© 2024
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
An update has been released for the Android version of the WAMC App that addresses performance issues. Please check the Google Play Store to download and update to the latest version.

Stephen Gottlieb: Impeachable Offenses – Disloyalty And Denial

Arguments about what should be in articles of impeachment divert our attention from the main point. Donald’s phone call with the new president of Ukraine should have made clear to all of us that the president is disloyal to America, willing to sell our security for a foreign leader’s press conference to make Donald look like a wizard instead of a duck. If we can’t trust the patriotism of the president, we can’t trust him to get anything right – except by accident.

His defense? Republican members of the Judiciary committee brought Professor Jonathan Turley to the stand to criticize Democrats for rushing when there are a lot of other witnesses with knowledge of Trump’s misbehavior. If there is anything favorable to Mr. Trump in what they would say, it has always been in his power to have them say it – it was Donald who told them to shut up, Donald who told them to stiff the subpoenas, Donald who threatened anyone who showed up to testify. It is perfectly appropriate for us to conclude that whatever they would say would make it even worse for Donald. Republicans are asking us to buy a completely irrational argument – that witnesses that Donald prevents from appearing would testify in his favor. Only if the Democrats were preventing witnesses favorable to Donald from testifying would their behavior be unfair. Instead, the Republicans are insisting that the Democrats are unfair because they refuse to fall into that trap. That’s Republican clap-trap and no American with their wits about them would fall for such nonsense.

Trump’s denial of science won’t make it into articles of impeachment, but is one of the most important reasons to get rid of him. Scientists test – will this work? What will happen if we do this or that? They can’t promise us a conclusion. Just the facts; sometimes good news and sometimes not. Trump just picks the conclusions he likes.

Mama didn't get to choose her diagnosis. If she could have, she would certainly have preferred the family physician who told her that lump on her breast was arthritis. But I have lived with the belief that had he gotten the science right, had he told us the bad news, she might have lived to meet her daughter-in-law and her grandchildren and they her. And oh the joys they'd all have shared.

Remember Trump’s claim that he could get away with murder on 5th Avenue. The environmental damage Trump is doing to favor the short term profits of his rich friends will drive millions of people out of their homes if they’re lucky, or kill, starve or suffocate them if they’re not, dwarfing the death toll in Hitler’s concentration camps, and we will all be his victims – the working men and women, laborers, middle class – all the people Trump has fraudulently claimed to help. Mass murder is the highest of crimes and the strongest of reasons to impeach a president.

People on other continents have been converted from poachers to defenders of our natural patrimony with well-targeted incentives. But it won’t be done by an Administration that stimulates violence, encourages global warming and seeks to rid the world of everyone but his storm troopers.

Doctors would properly be stripped of their licenses. Presidential malpractice in the face of impending calamity should cost him his office.

The president is disloyal. He is arranging the death of innocent men, women and children on 5th Avenue and everywhere else. His congressional supporters have lost their minds and want us to throw ours into the trash heap with theirs.

We’ve got to clean up the White House and the environment with the method that Mary Martin made famous in South Pacific – we’ve got to wash those men right out of our hair – and every place else!

Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

Related Content