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Comment by amykyta | Hacker News Reader

I’ve seen the impeachment described as illegitimate somehow. It was political sure, no doubt about it. But he tried to use his office to coerce a foreign government to take down his political opponent. That should be a fireable offense. He only escaped it because of purely political defense.

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The Obama administration used its office to take down a political opponent, on the basis of improbable claims of collusion with Russia, backed by an opposition research report funded by the Clinton campaign.

Is any of this good? Of course not. Both sides have been abusing their office in a similar way. I am struggling how people can get comfortable with “when my team does it it’s justified, but how does the other team dare to do it!”.

"on the basis of improbable claims of collusion with Russia"

Didn't Trump actually ask Russia to hack the democrats?

Nope

He literally said those exact words on live television.

For one thing, he literally didn’t. Prove me wrong.

Also, he figuratively didn’t.

I'll bite: https://youtu.be/-e-Vka_HkRU?t=107

Yeah, as I said.

You know this isn’t an actual sincere attempt to collude with Russia, right? People can’t seriously believe that’s what this is.

Not to mention, he was talking about Hillary’s lost emails, not hacking the democrats.

Wow. We all saw it happen.

How do you reach a common ground with people who reject the evidence of their eyes and ears?

You can't.

I would ask you this question. Let’s start by referencing the supposed incident in question. Where did your eyes/ears see and hear this?

We absolutely didn’t. Show me if you know otherwise.

Please see nl's comment elsewhere in this thread.

This is at the level of people who claim they saw Sarah Palin say "I can see Russia from my house". If it really happened, and "we all saw it", it should be trivial for you to produce a video of Trump asking Russia to hack the Democrats.

Direct quote from Trump:

"Russia, if you are listening I hope you are able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing."

https://youtu.be/-b71f2eYdTc?t=20

From https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-asked-russia-to-...

The emails under discussion were on Hilary Clinton's personal email server, and had been deleted. So the two questions you should ask are:

1) How would a hack, initiated after Trump's statement, find those emails - even in principle?

2) Even if we posit that such a hack was requested, how does that transmute into a request to "hack the Democrats"?

1) You really think Trump understands that?

2) It's a direct request to hack the Democratic presidential candidate and party standard bearer.

> 2) It's a direct request to hack the Democratic presidential candidate and party standard bearer.

So if someone were to hack Trump's emails, do you think it would be an accurate statement to say that they "hacked the Republicans"?

While he was running for president as the candidate of the Republican party? Yes of course!

Does your argument really come down to trying to parse a difference between Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party?

I'd note the "hack the Democrats" was the OPs characterisation of what happened. If you'd prefer to claim that Trump asked Russia to hack Hillary Clinton I'm not going to try to argue that point.

I think "Trump asked the Russians to find Hillary Clinton's emails" is entirely uncontroversial. Saying he asked the Russians to "hack" the "Democrats" involves two inferences and seems like a statement designed to maximize discord. The Russians are not in Donald Trump's chain of command, there are other ways to find her emails than hacking, and Hillary Clinton is not "the Democrats".

This will be my last post on the topic because it reminds of the "blue dress/green dress" thing someone posted way up thread. I'm sure you're posting in good faith, and I assure you I am too, but it is just not at all obvious to me why someone would say "Donald Trump asked the Russians to hack the Democrats" instead of "Donald Trump asked the Russians to find Hillary Clinton's emails".

Not only that, but this is obvious political riffing.

Elsewhere you've asked people to prove that Trump made the statement, which people did. Please now prove that this was "obvious political riffing," whatever that means.

No, his statement, which was linked, was not in fact what the claim said.

Okay, he didn't say "the Democrats," he said Clinton's emails. Is that really better? Please prove he was joking.

> Even if we posit that such a hack was requested

Which we do, and was the whole point

> how does that transmute into a request to "hack the Democrats"?

Hillary Clinton (the person under discussion) was the Democratic candidate for president at the time.

You still haven't answered how a hack could find deleted emails?

I'm not arguing that Trump knows anything about how hacking works at all.

He made a very obvious joke at one of his rallies.

Right. When he does it, it's so "obviously" a joke. And yet something tells me he would have no problem accepting help from anyone, legally or otherwise, if he thought he wouldn't get caught. I submit that maybe there are some things that presidential candidates should not even joke about, because even the whiff of impropriety should be anathema to decent, serious people.

Just a coincidence that Russia then proceeded to do exactly what he asked for?

> The Obama administration used its office to take down a political opponent, on the basis of improbable claims of collusion with Russia, backed by an opposition research report funded by the Clinton campaign.

The opposition research was initialy funded by the RNC.

He violated campaign finance laws, but there was not enough evidence to support the charge of misuse of office in a treasonous manner.

You may personally be convinced of the President's wrondoing, but to try a sitting President for what is a grave offense, there are much higher standards of evidence and procedure.

The whole impeachment was an exercise in power from day one, but Democrats made a huge fuss about a similar exercise in power by Trump: appointing a Justice t the Supreme Court in an election year. Both were actions that where the actors were entirely within their rights (The lower house has the right to impeach, and the upper house has the right to try the President; similarly, a President absolutely has the right to appoint a Justice of the Supreme Court for as long as he is President.), but the President made no bones about what the whole thing was, while the Democrats tried hard to couch their act in moral and ethical terms. Judging by the way the election went (razor thin margins at almost every level with 70+ million popular votes for Trump), the public were having none of it.

> You may personally be convinced of the President's wrondoing, but to try a sitting President for what is a grave offense, there are much higher standards of evidence and procedure.

Some of us remember the good old days when a (Democratic) president almost got impeached for lying about getting oral sex from an intern, so I'm not really convinced about your argument here.

But he admitted to lying. That’s pretty rock solid evidence.

There are tapes of Trump sounding like a two-bit mobster. The GOP did not dispute the evidence, they just refused to convict because it wasn't "serious" enough.

If Trump had backed down that might have made sense, but instead it emboldened his lawlessness. We're now at the point where his undermining of the voting process is entirely expected and hardly even noteworthy.

Disputing the vote and questioning results is very common in elections. Don't pretend like Trump is the first to do this, or the first to insinuate that fraud has influenced the result. It's pretty run-of-the-mill politicking. Here's Hillary doing the same thing, except she's blaming nefarious foreign actors instead of the local machine:

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/18/hillary-clinton-tr...

The simple fact is that Hillary simply couldn't believe she was defeated, and did as much or more disputing of results. That doesn't make her an enemy of democracy, and neither does Donald Trump's caterwauling. But if you read the recent news reporting or watched the current President-elect's speeches, you would think that the very foundations of Democracy are shaken. Utter hogwash.

What the fuck crime is “sounding like a two bit mobster”. Is that walking around saying “yous guys”?

nit: Nixon did not get impeached, but Clinton _did_ get impeached: he just wasn't convicted in the senate.

I agree with your point, still.

It was not campaign finance laws that’s incorrect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Donald_Trump?wp... Charges were abuse of power and obstruction of investigation. That Democrats were itching to impeach him doesn’t change the reality that he abused his office to advance his own political interests.

I'm aware of what the charges were. I'm referring to the original investigation of Muller's that had these findings.

We will never know whether any of Trump's wrongdoing rises to the level necessary to convict, because the Senate decided not to call any witnesses or subpoena any documents.

I think the Supreme Court Justice issue is way more complicated than that. When going down the nuclear option, both Reid and McConnell knew this was going to happen, it was just a matter of who ended up on top.

There was always going to be a scramble for one side to change the rules, get a leg up, and pull the ladder up behind them. I suppose that's endemic to a 2-party system, but that's what happens when hard-earned consensus is destroyed. Not blaming Dems/GOP here, I'm just saying this was the inevitable consequence and it's more complicated than you're letting on.

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