Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is sure getting a lot of advice from the punditocracy right now. Mostly, over the last few days, this has focused on the question of whether she should or should not hold an impeachment inquiry vote on the House floor. I'm going to ignore that issue today (perhaps to be revisited in a later column) because I feel there are other strategy ideas worth exploring, as the Democrats chart their course through the choppy waters of impeachment.

The first bit of advice I'd give to both her and all other Democrats being interviewed on television is to push back -- with scornful laughter, for full effect -- on all of Trump's current bugaboos. Here's how I would go about doing so:

Continue Reading »

Warning!

It isn't entirely clear at this point, but this site may go down later today. Pacific Gas & Electric may be shutting off the power grid right where my ISP lives. Again, I'm not positive this is going to happen, but there is a chance it will. If power goes down and the site goes cold, we have been informed it may take 3 to 5 days (!) before it is restored again.

Thankfully, I don't think the power at my own house will be cut, but I just wanted to warn everyone in advance that the site may indeed be affected. They've said the cut will likely happen around 5:00 P.M. Pacific Time, so if it does happen that's when things will go dark.

My apologies, in advance, if there is an interruption in service.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

I don't think I've ever used this column to comment on the world of basketball, but there's always a first time for everything. The National Basketball Association is currently struggling with a conflict between free speech and making piles of money in China. It is a struggle that many American corporations have faced before, and it boils down to one basic fact: if you want China's money, then you have to play by their rules, period. Chairman Xi is paying the piper, so he gets to call the tune. The concept is clear, and nobody's forcing any company to do business with China, but if any American company does want to tap into their billion-person market, then they've got to follow the Chinese rules for doing business there. And most of those rules are antithetical to democratic norms, which makes perfect sense because China is an authoritarian state.

What set all of this off was a tweet from the general manager of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey. The image read: "Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong." That's really not all that bad, at least to American sensibilities. To the Chinese, however, it was completely unacceptable, as spelled out in a message from the state television company, Chinese Central Television (CCTV), which read, in part: "We're strongly dissatisfied and oppose Adam Silver's claim to support Morey's right to freedom of expression. We believe that any remarks that challenge national sovereignty and social stability are not within the scope of freedom of speech." Got that? Free speech is fine and good as long as the Chinese government approves of what you are saying. If it doesn't agree with what you are saying, then it is nothing short of a "challenge to sovereignty and social stability." This, it shouldn't even need pointing out, is the exact opposite of freedom of speech.

Continue Reading »

All of a sudden, "letting Trump be Trump" isn't looking like such a good idea any more to many congressional Republicans. Ditto the concept of Trump conducting foreign policy on a whim, often one heavily interrelated with his own re-election prospects. Abandoning the Kurds in Syria may, in fact, turn out to be Trump's very own "red line" with the Republicans who, up until now, have given him nothing but a green light to do what he wishes on the world stage. Perhaps that's too chromatically-mixed, as metaphors go, but it has indeed been astonishing to see the swift and forceful pushback from previously-supine GOP senators and congressmen. Some of them are even talking about using veto-proof majorities to do things like slap sanctions on Turkey or even kick them out of NATO. That's quite a change from last week, you have to admit.

The heart of the issue is whether the United States military is going to abandon the Kurdish fighters in Syria who did the lion's share of the work in eradicating the Islamic State. We armed them, we helped them, but they did most of the actual fighting (and dying) that was required. We simply couldn't have done it without them, in fact, with the forces that we committed to the fight. And now President Donald Trump is stabbing them in the back by allowing Turkey to invade the territory the Kurds now control in Syria. It is nothing short of a massive betrayal, and it won't even be the first time the United States has betrayed the Kurds over the last half-century. One wonders why anyone in the Middle East would ever trust the United States again, since this betrayal cuts so deep.

Continue Reading »

The impeachment whirlwind shows no signs of slowing down, and in fact each day brings more and more evidence that President Donald Trump is using American foreign policy as his own personal opposition research to undermine his Democratic political opponents. Which, of course, is an eminently impeachable offense.

This week alone, we've learned: that Trump's attorney general has been pressuring Italy and Australia (and, most likely, other countries as well) to help out with the investigation into the conspiracy theory that the Mueller investigation was improperly begun; that Trump begged the leader of China for some dirt on both Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren during a phone call; that Rudy Giuliani sent a document dump to the State Department outlining his version of various conspiracy theories -- including one against the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine (who was later removed from her post); that Trump held out both the military aid to Ukraine and a personal White House meeting in what can only be called a quid pro quo arrangement; that Trump thinks there is nothing wrong with any of this as evidenced by his begging China for dirt on Biden while the television cameras were rolling; that there is a second whistleblower accusing a Trump political appointee with attempting to influence the I.R.S. in their audits of Trump's tax returns; and that Trump wanted to shoot people crossing the southern border in the legs or possibly build a moat on the border and fill it with alligators and snakes. Trump later denied this in a tweet about a "Moot stuffed with alligators," because of course he did.

And all of that was before the text message dump. Just another fun week in Trumpland!

Continue Reading »

House Democrats are soon going to face a stark choice. Either they wait for the court system to slowly grind its way up to the Supreme Court, and then hope that John Roberts values his legacy enough to rule in their favor; or they can just move past judicial delays altogether and draft articles of impeachment sooner rather than later. So far it seems they're more inclined to pursue the latter strategy, but it is still too early in the process to state that definitively. A court ruling limiting Trump's excessive executive privilege claims would be a valuable thing in its own right, but the question is going to be: is it worth the inevitable wait?

At the heart of the whole issue is the separation of powers inherent in our Constitution, and what happens when those powers come into contention with each other. Will this be a struggle involving all three branches, or merely two? Currently, House Democrats are already suing the Trump administration for its stonewalling on many subjects under investigation, but these court cases are not on any kind of fast track, and therefore will not provide any clear decisions any time soon. Even if a lower court were to rule that Trump had to turn over all the documents and witnesses they've been concealing, that decision would immediately be appealed to a higher court, and then no matter what they decided, appealed again up to the Supreme Court. This would all, obviously, consume a lot of time.

Even if all the courts ruled in the Democrats' favor, it still could be many months before any evidence is uncovered, to put it another way. And it's an open question how the highest court would rule. Past executive privilege decisions indicate that the Democrats would likely win at least a partial victory, mostly because no previous president has ever claimed executive privilege in such blanket fashion. Even the limited claims made by previous presidents have been denied by the high court, so it's almost certain that Trump's blatant misuse of privilege would be curtailed at least in part. Trump has not just pushed the envelope here, he has sent the envelope through the paper shredder. It's highly doubtful that all of his claims of executive privilege are going to withstand judicial scrutiny. But how long would all of that take? Would it be worth the time, or would it delay the impeachment investigation even beyond the 2020 election?

Continue Reading »

It's hard, when the president is literally tweeting "BULLSHIT," to focus on anything else going on in the world of politics. But today I'm going to ignore the impeachment circus and focus instead on the Democratic primary race, because several important developments are simultaneously happening which could entirely redefine the race. Elizabeth Warren continues her impressive climb in the polls, Joe Biden is beginning to falter amidst all the mud Trump has been throwing, and Bernie Sanders just had an emergency heart operation. How much each of these events will impact the race is still somewhat up in the air, but we should at least be able to see some indication before the next debate is held.

Continue Reading »

Due to an interruption in my personal web connection (due to a minor windstorm, some cables outside my house came down, and I had to spend all day dealing with it and the phone company), there will be no column today. Thankfully, everything seems to now be working, so there should be a new column up tomorrow. Thanks for everyone's patience, and I apologize for the lack of column today.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

President Donald Trump and all his coterie of apologists are right now angrily focused on impeaching the credibility of the whistleblower who complained about Trump's call to the new Ukrainian leader. And, yes, "impeaching" is the right word for what they're trying to do. But it's all both meaningless and irrelevant, because the scandal has already moved beyond any questions of bias or credibility of the whistleblower, largely due to the release of both the semi-transcript of the call itself and the whistleblower's complaint. Trump and his minions are, in essence, screaming about how they're going to sue the heck out of the locksmith, while the barn doors hang wide open and all the horses are running willy-nilly across the landscape. At this point, the story is the horses who are running free, not the lock's possible failure.

Continue Reading »

This has been an extraordinary week, in a presidency chock-full of extraordinary weeks. Call it extra-extraordinary, we suppose. The country went from hearing vague things about Trump stonewalling a congressional committee to full-on impeachment in a matter of hours, it seemed. Or days, at the longest. We went from zero to impeachment in record time, giving Trump a new superlative to brag about: fastest scandal ever.

Because this situation is so extraordinary, and because Democrats are all currently missing such a gigantic messaging opportunity, today's column will be an extraordinary one as well. We're not going to spend a whole lot of time here in the introduction, because everyone already knows exactly what is going on, so none of it really needs repeating. We've just got a few short side issues to raise, and then we're going to move quickly on. This week's talking points are unique as well, because instead of seven discrete talking points, the entire rant is essentially devoted to one single word. You can probably guess what it is, from this week's column title.

Continue Reading »