"Have Donald Trump and Trumpism and fanatical Trump voters so unbalanced the United States of America that the law does no longer apply to the president of the United States?" he asked.
December 4, 2018

From yesterday:

Last night, Lawrence O'Donnell put it all into perspective:

"Well, it was a day of high crimes for the president of the United States. The Congress that adopted articles of impeachment in the House Judiciary Committee against President Richard Nixon would have used each of the president's tweets today about Robert Mueller's investigation as a separate article of impeachment against this president," he said.

"Today the president of the United States committed a crime in public, on Twitter, a federal crime. An impeachable high crime. The question now is not whether the president is a criminal or whether the president is impeachable. The question now is, has America lost its mind? Has America lost its legal mind? Have Donald Trump and Trumpism and fanatical Trump voters so unbalanced the United States of America that the law does no longer apply to the president of the United States? And the answer might be yes.

"The answer might be yes because there was no new collective cry in Congress today for impeaching the president after he committed a crime in public. That is the benefit the president is now reaping from his years of utterly insane and reckless tweeting, beginning with his pathological lying about President Obama's birth certificate on Twitter. Twitter is the form where the president lies more than anywhere else. So the country has grown used to the president being crazy on Twitter, just outright crazy. The country has become accustomed to shrugging off Trump tweets. Filled with madness, mistakes and inexplicable quotation marks. In his most criminal quote of today, Donald Trump actually put quotation marks around the words 'president' as if he's not really president. Such is the dementia of a typical Trump tweet, and so Trump tweets are not taken seriously.

"But are they not taken seriously to the point that Donald Trump can commit a crime on twitter and it will be ignored? Ignored by the special prosecutor who is investigating Donald Trump? Here is the most criminal Trump tweet of the day."

"Article 1 of the impeachment articles adopted by the House Judiciary committee against President Nixon said in his conduct of the office of the president of the United States Richard M. Nixon in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute of the president of the United States and to the best of his ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed has prevented, obstructed and impeded the administration of justice.

"That was Article 1. Article 1 specified that the president, quote, 'using the powers of his high office engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede or obstruct the investigation.' Count five of Article 1 of the Nixon impeachment articles said the president should be impeached and removed from office for, quote, 'obtaining the silence or influencing the testimony of witnesses.' Influencing the testimony of witnesses, that is what Donald Trump was doing today. And expressed sympathies for Paul Manafort while Paul Manafort was on trial. The president was trying to influence a federal criminal jury in Paul Manafort's case with tweets. That would have been an impeachment count against Richard Nixon if Richard Nixon did that. Because the Congress that moved against Richard Nixon had not lost its collective mind and stopped caring about the rule of law.

"Donald Trump has publicly dangled a pardon in front of Paul Manafort, saying he's thinking about it. The president is thinking about it, it's not off the table. The president is obviously hoping that Paul Manafort does not tell Robert Mueller anything incriminating he knows about Donald Trump. Count 9 of Article 1 of the impeachment articles against President Nixon said the president should be impeached from office for quote, 'endeavoring to cause prospective defendants and individuals duly tried and convicted to expect favored treatment and consideration in return for their silence or false testimony.' Donald Trump is guilty of that beyond a reasonable doubt. And so the question is, has America lost its mind? Has America lost its legal mind, has the United States Congress lost its mind? That is what Donald Trump is counting on -- that he has driven America and the Congress crazy to the point he can commit crimes publicly in writing, on Twitter and get away with it, and so he also wrote this today.

"Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to crimes that involved Donald Trump, so that tweet is lying about that. Involved Donald Trump to the point that Donald Trump was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the case where Michael Cohen pleaded guilty for the first time. And so there in that tweet is the president of the United States saying that if you give special prosecutor Robert Mueller information against the president, you should be punished as severely as possible. You should serve a full and complete sentence. Richard Nixon would not have dared say something like that publicly because Richard Nixon did not believe that America had lost its legal mind or that the Congress had lost its legal mind.

"Also today, Donald Trump tweeted, "Bob Mueller, who is a much different man than people think and his out of control band of angry Democrats, don't want the truth, they only want lies. The truth is very bad for their mission." Count 4 of Article 1 of the articles of impeachment passed against President Nixon said that President Nixon should be impeached and removed from office for quote, 'interfering or endeavoring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of the Watergate special prosecution force and congressional committees.'

"Every single one of those Donald Trump's now countless public attacks on Robert Mueller, every single Trump tweet attacking Robert Mueller is an impeachable offense, according to the Congress that brought articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, the Congress that did not lose its mind the way the Trump Republican Congress has so fully and apparently irretrievably lost its mind."

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