The Glade 4.0

So its clear that some of us believe that Trump is the most dangerous politician this side of the Third Reich. His 'war with the media' (his words), his use of goodfacts vs realfacts has shades of 1984 and Babylon 5 in it. His demonizing minorities and "America First" agenda have, in my view, all the signs of the next Führer. Hell, he was even asking for a Soviet/North Korea/Nazi style missile parade for his inauguration.

But obviously others don't see that.
Okay, so lets play the hypothetical: Lets say he turns out to be what we think he is. What level of proof will you require? What actions would it take before you admit he has to be removed from office? What will it take to convince congressional leadership?

I require none.

These people - ... require ...

He needs to be removed when the Senate rules that he's committed impeachable offences.

Democratic or Republican? I'd say the party affiliation is critical, even though Trump clearly isn't Republican. One party's definition of treason, bribery, high crimes and misdemeanors undoubtedly differed from the other.

Would you really want Pence as president? I thought he was considered worse than Trump?

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In time, this too shall pass.

Pence at least has demonstrated self control.

Yeah, I really don't understand the point of the question. We have a government of checks and balances for a reason. Unless your hypothetical situation assumes the entire government is corrupt to the point of inaction against the executive and necessitates the people overthrow the government.

If that is the case, I think you should be answering your own question first since your threshold for the point that necessitates (violent?) overthrow would come before mine. Otherwise, it appears you're just trying to get people on record to bludgeon them with hypocrisy for not meeting the standard of your perception of their values.

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The Dude abides.

Government responds to the people-- at what point will you call your congressmen and demand he be impeached? What will make you write a letter? What will make you march in protest? What is the threshold for you to take up arms?

I think you need to realize that elections have consequences.

If that sounds smug and condescending... I agree with you. The people you're hating right now agree with you. You can either appreciate the irony of being hoist with one's own petard or get an ulcer, that's totally up to you.

That said...

I've never insulted a sitting POTUS. Personally, I think it shows a lack of class to do so. However, if you read a couple of threads here you'll see where I've expressed my opinion of "Trump the candidate". Let's just say that there were aspects of the nominee's behavior I was less than enamored with, but now he's my president and I'm hoping he achieves everything he promised to the folks that put him in office. The US won't be made "great again" without breaking a few of the other guy's sacred cows.

It always comes down to choices and the offerings on the field, and you pick one, hold your nose, and suck it up for however long the idiots in power can hold on to the pendulum before it swings the other way. The chance to affect the change you want occurs once every 4 years, there's nothing you can do between time, but every 4 years you can change the course of the nation. Jan 20th was proof of that... your response to that change is proof of that.

If you'd like to gain some clarity, I suggest you take a cruise. Lay off the internet for a bit. Get out of the news loop. You'll feel better.

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In time, this too shall pass.

For me to remove him from office? Holy cow, that would take a lot. Refusing to step down after his term, bombing American civilians, extrajudicial executions of American citizens. There's others, I'm sure. It's a pretty high bar - there's a lot of well-armed people between me and the President, and people already in place who are supposed to take care of that sort of thing.

I see what you did there.

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In time, this too shall pass.

You have to bring charges in an impeachment. Your congressman is not going to waltz in to congress and call for impeachment because some of his constituents called in to say "we don't like this guy".

So, what charges did you offer your congressman when you called? It might help others decide how to proceed.

I think you're setting the bar too high in your question, TheRiov. I believe Trump is morally despicable, temperamentally unfit, culturally and politically destructive, and utterly unqualified for the Presidency, but the fact is that he was legitimately elected in a free and fair election, so until he commits some rather blatant "high crimes and misdemeanors" in office, even I would not support impeachment. There are big picture legal, political and institutional norms against invoking impeachment that matter more in the long run than whatever damage this asshat and his supporters can do in the next 4 years. So, with that in mind, I would recommend a more moderate question - e.g., something like, "What would it take before you (i) admit that he really is the despicable, unfit, destructive, unqualified embarrassment his opponents say he is and (ii) agree that his message should be repudiated and his agenda opposed via proper political and legal process (e.g., public advocacy, Congressional opposition, independent action by the States, lawsuits when his Administration violates or fails to enforce existing laws, etc.) as much as possible until we get the chance to boot him out in 4 years?"

I approve this message.

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The Dude abides.

This, basically. You don't get to impeach someone just because you don't like him, no matter how much you don't like him. He's free to be terrible at his job. If he acts in a clearly illegal manner, then impeach the **** out of him. (Honestly, he seems to be barreling down that path himself. "Never interrupt your enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself," and all that.)

This. I'd even argue that he's obligated to be terrible, if by doing so he is keeping a promise his constituents are expecting him to keep, as long as it's allowed by the constitution. Of course, I don't think his constituents would feel he was being terrible in that case, but that's pretty much to be expected. All part of "elections have consequences".

If he ran on a platform he should keep to the platform in spite of what the opposition says or does, within the boundaries of his oath of office and the limits of his constitutional powers.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Should be interesting to see how this becomes a relevant issue again.

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The Dude abides.

It would be nice if both sides remembered this when their own guy is in power. I can't even count the number of times over the last eight years that I've tried to get my liberal friends/family to understand that no matter how much they liked Obama and trusted him to do the right thing, many of the Executive powers he asserted or continued from the Bush years were dangerous precedents in the long run. And, sadly, I'm sure there's going to be an exact flip of that script among Republicans now, just as there was during Bush's presidency.

Indeed.

"We have an increasingly lawless presidency where he is actually doing the job of Congress, writing new policies and laws without going through Congress," the guy standing over Trump's shoulder said in 2014.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/us/p ... rders.html

This is a bait question. You obviously believe this already, and for no good reason whatsoever.

Furthermore, the rhetoric of "nazi/facist/<whatever>" has been directed at every one of the last 3 Republican presidential candidates, the ones that the left now finds itself bemoaning aren't the Republican they ended up with.

I think the more pertinent question is "What level of proof would it take for you to realize that Trump is not a nazi or a facist or whatever the label is this week?" or perhaps "why should anyone take you even a little seriously with your worries about 'nazis' and such?"

I'm pretty sure the answer is "for him to turn into a liberal fantasy president."

This is what it looks like when the left does not get its way - when not only is a leftist not in the Presidency, but the left doesn't control Congress or the vast majority of state-level offices either. Let's not forget that - Trump, by himself, isn't really what's going on here. What's going on is that the Left has lost control of almost everything and is now reduced to inventing moral panic in order to try to get the right to govern as if it were the left. The problem, of course, is that the press has totally discredited itself and what was left of that credibility was blown trying to drag Hillary Clinton over the finish line. The press is great at pretending that people are staring askance at Trump's first week in office because they are and washed-up celebrities are, but really that's not what's going on.

The tone of your OP is so **** arrogant it's almost unbelievable. "Well, we've concluded he's a nazi so he must be, what level of proof will it take for you to accept our righteous conclusion?"

If people like you are scared, he's probably doing something right. It is high time someone took a gigantic **** all over the left - and as for worries about his powers, Obama set those precedents when he couldn't understand that he was elected to curb Republican excess, not to turn the USA into liberal fantasy Euro v.2.0. That message was sent in 2010, and 2014 and he - and you - still didn't get it. Liberalism is a different worldview - it isn't "progress", it isn't "inevitable" and there is no "wrong side of history".



"Their own guy?"

How quickly we forget. Trump is not the Republican's guy. The party didn't want him. He was a joke, laughed at. He alienated huge portions of the Republican establishment. They were all convinced he couldn't win. I was convinced he couldn't win. I didn't even vote for him (though I would have, had I still been living in a swing state).

The Republicans have been put on notice as well - until academia and the media return to some semblance of balance, they are expected to stand up to them. It's the left presently out shooting people, smashing windows, making up false hate crimes, and acting like lawless bandits, and they have been since the election (on and off). In the last 2 years we've seen a total abandonment of any sense of consistency - if the election results had gone the other way we'd certainly not see such minimization from the press.

The failure of the Republicans to stand up to the national media has left them with Trump. The media is not a fourth arm of government that runs without checks and balances, entitled to anything it demands, and to be a left-wing platform deciding what is and isn't acceptable.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes, the Republican establishment didn't want him, but the Republican voters clearly did. I specifically chose the word "Republican" rather than "conservative" because he is decidedly NOT a conservative, and neither is the contemporary Republican voting base. He and they are populists and nationalists, filtered through a lens of white, nominally-Christian identity politics. The actual ideological and temperamental conservatives of the old Republican elite have been riding that tiger for decades, and they finally lost control of it.

Yes, I'm sure that "tiger" is why states that went for Obama twice decided to vote against the white lady who professes to be a Methodist and at least doesn't publicly embarrass herself with brazen sexual appetites. (Even if her husband has)

The left has been "riding its own tiger" and much more blatantly so for decades. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I was critical about this when Bush was in office, and it used to get under some friends' skin. I personally don't think any executive order should be legal. If the President has an enumerated power defined in the Constitution then let him wield it. If not and it's an important issue, then make an amendment granting him such powers for X thing. I realize not many agree with me on this, and I don't care.

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The Dude abides.

Bush set the stage for abuse of presidential power, and then rather than put his foot down and insist that the rule of law would be upheld, Obama chose to make further power grabs. The reality of the situation now is that both parties have worked together to create the monster that is the Trump Administration.

To Riov's more direct point:

You begin by not acting like the sky is falling and the world is coming to an end. You begin by not calling everyone who disagrees with you a Nazi. You begin by knocking it off with the, "America is a terrible horrible racist sexist shithole," rhetoric. You begin by acknowledging that the world at large is a much better place today than it was at any point in the past.

The left has become a group of extremists. Everything they don't like is the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the world. Liberals and leftists are not the same thing. We have too many leftists, and not enough liberals.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Pretty much this. If this election hasn't proven that constantly slurring people - in the media, in public, on campuses, pretty much anywhere - then claiming the slur is really just "calling out" unacceptable behavior and they're just "Resentful" isn't a winning strategy, nothing will.

Or, to put it another way - you can't piss on people and tell them its raining. People know what piss smells like.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Executive orders are a means, not a power in themselves. They are how the President executes his office. Anything the President tells anyone to do is an "executive order"; the numbered, formalized ones are merely more significant.

When Congress creates a department or agency that department or agency is necessarily under the President's authority to execute the laws it was created to carry out. That's because, as the first line in Article II specifies: "The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.".

This can occur in one of three ways: either the agency is supervised by a person appointed by the President, and confirmed by the Senate who serves at the President's pleasure, or it can be a commission where the President can only remove members "for cause", or it can be subordinate to one of these other two methods (the FBI has a single director for a 10 year term, for example, but is subordinate to the Attorney General).

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's directorate scheme was recently found unconstitutional because it met none of these criteria.

If the President could not issue executive orders, he would not be an executive at all. The thing is, the President can only issue such orders in areas Congress has already created regulatory power. The problem is really not expansion of executive power in itself; it's that Congress has added Federal regulation to more and more areas. Many of the Federal departments we're quite used to are really fairly recent innovations. HHS was created in 1953, HUD in 1965, education in 1979, and of course DHS in the 21st Century.

In turn, much of this has been a result of people demanding national solutions to every problem.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Bush issued 166 executive orders.
Obama issued 276 executive orders.
Clinton, 308.
Reagan, 381.
FDR, 3,522.

First president to issue an executive order? Washington.

According to Wiki, anyway. There's a long history there, and it has nothing to do with Party.

A point of order, FDR had 3 full terms and part of a 4th; his numbers therefore will be distorted.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."