When it comes to the drone strikes that Obama ordered, they were definitely out of line. I think we're in agreement that Obama's use of executive powers set was far beyond what it should have been and set a very bad precedent for the role of the President in U.S. government. The killing of U.S. citizens is a good example of the dangers that come from this sort of action, even if it was this same type of action that led to Osama Bin Laden getting taken down.
I will ask this though:
Why do you think Obama did this?
Do you think he did it for personal gain? Because this certainly didn't help his popularity. Even the super-liberal comedian Stephen Colbert called this out as disgraceful.
https://www.motherjones.com/politic...due-process-just-means-theres-process-you-do/
This is what leads me to the difference between Trump and Obama.
Both of them had made some major lies and some of those lies had some very strong commonalities. One of the most frequent types of lies you get from politicians are when they over-promise what they will accomplish. For Obama, this was promising that the Affordable Care Act would allow people to keep their health plan. For Trump, this was promising that the border wall would be paid for by Mexico. In both cases, the reality was very different than what was promised, but if you give the benefit of the doubt in both cases, you can at least see that they might have expected their promise to be what they intended to accomplish, but were just unable to actually pull off.
Now, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and neither politician should get a free pass for promising something helpful and instead delivering something harmful. Losing your healthcare plan can have dire consequences and military families shouldn't pay for a border wall.
But intentions still matter. The reason Obama wasn't impeached over his drone strikes and blundering foreign policy decisions was because as bad as they were, the driving force behind them was the national interests of the U.S.
And so when we get to the issue with Trump...
Here's the problem with that argument. Withholding funding from a foreign government for something in exchange isn't inherently wrong. This kind of stuff is done all the time in negotiations. Even in the trade war, you have all sorts of threats of tariffs and such that are for the sole purpose of getting a foreign government to provide something in return.
I've linked this before, but there's an interview from a former U.S. ambassador talking about this:
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/05/7675...or-to-russia-shocked-by-ukraine-text-messages
The media has been getting really up in arms about whether Trump had a quid pro quo or not, but the problem is not whether he had a quid pro quo. Instead, it's about whether he had a quid pro quo in order to further national interests or to further his political career.
So what when Trump waits to seek investigation on Biden's "corruption" until he starts running for president and leading in the polls, it starts to look fishy as to whether he's really looking to uncover corruption for the interests of the U.S. or for himself. When diplomats who have nothing to gain by opposing Trump
express concern over the intent of withholding funding to Ukraine, it starts to look worse. When it comes out that the
White House tried to deliberately cover up details about the Ukraine situation, it continues to look worse.
So there is ample evidence to see why Trump would pursue pressure on Ukraine for his own benefit.
On the other hand, why would his efforts be a benefit to national interests? Well, if Biden did perform corruption while in office of Vice President, it would be something we should know. Why would the president be trying to hide this? Why would he be using his personal lawyer to lead this?
I get that there is a ton of partisan bullshit surrounding all of this. I don't doubt that many dems out there care more about impeaching Trump because they don't like him above all else. Just the same, there are plenty of Republicans who are likely defending Trump more based on what is politically savvy for themselves than what any of the actual facts in this case say.
But partisanship will always be there. Hand waving the issue because some people have biases overlooks some serious issues that have credibility and how we handle this situation will have implications on what the next person stepping into the office of presidency will be allowed to do, just as Obama's over-reaching of executive actions have empowered Trump in many ways.
