Impeachment as Political Vendetta?

The impeachment process against former President Biden is raising concerns about the lack of pragmatism and political motivations behind it. The previous impeachment processes against former President Trump were seen as politically driven rather than genuine attempts to remove him from office.

It is important to assess whether the current impeachment process against Biden is based on substantial evidence or if it is merely a means to expose aspects of his presidency that are disliked. It is crucial to differentiate between criticism of Biden and support for Trump, as they are separate entities.

The allegations against Biden involve his son Hunter's business dealings and the potential misuse of power. It is necessary to investigate and provide clear details regarding the flow of money and any connections to foreign operators. Transparency is crucial in understanding the extent of these allegations.

The concern is that the impeachment process has become a tool for political vengeance, with each side targeting the other president. This trend may continue in future administrations, leading to a lack of reasonable and pragmatic politicians in Congress. It is essential to have representatives who engage in rational discourse and prioritize the well-being of the nation.

• The impeachment process against former President Biden lacks pragmatism and appears politically motivated, similar to the previous impeachment processes against former President Trump.
• It is important to distinguish between criticizing Biden and supporting Trump, as they are separate entities with their own merits and flaws.
• The allegations against Biden regarding his son's business dealings require thorough investigation and transparent disclosure of financial flows and connections to foreign operators.
• The concern is that the impeachment process has devolved into a cycle of political vengeance, where each side targets the opposing president, undermining the search for reasonable and pragmatic politicians in Congress.

The Real Clear Podcast with Dr Lucas Klein is the in-depth analysis and commentary on current political events through a psychological lens. The Real Clear podcast covers a wide range of topics, from the latest election results to policy debates, to exploring the impact of current events on the political landscape.

Transcript

Good morning folks. It is Thursday, september 14th 2023. I've just finished having my coffee with Maverick in the front, and he monitors the landscape for animals and I monitor our politics for animals, and we're talking about the impeachment process this morning. Okay, let's start from a few different bases here. When asked about this impeachment process, president Biden stared off into space confused. That's more of the same. So I could say the impeachment process of former President Biden, because I think he left office a while ago and it's not clear who's running the show at this point. As I'd mentioned in a previous episode, he just walked off the stage at the Medal of Honor ceremony. He did not attend 9-11. Instead, he stayed in Anchorage and likely because he couldn't make the trip across the country because he was coming from a bit further away. Okay, so what are we doing with this impeachment process? I worry that the country has just slipped into an un-pragmatic realm. The impeachments against former President Trump were not pragmatic in basis, meaning they were not meant to actually remove the president from office. If you're coming from a rational standpoint and most of the congress people who were waging that war, I think, are not stupid people most, but we'll talk about that in a little bit. Most of them knew it was a political operation meant to sway public opinion against the former president. They succeeded to some degree. Now is the same thing going to happen against Biden? Remember, in the impeachment against Trump, the Durham report has outlined very clearly that there was no evidentiary basis for it. The Steele and Duchenne Codossiers were really nonsense. Steele may have well it's testified that he may well have been paid a million dollars for his interview. That was a substantive basis for some of the claims against Trump by the Clinton campaign. By the way, okay, most people are not paying attention to that. It's as though that's just some sort of historical fact from yesteryear. Pretty significant historical fact, my god. Steele and Duchenne Codossiers were enlisted from the Clinton campaign. That's how they got off the ground as a major part of those impeachment processes, and Adam Schiff used them in the sort of cloaking dagger claims against Trump in a totally fallacious manner and was never called to the grill for that. Just he was just left to bumble along as he does. He's one of the ridiculous people that I'd like to address after I go through this analysis of the impeachment process. Okay, now there is a statement from the White House and generally from the left right now. That makes no sense, and it is as follows the claims made by Speaker McCarthy have not been proven, folks. That's the purpose of an impeachment inquiry is to provide an evidentiary basis for claims being made. It is a stupid reaction and or a manipulative reaction. The purpose of an inquiry is to provide substantive evidence of the claims being made. You never have claims proven prior to an inquiry. Okay, let's move on from there. The next thing I'm worried about is that the Republicans right now are becoming as pursuing and warring against Biden as the Democrats were against Trump. So how do we measure whether that's likely true? I think we measure that by asking ourselves is there a likelihood that an impeachment could be successful through having the votes necessary for a vote against the president? The answer is no. Even and also GOP Congresspeople, who are looking at this in a sober and judicious fashion, understand and have vocalized this is unlikely to go anywhere. So what, then, is the purpose? Is an impeachment now just another mechanism of our politics to expose aspects of a president that we don't like? And there are plenty of aspects of Biden that we don't like, but I don't care for that. I despise, actually, I think the man is actually quite cruel, I think he's indecent. It's not to say that I think Trump is decent or laudable at all. Don't make that kind of parallel, that kind of dialectical. It's not where we're going. You have to be able to hold two thoughts in your head at once, folks. One is a comment against Biden is not a comment for Trump. Alright, let's try to be advanced beings here. We can do this. So the claims against President Biden are as follows Broadly I'm not looking at any kind of rap sheet here that he was engaged in a diffuse behind the scenes amplification of power for his son, hunter and his foreign business dealings. He was on the phone occasionally during Biden or, yeah, biden, hunter, biden's business dealings, especially with barisma, in a sort of like well, yes, I'm here, and isn't it nice weather and so forth. And then Hunter would say to his foreign business partners you see, I can get my father on the phone, that's the vice president. There were shell companies as well as multiple bank accounts and pseudonym emails that were used to usher money from foreign foreign operators into quote the Biden families on quote accounts. Now that does need to be detailed out. I do think the American public needs to understand what money came from who and then went to who. Okay, and Biden Hunter? Biden details in emails this is provably true in emails that his income went into a certain proportion to his father during the years when his father was vice president. That needs to be detailed out very clearly. Okay, so those are real bases of this impeachment process that are valid and do need to be pursued. But there is a broader issue here that I'm worried about. Some of the Speaker McCarthy's claims have an eerie ring, like the claims being made against Trump right now. The claims against Trump rests on RICO statutes in Atlanta and federally, and they go as follows and remember a RICO statute? A racketeering charge is that someone hasn't committed any singular crime to a great degree, but when taken together, their activities over a certain period of time point toward a theater of crime. What did McCarthy say about Biden? He said when taken together, these activities create a culture of corruption. Are we getting to behave somewhat like the Democrats against Trump, and is that a good idea? Maybe it is. Maybe there are wiser political minds than mine who think that holding the Democrats accountable, the same kind of warfare, is necessary to balance the political machine to show that you've got teeth as well. I don't know. That's where we can all have our opinions, but it worries me that we have descended into a political vengeance machine where each side simply wages a hunt against the other president, and this is going to typify each person who holds office for well, the next phase of time, however long that's going to be. And who do we have in Congress, our sober and judicious representatives in Congress? Well, I like people like Dan Crenshaw from Texas. He's an incredible representative. He is blazingly intelligent, he testifies and speaks publicly in such a clear, incisive manner. But he's one in a sea of people who don't seem to have any semblance of reason and rational discourse. I mean, look recently at Lauren Boebert, the representative from Colorado on the Republican side. She was recently kicked out of a theater in Denver for singing along, vaping, making out with her boyfriend and taking videos yeah, we've got a term for that. I won't uh, I won't bandy to put it out, but we've got a term for that and she was kicked out and jeered at the ushers and you know who I am, etc. This is the kind of person that we have in Congress these days. You have Marjorie Taylor Greene, who shows up at the State of the Union Addressed dressed like she's going out to some kind of strip club and yells at the president, all right. And then on the left side of the spectrum, it's very easy to pick on AOC, but she deserves it. She says so many stupid things, so many self-righteous, outlandish things that are almost unparalleled in the world of politics that it's hard for me to pick them out. Remember when she was speaking about Amazon coming to New York City and this is a woman with an economics degree from a very good school, by the way I said that those tax revenues should be going somewhere else One of the stupidest things I have heard in my lifetime coming from someone in political office. She didn't even recognize that the tax revenues that she was referring to were a hypothetical contingent on the actual profit of the company, that without them there is no revenue. It's not like there's just money sitting there in some bucket somewhere that you're going to give a company in terms of subsidies or disperse in terms of revenues to the community. This woman has no reason to exist in the world of politics other than vanity. So we don't have many crunchaws. We don't have many people like Joe Manchin, a sober and judicious person coming from the Democrat side. I actually don't know why he hasn't just switched over to the Republicans. He doesn't have anything in common with the Democrats, so we should be worried about where our politics are going. We don't have reasonable, pragmatic people waging the political campaigns anymore, and I think, post-newt Gingrich in the Congress, with Clinton, we set a precedent for impeachments to be taken as a mechanism of political vengeance. That's where we are right now, and so what can I say? This is another troubling aspect of our world, of our politics, and we're here to talk about it. Well, weigh in. If you'd like, get on realclearpodcastcom and comment on this post and let's see where it goes. Thanks for listening. Folks, I'll be with you soon and, as always, be well.