Bob Cesca: Trump Impeached Again, Despite Dumbshit Republican Excuses
The GOP excuses are almost as infuriating as the insurrection itself.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC -- Donald Trump was impeached for an historic second time on Wednesday. The first impeachment was for his ridiculous attempt to cheat in the 2020 election by extorting Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into now President-elect Joe Biden. This time, it’s for inciting insurrection against the U.S. Congress after losing the election anyway.
Make no mistake: I’m thrilled that he’s been impeached again, yet it still doesn’t feel like enough -- enough to match the four-year syllabus of horrendous trespasses against the republic. While the system has more or less survived the Trump stress test, it’s clearly not robust enough to stop him in the act. The toxicity of the Republican Party has made it nearly impossible to fully apply the strictures of justice to the daily awfulness perpetrated by the outgoing president. The so-called party of personal responsibility has collectively decided that accepting consequences is no longer politically expedient.
This explains why only 10 Republicans voted to impeach Trump. Sure, it’s a record for bipartisanship in impeachment votes -- in other words, no other previous vote to impeach has been this bipartisan. However, it still leaves 197 House Republicans who chose instead to exonerate Trump from not just sparking but reportedly planning the first hostile incursion into the Capitol Building in more than 200 years.
The GOP excuses are almost as infuriating as the insurrection itself.
Nearly every Red Hat member of Congress, as well as pundits and followers alike, believe the reaction to the invasion and the impeachment are attempts to silence “conservative thought” -- to cancel Republican leaders, including Trump. In reality, conservative thought is, say, proselytizing about tax cuts or small government. But now, these dinguses seem to believe inciting an insurrection is “conservative thought” requiring First Amendment protections. Think about that. 197 Republican members of the House decided that Trump’s participation in the attempted violent overthrow of Congress wasn’t an impeachable offense and that it absolutely deserves constitutional protection. That’s how dry-rotted the GOP has become. That’s how cancerous it is.
Likewise, Trump supporters everywhere, including members of Congress, can’t stop screaming about how liberal protesters broke windows, too, and lit some things on fire over the Summer in Portland and elsewhere. First, there’s no evidence the damage was done by actual Black Lives Matter protesters or even the mythic Antifa group that I’m not even sure really exists. Nevertheless, this is a dogshit argument and a colossal false equivalence that I can’t even believe I have to explain. Simply put: there’s no similarity between smashing the window of a Chipotle and invading Congress with the intention of hanging the vice president and congressional leadership. Anyone who believes there’s a similarity is lying or delusional or both.
As for the unity argument, Republicans are merely taking Joe Biden’s words and coopting them as a convenient excuse for wiggling out of this mess. Unity and reconciliation can’t occur when villains are allowed to roam free or when victims don’t receive justice. Hugh Hewitt this week tried to argue that Abraham Lincoln called for unity after the Civil War, which is partly true. But Lincoln only did that after he raised the largest army to ever march in the Western Hemisphere in order to put down the perpetrators of secession and the bombing of Fort Sumter. Now, today, we’re engaged in the same effort: putting down a rebellion, a seditious attempt to violently overthrow Congress in order to install a defeated criminal president. The time for unity will arrive, but only after justice is rightfully served.
Here’s one that’ll really piss you off. Red Hats are saying that one of the law enforcement officers killed during the attack, Brian Sicknick, who was dragged outside and beaten to death with a fire extinguisher and, yes, the American flag, actually died because of some sort of pre-existing condition and not the grotesque bludgeoning we’ve all witnessed on video. It’s the same excuse they’re using for COVID deaths, by the way. But let’s put it this way: if a Red Hat decides to stick a pair of scissors into an electric socket and the shock causes the guy to have a heart attack and die, the cause of death is, of course, electrocution -- not the heart attack, which was triggered by the surge of electricity. Makes sense to the Normals, but when Red Hats are fishing for an excuse to backstop their pro-Trump fanfic, they’ll concoct all kinds of gibberish to justify their loyalty to a clown dictator.
If that one didn’t piss you off, this excuse will. Regarding the insurrectionists who brandished zip-ties in the Capitol with the intent of using the ties to bind hostages, the Ben Shapiro droid tweeted, “Literally every regular human I know owns zip ties.” Yeah, one of the leaders of the so-called “intellectual dark web” doesn’t know about flex cuffs, which look like large zip-ties but are actually made for restraining people. That’s what the insurrectionists were carrying and that’s what they intended to do -- restrain members of Congress including the Speaker of the House and possibly Vice President Pence.
One of the many soul-crushing aspects of Trumpism has always been the reality that the very people who raised us as children to embrace the values of fairness, honesty, integrity, character, decency, and honor, are currently rejecting those values through their support for the Trump-infected Republican Party. More importantly, the same party is rejecting the American values of decorum, democracy, and the rule of law in favor of backstopping a cartoonish fascist tyrant who spearheaded the entire attack. After he’s gone, this subversion of our most cherished values will surely continue until the source of the poison is eradicated through societal and political rejection. From the looks of things right now, this rejection is stronger than it’s ever been before -- and it’ll continue as long as Americans don’t buy into the stupid, stupid excuses.
Read an excerpt from this week’s Banter Members article:
Republicans Are Fleeing Trump Because He Threatens The System That Protects Them
Trumpism was fun and games during Russiagate, but not now Republicans are being targeted by Trump’s rabid mob.
Yuri Gripas/Reuters
by Ben Cohen
After Donald Trump won the GOP primary in 2016, Republicans across the spectrum spent the next few months figuring out how to justify their support for him. It was a tortuous affair that saw “family values” conservative Christians get behind a man accused of sexual assault and rape by 19 women, cheated on his wife with pornstar, and openly flouted every value they claimed to stand for.
Many of these Republicans privately despised Trump but they also knew he was rapidly consuming their base. The choice was simple: become irrelevant, or get on the Trump train and try to control him from the inside.
Chris Christie articulated this predicament to the New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner last week after being pressed on why he supported Trump knowing he was a virulent White Nationalist with autocratic tendencies.
“My endorsement was based on two things,” said Christie. “I was absolutely convinced that there was no one left on that stage in the Republican primary who was going to beat Donald Trump. He was going to be our nominee. And, secondly, I was absolutely committed to Hillary Clinton not being President of the United States. So, given my relationship with Donald Trump over all those years, I felt like if I got in early and helped him I could have influence in making him a better candidate and, ultimately, a better President.”
Christie of course believes he did have a positive influence.
“I think I did both those things,” the former governor told Chotiner. “But, in the end, the person who holds the job is the person who makes the decisions. So, no, I have no second thoughts in doing what I did in supporting him. American democracy is ultimately not about voting for who you want to vote for. It’s about voting for who is left.”
In Christie’s mind, this means he is not in any way culpable for what transpired last week in Washington DC. Yes, he voted for, advised, and gave political cover for a racist wannabe tyrant who incited a mob to violently storm the Capitol, but Hillary Clinton was really bad.
Christie’s culpability avoiding playbook is doing the rounds in DC as almost every prominent Republican desperately tries to sever themselves from the drowning Trump. We never knew he would do this! We only voted for him because of the alternative!
Having given the fox free rein in the hen house it is quite something to watch Republicans pretending to be shocked that all the hens are dead. But thus is the nature of politics in a party dedicated to wrecking the institutions of government, enriching its donor base, and disenfranchising minorities…
This is an excerpt from today’s Members Only article. Get a 50% discount on a Banter Membership and read the full article here.
The question going forward now is, will the Republican party finally be forced to take a long hard look at themselves and realize that years and decades of accusing, attacking, smearing, and demonizing their opposition just for having a different outlook of the country, has repercussions for themselves and try and change for the better? Or will they not take Personal Responsibility and just double and triple down their toxic rhetoric because they believe it still works for them!
I'm going to guess the latter, with the aid of the Liberally Biased Mainstream Media™ and their bullshit "BOTH SIDES!" narrative!
Powerful, incisive and spot-on once again, Bob Cesca.
"Think about that. 197 Republican members of the House decided that Trump’s participation in the attempted violent overthrow of Congress wasn’t an impeachable offense and that it absolutely deserves constitutional protection. That’s how dry-rotted the GOP has become. That’s how cancerous it is." Diagnosis compete.