Using the Full Weight of U.S. Diplomatic Power to Force Ireland to Spend at Trump Branded Properties
May 19, 2019 story from CNN:
A standoff is heating up between advance teams from the Irish and US governments over a potential presidential visit next month to the Emerald Isle.
President Donald Trump is expected to travel to Ireland for two nights during his visit to Great Britain and France to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day.
An Irish government source with knowledge of ongoing discussions told CNN that the White House is insisting the Irish prime minister, or taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, come to the President's golf course in Doonbeg to host a meeting between the two leaders.
According to the source, "The Irish government feel that protocol dictates that any event they host for President Trump should be at a venue of their choosing and certainly not at an hotel owned by Trump."
It’s a simple question: is there an emoluments clause or not? Any failure to, at the very least, investigate this violation of the Constitution will have the effect of changing the Constitution, wink at corruption, and endorse the looting of America. If we’re afraid to impeach Trump because he’s strong and we are weak, we could at least impeach the Secretary of State, who won’t be in office for long anyway.
As TNR recently stated in an article titled The Democrats Are Overthinking Trump’s Impeachment. Naturally.:
Nothing could make Democrats look weaker than spending the next two years warning that Trump is an existential threat to American democracy, then telling voters that it’s not worth the trouble to impeach him. “I wish him and his family, his administration and staff would have an intervention for the good of the country,” Pelosi remarked on Thursday. The House of Representatives has the constitutional power to stage that intervention as well.
The Pedophile’s Plea Agreement
Remember pizzagate, the fake Clinton pedophile scandal? Trump has a real one, tied to Jeffrey Epstein, who is also connected with the women who claimed Trump raped her when she was 13 (HuffPo, 2016).
Here’s a story from Newsweek:
Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficked underage girls, and President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta, then a federal prosecutor in Miami, illegally kept details of Epstein's plea deal from victims, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.
If we’re afraid to impeach Trump because he’s strong and we are weak, we could at least impeach the Secretary of Labor, who, because of his past assistance to a famous pedophile, will probably be in office for a long time under Trump.
Impeach Barr: Part 1
Here’s the argument of Jonathan Chait:
There is no other department in government in which mere norms, not laws, are all that stand between democracy as we know it and a banana republic. Barr has revealed his complete unfitness for this awesome task. Nearly two more years of this Trumpian henchman wielding power over federal law enforcement is more weight than the rickety Constitution can bear.
Impeach Barr: Part 2
The Q conspiracy theory has succeeded, and the U.S. Attorney General is investigating anyone who dared to suggest Trump has a connection to Russia.
See also, here at DKos, Bill Barr's Distract and Distort Mission -- Already very much in Progress
All of that Without Mueller
Notice what’s not on the list: the Mueller Report. Congress should not wait for a Republican to do the investigating that it should be doing for itself.
Conclusion
In summary, I think that at the very least, Congress should be doing the sorts of investigations that get more attention from the lapdog press, which occasionally wants to stand up to Trump (except for the NY Times itself, see Hicks, Hope). H/T AbbreviatedPundit Round-up for the list of impeachable offenses from The Atlantic.