28T02:20:00","slug":"manieri-column-democrats-risk-credibility-with-impeachment-gambit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/manieri-column-democrats-risk-credibility-with-impeachment-gambit\/","title":{"rendered":"Manieri column: Democrats Risk Credibility with Impeachment Gambit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rich Manieri<\/strong>
BLAINE SHAHAN | Staff Photographer<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

There came a point when no one took Fred Sanford seriously when he clutched his chest, looked toward the heavens and cried out, \u201cThis is the big one! I\u2019m coming Elizabeth!\u201d<\/p>\n

But we are now to believe, according to Democrats and even some Republicans, that President Donald Trump\u2019s phone call with the president of Ukraine is the \u201cBig One.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, one of the most outrageous things I\u2019ve heard a politician utter in recent memory \u2014 and the competition is stiff indeed \u2014 came from Republican William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts who, for some reason, is wasting his time challenging Trump for the 2020 GOP presidential nomination.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Weld appeared on MSNBC\u2019s \u201cMorning Joe\u201d \u2014 a pretty good place to hear outrageous things \u2014 and talked about Trump\u2019s phone call during which Democrats claim Trump pressured the president to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden\u2019s son.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not just undermining democratic institutions. That is treason. It\u2019s treason, pure and simple,\u201d Weld said. \u201cAnd the penalty for treason under the US Code is death. That\u2019s the only penalty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weld wasn\u2019t finished.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe penalty under the Constitution is removal from office, and that might look like a pretty good alternative for the president if he could work out a plea deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weld didn\u2019t misspeak, and \u201cMorning Joe\u201d grabbed a pitchfork and joined in, tweeting out Weld\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n

You would think Weld would stop himself before invoking terms like \u201ctreason\u201d and \u201cdeath\u201d when referring to a sitting U.S. president. But thinking and gathering information are no longer prerequisites in our current political discourse.<\/p>\n

The transcript of the call, over which Weld and Democrats want to impeach Trump, was released Wednesday.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s remarkable how two groups of people can look at the same document and have diametrically opposed interpretations of what it actually means. The transcript either exonerates or convicts Trump. There\u2019s no middle ground in an age of extremes.<\/p>\n

According to the transcript, there appears to be no direct quid pro quo over military aid, nor does Trump pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

We do know that Biden, when he was vice president, pressured the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor who was investigating the Ukranian gas company where Biden\u2019s son, Hunter, worked until this year. The younger Biden was a member of the board of directors for Burisma, which faced a variety of corruption allegations. In a 2018 speech, Biden talked about how he threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees if the prosecutor wasn\u2019t fired.<\/p>\n

The investigation into Burisma was underway in 2014. The prosecutor was fired and the investigation was dropped after Biden\u2019s \u201crequest\u201d in 2016.<\/p>\n

Early in Trump\u2019s phone call to Zelensky, Trump makes a completely appropriate request for Zelensky\u2019s help in getting to the bottom of Ukranian actors\u2019 interference in the 2016 election. Later, Trump brings up Biden.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of talk about Biden\u2019s son,\u201d Trump said to Zelensky, \u201cthat Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it\u2026 It sounds horrible to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

This sounds as if Trump is asking Zelensky to look into Biden\u2019s firing of the prosecutor rather than into Hunter Biden\u2019s role with Burisma. I\u2019m not really sure what Trump is asking for. Of course, bringing up a political opponent\u2019s name to a foreign leader in the context of any investigation is, at the very least, questionable.<\/p>\n

But is it impeachable? Not unless there\u2019s something else we haven\u2019t seen.<\/p>\n

But House Democrats are moving forward anyway. Of course, a week ago, they were ready to impeach Trump over non-existent collusion until they were distracted by a newer, shinier thing.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, the House Intelligence Committee released a redacted version of the whistleblower complaint that started the controversy. The complaint alleges Trump pressured Zelensky to take actions to help the president\u2019s 2020 election bid\u201d though the whistleblower had no firsthand knowledge of the call, according to the Department of Justice.<\/p>\n

What is pretty clear, within this vast, mottled mess, is that most Americans don\u2019t have much of an appetite for any of this. Before news of the phone call broke, polls consistently showed that impeachment is unpopular among voters. After the news of the call, 57 percent of voters surveyed were against impeachment, according to a Quinnipiac University poll, released Wednesday.<\/p>\n

So, if this is, in fact, the \u201cBig One,\u201d forgive us if we don\u2019t rush to help. If it isn\u2019t, don\u2019t worry. There will be another.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2019 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, \u201cWe Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me\u201d is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at manieri2@gmail.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rich ManieriBLAINE SHAHAN | Staff Photographer There came a point when no one took Fred Sanford seriously when he clutched his chest, looked toward the heavens and cried out, \u201cThis is the big one! I\u2019m coming Elizabeth!\u201d But we are now to believe, according to Democrats and even some Republicans, that President Donald Trump\u2019s phone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1315083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-28 01:28:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}