The crux of Trump's impeachment is Trump claiming absolute rights he has as President, and Trump making absolute claims that he has done nothing wrong and egregious wrongs have been done against him.
The Democrats say that Trump does not have the absolute rights Trump claims, and they are holding Trump accountable for impeachable wrongs he has committed and putting a stop to future wrongs Trump will commit based on his claimed absolute rights.
Trump has made it clear he will fight tooth and nail that he has the absolute rights he claims and he will never acknowledge having done any wrong. The Democrats will not back off, and there is currently a stand off.
In the stand off, the Democrats will draft and file articles of impeachment against Trump.
In the course of House hearings, the Democrats will educate the American people about Trump's absolutism and why Trump needs to be impeached for his absolutism.
Republicans in the House will be called on to defend Trump's absolutism.
The House will vote on and pass articles of impeachment against Trump, which will be referred to the Senate.
In the Senate, the Senate Republicans will in their turn be called on to defend Trump's absolutism
If the Senate does not convict Trump for his absolutism, the American people will have received education about Trump's absolutism and will take that into account in how they vote in November 2020.
The 2020 election will then determine whether the American people, with information about Trump's absolutism, wish for Trump to continue with his absolutism and will accept the consequences of four more years of Trump's absolutism.
Alternatively, if Trump is not convicted by the Senate, the American people may decide that Trump's absolutism is bad for the United States and Trump will be defeated in the 2020 election.
Trump's claim of absolute right
Yesterday, Trump tweeted
Some of Trump's claims of absolute rights
During the past 2-1/2 years, Trump has shown that he believes that he has absolute rights to do many questionable things, and that such absolute rights are based on determinations by Trump that the questionable things help Trump serve the country's interests or help Trump carry out his promises to his voters.
Further, Trump has evidenced that the determinations he makes are absolute, the determinations may not be questioned by Congress or anyone else, and Trump may make such explanation, or make no explanation, of his determinations to Congress and the American people as Trump decides in his sole discretion.
Questionable things that Trump believes that, as the President of the United States, he has an absolute right to do include:
1. He has an absolute right to offer pardons to people in order to induce them not to testify or not to cooperate in investigations that are detrimental to Trump.
2. He had an absolute right to influence Michael Cohen to lie to Congress in March 2017 that the pursuit of the Trump Tower Moscow was ended in January 2016.
3. He had an absolute right to instruct Don McGahan to take steps to get Mueller fired, and an absolute right to request Don McGahan to write a letter for the record that Trump did not instruct Don McGahan to take steps to get Mueller fired.
4. He has an absolute right to tell the American people 12,019 false or misleading statements between January 20, 2017 and August 2019.
5. He has an absolute right to make all the verbal attacks on people that he has made during the past 2-1/2 years, regardless of their truth or falsity, and regardless of whether Trump believes what he says.
6. He has an absolute right to do and say all the things that he has said or done during the past week, or that have been revealed during the past week to have been done, related to Ukraine matter.
[The foregoing is a partial list of the questionable things Trump believes he has an absolute right to do, based on determinations by Trump in his sole discretion that the questionable thing helps Trump serve the country's interests or helps Trump carry out his promises to his voters.]
Trump's absolutism is contrary to constitution
Under the constitution and its separation of powers and checks and balances, Trump's absolutism is untenable. Trump's absolutism has gotten progressively worse. Past presidents have had instances when they took actions that exceeded their Article 2 powers and they have been checked by the Supreme Court or Congress. No past president has come anywhere near to Trump in Trump's belief about the absolute powers he claims he has. There are explanations for how Trump has gotten so far away in his claims of absolute powers. This has now been brought to a head with the Democrats on course in the House of Representatives to impeach Trump.
Source and nature of Trump's absolutism
Trump may not understand the limitations on the President's rights under the constitution and may not understand why his beliefs about his absolute rights do not comport with the constitution.
In Trump's personal business history, there was little or no accountability to anyone else, such as a Board of Directors or stockholders. This may have rendered Trump insensitive or unaware that the Presidency is subject to limitations and there is accountability.
Before becoming President, Trump led an inordinately selfish and narcissistic life of pursuing wealth, glitz, glamour, publicity, and notoriety Trump's grotesque self-centeredness in promoting himself would seem to have left little room for empathy and concern for others, and if hurting other people helped Trump, Trump probably did little subordinating of his interests to the interest and good of others.
Overwhelming self-centeredness and self-promotion easily carry over to a lot of lying. Trump likes superlatives for himself, and it is easy to speculate, in his personal and business life, the pervasiveness and egregiousness of his lying over 30 years are matched by few other persons. His lying as President probably makes Trump the biggest Presidential liar in history.
A public official has a duty to serve the public interest and not his private interests. A President needs to understand that, be able to discern when the President's personal interests are not the same as the interests of the American people, and be able to choose to act to serve their interests ahead of his own personal interests. Doing that requires honest introspection, and Trump may not be capable of honest introspection for differentiating what Trump's personal interests are and the country's interests are.
Trump adamantly touts that everything he does serves the interests of the American people or to fulfill his promises to his voters. While Trump says that, Trump has said and done much that evidences that Trump does not do the needed introspection to discern his personal interests versus the country's interests and is is able to choose to put the interests of the country ahead of his own personal interests or gratifications. At bottom, Trump may be plain dishonest with himself, as well as with the American people.
Consider Trump's over the top personal attacks and disparaging of others. It is clear that Trump gets personal psychological gratifications from doing that. Perhaps Trump would contend that such attacks and disparaging of others aids Trump in advancing the agenda he was elected to carry out. Many would say that Trump would not be honest with himself if he said that, and Trump is putting his own gratifications ahead of the interests of those who voted for him.
Ukraine offers another example. Trump claims an absolute right to fight corruption, and such fighting of corruption is in the interest of the United States. Many would say Trump is being dishonest about his motive, and his motive has nothing to do with fighting corruption in the interest of the United States but only to achieve political gain for himself.
Trump chose to compound for himself the problem of having personal interests differing from the country's interests, his failing to see the differing interests, not being able to separate them in his mind, and and not being able to subordinate his personal interests to the country's interest. This self chosen compounding of the problem by Trump started at the outset of his Presidency by how Trump chose to keep and pursue the extensive business conflicts of interest after he became President (unlike how previous Presidents dealt with conflicts of interest). For more discussion, see Trump's conflicts in interest problem.
All of the foregoing has contributed to and is manifested in the extreme degree to which Trump sees everything through the lens of whether he is helped or harmed. If something or someone is helpful to him, that is good, right and beautiful. If something or someone is detrimental to Trump, it is corrupt or evil or a disgrace. This lens through which Trump sees things results in Trump conflating in his mind his own interests and the country's interests, so that if something serve his interests he can find a way to label it as serving the country's interests that is ultimately dishonest.
Ukraine exemplifies this by Trump not seeing that he has a personal interest of political gain that is different from the country's interest in fighting corruption, and Trump being dishonest with himself and the country in saying his motive is to serve the country's interest to fight corruption, when in fact his motive is political gain for himself.
This absolute black and white for Trump according to how Trump is helped or harmed contributes to Trump's absolute adamancy that he is always right and never wrong, his claiming excessive credit for himself for favorable events and circumstances, and, if there is an unfavorable event or circumstances, he bears no blame and only others are to blame.
Trump's absolutism is putting enormous strains on the United States political body. Trump's supporters may be fine with Trump's black and white absolutism. Trump's supporters need to be able to see how intolerable Trump's absolutism for those who are not signed up to Trump's cult of personality. Such absolutism of Trump claiming absolute rights and unwillingness to accept limitations on his rights and Congressional oversight of the same brings the country to the stalemate and impeachment crisis.
Trump will not back down in his claims of absolute rights as President, the Democrats will absolutely disagree with Trump having the absolute rights he claims, and the Democrats will impeach Trump to hold Trump accountable for Trump wrongfully acting on the basis of Trump's claimed absolute rights and to stop Trump from further acting wrongfully.
Impeachment by the House
As stated above, it is certain the House will impeach Trump.
It remains to be seen what will be included in the articles of impeachment and whether the articles will limited, say, to the Ukraine matter, or include other matters.
As to Ukraine, Trump's above tweets set out the argument that Trump and his supporters will put forth to the effect that Trump had an absolute right to ask a foreign government to investigate corruption on the basis of his determination that such investigation serves the interests of the United States and the American people.
The Democrats will disagree, say Trump's asserted purpose to protect the United States against corruption is pretext and in bad faith, say Trump is flat lying about his purpose and Trump's true purpose was only to get Ukraine to do things to help Trump and hurt Biden in the 2020 election, and Trump put his own personal interests ahead of the interests of the United States. The Democrats will say such violates the constitution, and the House, under its impeachment power, may determine what Trump has done is an impeachable offense.
One or more of the ten instances of possible obstruction of justice set out in the Mueller report may be included in the House's articles of impeachment. Trump may contend that he had the absolute right to do the things he did in those instances in order to protect the United States from an coup against the President rooted in wrongful investigations made of him. The Democrats will say Trump had no such absolute right, and that Trump's actions did constitute obstruction of justice, which the House has the power to determine is an impeachable offense.
The American people will hear much from Trump saying he had the absolute right to do various questionable things that are included in the articles of impeachment and from the Democrats explaining that Trump did not have the absolute right to do such questionable things. It is an open question what the American people will think when they are exposed to hearing for weeks or months about the questionable things Trump has done.
What happens after House impeaches
The Republicans will have charge of the trial of Trump in the Senate. The Senate trial may result in the American people hearing more of the same they heard in connection with the House impeachment proceedings.
Alternatively, the Republicans may make the Senate trial very brief, and the American people will not hear a repetition of what they heard in connection with the House proceedings.
Regardless, most American people will not be able to shut their ears to the impeachment proceedings and will not be able to avoid thought along the lines of, "I have heard at length about these questionable things that Trump did that the Democrats say were to serve Trump's own interests and not the interests of the United States, I have heard about separation of powers, checks and balances and the role of Congressional oversight regarding questionable acts of the President. So what do I really think about all this I have heard?"
It probably cannot be predicted how the Senate Republicans will think about and react to the phenomenon of the American people hearing weeks or months of impeachment proceedings about questionable Trump actions.
If the Senate does not convict, then there will be the 2020 election that will decide whether the United States will continue with Trump's absolutism as President.
The Democrats say that Trump does not have the absolute rights Trump claims, and they are holding Trump accountable for impeachable wrongs he has committed and putting a stop to future wrongs Trump will commit based on his claimed absolute rights.
Trump has made it clear he will fight tooth and nail that he has the absolute rights he claims and he will never acknowledge having done any wrong. The Democrats will not back off, and there is currently a stand off.
In the stand off, the Democrats will draft and file articles of impeachment against Trump.
In the course of House hearings, the Democrats will educate the American people about Trump's absolutism and why Trump needs to be impeached for his absolutism.
Republicans in the House will be called on to defend Trump's absolutism.
The House will vote on and pass articles of impeachment against Trump, which will be referred to the Senate.
In the Senate, the Senate Republicans will in their turn be called on to defend Trump's absolutism
If the Senate does not convict Trump for his absolutism, the American people will have received education about Trump's absolutism and will take that into account in how they vote in November 2020.
The 2020 election will then determine whether the American people, with information about Trump's absolutism, wish for Trump to continue with his absolutism and will accept the consequences of four more years of Trump's absolutism.
Alternatively, if Trump is not convicted by the Senate, the American people may decide that Trump's absolutism is bad for the United States and Trump will be defeated in the 2020 election.
Trump's claim of absolute right
Yesterday, Trump tweeted
Today Trump tweetedAs the President of the United States, I have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate, or have investigated, CORRUPTION, and that would include asking, or suggesting, other Countries to help us out!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 4, 2019
As President I have an obligation to end CORRUPTION, even if that means requesting the help of a foreign country or countries. It is done all the time. This has NOTHING to do with politics or a political campaign against the Bidens. This does have to do with their corruption!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 4, 2019
Some of Trump's claims of absolute rights
During the past 2-1/2 years, Trump has shown that he believes that he has absolute rights to do many questionable things, and that such absolute rights are based on determinations by Trump that the questionable things help Trump serve the country's interests or help Trump carry out his promises to his voters.
Further, Trump has evidenced that the determinations he makes are absolute, the determinations may not be questioned by Congress or anyone else, and Trump may make such explanation, or make no explanation, of his determinations to Congress and the American people as Trump decides in his sole discretion.
Questionable things that Trump believes that, as the President of the United States, he has an absolute right to do include:
1. He has an absolute right to offer pardons to people in order to induce them not to testify or not to cooperate in investigations that are detrimental to Trump.
2. He had an absolute right to influence Michael Cohen to lie to Congress in March 2017 that the pursuit of the Trump Tower Moscow was ended in January 2016.
3. He had an absolute right to instruct Don McGahan to take steps to get Mueller fired, and an absolute right to request Don McGahan to write a letter for the record that Trump did not instruct Don McGahan to take steps to get Mueller fired.
4. He has an absolute right to tell the American people 12,019 false or misleading statements between January 20, 2017 and August 2019.
5. He has an absolute right to make all the verbal attacks on people that he has made during the past 2-1/2 years, regardless of their truth or falsity, and regardless of whether Trump believes what he says.
6. He has an absolute right to do and say all the things that he has said or done during the past week, or that have been revealed during the past week to have been done, related to Ukraine matter.
[The foregoing is a partial list of the questionable things Trump believes he has an absolute right to do, based on determinations by Trump in his sole discretion that the questionable thing helps Trump serve the country's interests or helps Trump carry out his promises to his voters.]
Trump's absolutism is contrary to constitution
Under the constitution and its separation of powers and checks and balances, Trump's absolutism is untenable. Trump's absolutism has gotten progressively worse. Past presidents have had instances when they took actions that exceeded their Article 2 powers and they have been checked by the Supreme Court or Congress. No past president has come anywhere near to Trump in Trump's belief about the absolute powers he claims he has. There are explanations for how Trump has gotten so far away in his claims of absolute powers. This has now been brought to a head with the Democrats on course in the House of Representatives to impeach Trump.
Source and nature of Trump's absolutism
Trump may not understand the limitations on the President's rights under the constitution and may not understand why his beliefs about his absolute rights do not comport with the constitution.
In Trump's personal business history, there was little or no accountability to anyone else, such as a Board of Directors or stockholders. This may have rendered Trump insensitive or unaware that the Presidency is subject to limitations and there is accountability.
Before becoming President, Trump led an inordinately selfish and narcissistic life of pursuing wealth, glitz, glamour, publicity, and notoriety Trump's grotesque self-centeredness in promoting himself would seem to have left little room for empathy and concern for others, and if hurting other people helped Trump, Trump probably did little subordinating of his interests to the interest and good of others.
Overwhelming self-centeredness and self-promotion easily carry over to a lot of lying. Trump likes superlatives for himself, and it is easy to speculate, in his personal and business life, the pervasiveness and egregiousness of his lying over 30 years are matched by few other persons. His lying as President probably makes Trump the biggest Presidential liar in history.
A public official has a duty to serve the public interest and not his private interests. A President needs to understand that, be able to discern when the President's personal interests are not the same as the interests of the American people, and be able to choose to act to serve their interests ahead of his own personal interests. Doing that requires honest introspection, and Trump may not be capable of honest introspection for differentiating what Trump's personal interests are and the country's interests are.
Trump adamantly touts that everything he does serves the interests of the American people or to fulfill his promises to his voters. While Trump says that, Trump has said and done much that evidences that Trump does not do the needed introspection to discern his personal interests versus the country's interests and is is able to choose to put the interests of the country ahead of his own personal interests or gratifications. At bottom, Trump may be plain dishonest with himself, as well as with the American people.
Consider Trump's over the top personal attacks and disparaging of others. It is clear that Trump gets personal psychological gratifications from doing that. Perhaps Trump would contend that such attacks and disparaging of others aids Trump in advancing the agenda he was elected to carry out. Many would say that Trump would not be honest with himself if he said that, and Trump is putting his own gratifications ahead of the interests of those who voted for him.
Ukraine offers another example. Trump claims an absolute right to fight corruption, and such fighting of corruption is in the interest of the United States. Many would say Trump is being dishonest about his motive, and his motive has nothing to do with fighting corruption in the interest of the United States but only to achieve political gain for himself.
Trump chose to compound for himself the problem of having personal interests differing from the country's interests, his failing to see the differing interests, not being able to separate them in his mind, and and not being able to subordinate his personal interests to the country's interest. This self chosen compounding of the problem by Trump started at the outset of his Presidency by how Trump chose to keep and pursue the extensive business conflicts of interest after he became President (unlike how previous Presidents dealt with conflicts of interest). For more discussion, see Trump's conflicts in interest problem.
All of the foregoing has contributed to and is manifested in the extreme degree to which Trump sees everything through the lens of whether he is helped or harmed. If something or someone is helpful to him, that is good, right and beautiful. If something or someone is detrimental to Trump, it is corrupt or evil or a disgrace. This lens through which Trump sees things results in Trump conflating in his mind his own interests and the country's interests, so that if something serve his interests he can find a way to label it as serving the country's interests that is ultimately dishonest.
Ukraine exemplifies this by Trump not seeing that he has a personal interest of political gain that is different from the country's interest in fighting corruption, and Trump being dishonest with himself and the country in saying his motive is to serve the country's interest to fight corruption, when in fact his motive is political gain for himself.
This absolute black and white for Trump according to how Trump is helped or harmed contributes to Trump's absolute adamancy that he is always right and never wrong, his claiming excessive credit for himself for favorable events and circumstances, and, if there is an unfavorable event or circumstances, he bears no blame and only others are to blame.
Trump's absolutism is putting enormous strains on the United States political body. Trump's supporters may be fine with Trump's black and white absolutism. Trump's supporters need to be able to see how intolerable Trump's absolutism for those who are not signed up to Trump's cult of personality. Such absolutism of Trump claiming absolute rights and unwillingness to accept limitations on his rights and Congressional oversight of the same brings the country to the stalemate and impeachment crisis.
Trump will not back down in his claims of absolute rights as President, the Democrats will absolutely disagree with Trump having the absolute rights he claims, and the Democrats will impeach Trump to hold Trump accountable for Trump wrongfully acting on the basis of Trump's claimed absolute rights and to stop Trump from further acting wrongfully.
Impeachment by the House
As stated above, it is certain the House will impeach Trump.
It remains to be seen what will be included in the articles of impeachment and whether the articles will limited, say, to the Ukraine matter, or include other matters.
As to Ukraine, Trump's above tweets set out the argument that Trump and his supporters will put forth to the effect that Trump had an absolute right to ask a foreign government to investigate corruption on the basis of his determination that such investigation serves the interests of the United States and the American people.
The Democrats will disagree, say Trump's asserted purpose to protect the United States against corruption is pretext and in bad faith, say Trump is flat lying about his purpose and Trump's true purpose was only to get Ukraine to do things to help Trump and hurt Biden in the 2020 election, and Trump put his own personal interests ahead of the interests of the United States. The Democrats will say such violates the constitution, and the House, under its impeachment power, may determine what Trump has done is an impeachable offense.
One or more of the ten instances of possible obstruction of justice set out in the Mueller report may be included in the House's articles of impeachment. Trump may contend that he had the absolute right to do the things he did in those instances in order to protect the United States from an coup against the President rooted in wrongful investigations made of him. The Democrats will say Trump had no such absolute right, and that Trump's actions did constitute obstruction of justice, which the House has the power to determine is an impeachable offense.
The American people will hear much from Trump saying he had the absolute right to do various questionable things that are included in the articles of impeachment and from the Democrats explaining that Trump did not have the absolute right to do such questionable things. It is an open question what the American people will think when they are exposed to hearing for weeks or months about the questionable things Trump has done.
What happens after House impeaches
The Republicans will have charge of the trial of Trump in the Senate. The Senate trial may result in the American people hearing more of the same they heard in connection with the House impeachment proceedings.
Alternatively, the Republicans may make the Senate trial very brief, and the American people will not hear a repetition of what they heard in connection with the House proceedings.
Regardless, most American people will not be able to shut their ears to the impeachment proceedings and will not be able to avoid thought along the lines of, "I have heard at length about these questionable things that Trump did that the Democrats say were to serve Trump's own interests and not the interests of the United States, I have heard about separation of powers, checks and balances and the role of Congressional oversight regarding questionable acts of the President. So what do I really think about all this I have heard?"
It probably cannot be predicted how the Senate Republicans will think about and react to the phenomenon of the American people hearing weeks or months of impeachment proceedings about questionable Trump actions.
If the Senate does not convict, then there will be the 2020 election that will decide whether the United States will continue with Trump's absolutism as President.
