We need more people like Me. Cohen holding public office. Sadly, I think he's correct about Trump's re-election prospects as well. I wish the Democrats had someone strong to unite the party, but I don't see anyone emerging at the moment.
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Speaking as a former long-time Republican, I believe the impeachment case against Trump is valid and long overdue. This guy is a menace to society and the world. The sooner we rid ourselves of him, the better. Pence is no prize, but a chastised and removed president would likely keep Pence's worst instincts in check.
I watched much of the impeachment hearings, and that fiasco reinforced my judgement for ditching this worthless and dangerous party years ago.
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Despite his many flaws, Nixon did have some talents, including his foreign policy efforts. Trump has NO discernable talents, unless you want to reach so low as to count crudeness, cruelty, and vileness. How anyone ever thought it was a good idea to vote for Trump is beyond me. When you are casting your ballot in 2020, just remember Trump being so low as to suggest that the honorable husband of a widow, who is facing her first Christmas without him, might be in hell. Nixon would never do something so vile.
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@rox, surprisingly enough, he also had a pretty good record on the environment. He signed some of or basic environmental laws: the clean air act, the clean water act and the endangered species act. He also established the EPA.
But that was in the days when support for a clean environment was bi-partisan. Trump would just as soon dismantle all of that legacy.
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"Trump does not believe in the law. He has no respect for the law. He has no respect for institutions. He's totally amoral."
And contemporary Republicans are just fine with that.
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Funny you should site the sitting American president for not respecting the law after everything in the current investigations has shown just how careless Democrats and the FBI have been. @Alan R Brock
"Trump can never do that. Trump does not believe in the law. He has no respect for the law. He has no respect for institutions. He’s totally amoral. And I think he’s going to get re-elected."
That last line sends shivers up your spine. I said it before and I'll say it here again: "Trump is not just a menace to the United States, he's a menace to the world."
His ideas about foreign policy - if you can call them "ideas" and "policies" - are manifestly dangerous and perhaps irreparable. His goal of crippling or maybe abandoning NATO might be one example of his malfeasance. But perhaps this is just Putin, the ventriloquist, talking through Trump, the useful dummy.
As an American living in a small idyllic French island in the Caribbean, that distance from my home turf usually insulates me emotionally from the day-to-day struggles and devolution of our democracy that citizens living in the States have to face from morning to night under the sway of Trump and his cult. But, now my insulation has been fried and it is shorting out. The result?
Sheer terror...
1
In a nutshell. "The difference was, you had three networks, and basically three major newspapers, which had some ability to filter information through respected procedures. You didn’t have social media, and you didn’t have Fox, which is kind of state-owned propaganda. And that has changed, where people now have many platforms they turn to for information or disinformation."
Let’s cut the revisionist nonsense about Nixon. He opened a back door channel to Hanoi via a Taiwanese-American socialite in L.A. - promising a better deal if elected thereby stalling the Paris Peace talks. LBJ called him on it. He lied. LBJ knew it and almost jumped back in the game to rescue the Democrats from Humphrey. Treason. Tens of thousands more Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese conscripts and civilians died. Orders of magnitude more were wounded. Kissinger is a War Criminal, as was McNamara and Rand Inc. and all those that authorized dumping IBM keypunch cards in batch processors to compute ‘victory is at hand’.
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This new liberal fixation on Nixon strikes me equally as peculiar as the sudden liberal rehabilitation of G. W. Bush.
Look: Nixon was worse by far than all modern presidents and I can fully back that up with just one example. The White House tapes show that an enraged Nixon wanted to drop nuclear weapons on North Vietnam. Henry Kissinger talked him out of it. When Kissinger is The Voice of Conscience in an administration, nothing - repeat: NOTHING - can possibly get worse than that.
Case closed.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
2
William Cohen sounds genuinely surprised to hear the information about John Jacob Rhodes and Barber Conable, reported in the Atlantic, recently. This is almost 46 years later, yet he hadn't heard it. And he says Trump has "turned the party of the Republicans into a cult following."
It is enlightening to read Cohen's answers. His thoughts are refreshingly authentic. It's invigorating to hear what many of us feel is true from a true conservative Republican, rather than the sycophantic, bombastic drivel spewed by today's Republican "leaders."
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He’s totally amoral. And I think he’s going to get re-elected.
Of course he is going to get reelected. Putin got him elected last time and it paid off in spades (he got Crimea, Syria and sanctions stalled.)
Anyone who doesn't think Putin won't spend 50 times what he spent last time is a fool. And I guarantee you Putin is already working on distorting the ballot box directly this time.
4
Senator and Secretary of Defense Cohen has it right. A president who:
• Calls journalists “enemies of the state”
• Tells 4 American Congresswomen that they should go back to their countries; and
• Calls other members of congress “human scum”
- does not have a presidential temperament.
And I wonder what kind of person cruelly demeans a grieving spouse and insinuates that her husband -- a universally beloved and deceased member of Congress –- might be looking up from hell?
The only person I know who would do that (who would even THINK of doing that) is Donald Trump.
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The problem with American democracy (or lack of it) has very little to do with whether it is Nixon or Trump. The fact that all the presidents, Republican or Democratic, have committed excesses and have largely gotten away with it. Therefore it is now incumbent on the US to switch to Parliamentary form of democracy under which the head of the government is under the immediate watch of the parliament 24/7. Boris Johnson of the UK cannot come even remotely close to Mr. Trump in his lies, in his mismanagement, in his womanizing, in his corruption and in his lack of mannerism even as a human being. The American President today is worse than any authoritarian ruler one can think of around the world. Your next door head of governments of Canada is much better behaved, respectable and circumspect because their form of government demands and imposes it on him.
What a really scary thought: "Trump is going to get re-elected".
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"And I think he's going to get reelected." God, I hope he's wrong.
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5 1/2 years of Nixon
8 years or Reagan
8 years of GWB
nearly 3 years of DJT...so far
about 1/3 of my life hoping I don't have to mute the volume when I watch the news.
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Save it for the tourists. Comparing Nixon to Trump is definitely an "apples to oranges" logical fallacy. Underneath it all, we all know the drill, but love to play head games so much that reality is escaping us through the conduit of group psychology and identity politics. Unfortunately, we live in an era where presidents aren't capable of uniting the two polarized, myopic political parties that have a death grip on the government. A true Independent has been reduced to a rat on a sinking ship.
3
“And give Nixon his due on this: He believed in the law, even though he broke it. He believed in the rule of law and in institutions. I think he finally came to grips with the fact that his being president was not the same as the office of the president. His fate was not going to determine the fate of the nation. You can have different presidents, but you must respect the office itself.”
“Trump can never do that. Trump does not believe in the law. He has no respect for the law. He has no respect for institutions. He’s totally amoral. And I think he’s going to get re-elected.”
Listen to William Cohen. His words are true, necessary and correct.
But Trump is not going to get re-elected. We have many fine Democratic contenders who will beat him soundly.
Listen to William Cohen’s interview with Christine Amanpour.
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Combing recent and history 45 years ago, very illuminating article. Love political history.
2
Every elected republican has proven too craven, too cowardly, too greedy and too power hungry and too partisan to hold on to their office. They all need to go for allowing this corrupt, grifting, self sealing, personal money making presidency that is filled with unqualified people communicating on personal devices to continue with their full approval. It is an outrage.
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@Deirdre I'm an Independent, the Democrats only look good to Democrats. It's mind boggling how anyone can support the losers in either party. Outrage? Well, yeah, that's what the media calls for on a daily basis, "Where is the outrage?"
Cool heads prevail.
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@Deirdre "Every elected republican has proven too craven..."
Except Justin Amash. Let's not forget one who put his career on the line.
5
I take solace in the fact that two elementary school are still named for Nixon; Trump will have zero...
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@Dr. Pangloss
Good point I think it would be great to name a few Federal prisons after Trump
2
What hypocrisy and sanctimonious nonsense by Mr. Cohen. He attacks the journalists at Fox News as spouting "state owned propaganda" but then says how terrible it is for Trump to attack journalists. I guess it's fine to attack journalists if they're from Fox, but if they're from CNN or MSNBC it's somehow poses an imminent threat to our democracy. And how many Republicans who hate Trump are the media going to churn out, to attack Trump while at the same time claiming that Republicans are this monolithic group who are too afraid to criticize Trump? It's just so self-contradictory and ridiculous. Maybe the Republicans who are supporting Trump through this are doing so because they were voted in by constituents who want them to support Trump - like actual democracy maybe? Has that occured to Mr. "rule of law" Cohen?
3
@R.P. I didn't see Mr. Cohen calling Fox News the "enemy of the state" or saying that maybe their reporters should be beat up. And if you want to see "monolithic," did you notice the House vote on the articles of impeachment? Just because there are a few people (Republicans or former Republicans) outside of government who recognize the danger that Trump poses to this country doesn't change the fact that the Republicans "in" government have decided to go for broke in following him off the cliff.
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@R.P. “He attacks the journalists at Fox News...”
Let’s call a spade a spade here. If there are any actual journalists left at Fox News, they’re few and far between. There’s a world of difference between news networks that may lean left of the Republicans but report the facts, and outright making up lies, which is what Fox News does on a regular basis.
Slapping the label “news” on the channel doesn’t make them journalists any more than the word “newspaper” makes the National Inquirer into journalism. Fox News has outright argued in court that they have the right to lie on the air, which is something that CNN and MSNBC, for all their faults, would never dream of doing.
No one is calling Fox News the “enemy of the people,” but they shouldn’t get a pass on their lies, either.
4
Trump attacks any media outlet or journalist that offers facts that disagree with his personal narrative, including some at Fox News. And this is a man with thousands of provable lies, often easily demonstrated with video clips. Naturally, a man incapable of telling the truth would require a propaganda arm to support him, and a steady drumbeat of “rallies” to amplify his distortions with cheers and boos in all the right places.
3
Mr. Trump is so fond of nicknames I think it's time he has a new one "3". "45" will not be able to handle it if all start calling him "3".
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"Nixon at his worst wouldn't do that." If Trump gets word that Mr. Cohen said that, he'll probably call him "scum."
Mr. Cohen appears to be a decent, thoughtful, patriotic man. Oh, for the days when there were such people in leadership positions in both parties.
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President Nixon was at least honourable. He can tell what is right and what is wrong and he knew he broke the law. Time has changed. With support from the Evangelicals, they think they speak the truth just because they believe God. (Sort of like - God is on my side!)I am also saddened by what Lindsey Graham and McConnell said! I thought at least these two have conscience to choose the right path and cross party line for impeachment.
10
@GH "President Nixon was at least honourable'?
Read this, and reconsider. Nixon had no honor at all. None. He was the worst traitor to this nation since Benedict Arnold.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/nixons-vietnam-treachery.html
2
@GH Honorable? Heck no. Watch ‘Vietnam’ (Ken Burns). Learn the history. Treason of the highest order that directly cost the lives of tens of thousands of U.S. troops, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese conscripts and civilians. Honorable? Listen to the tapes (readily available on YouTube). Anti-Semitic, racist, misogynistic rants of a fascist. Set the stage for Kent State. A Chicago Police riot. Etc. Etc. Should have been tried for treason. Would have been convicted if the evidence was found and presented.
2
“What’s so dangerous about it is that presidents are elected to unite people ...He believed in the law, even though he broke it. He believed in the rule of law and in institutions.”
Trump has united tens of millions, and believes in the rule of law, and in institutions, as long as it’s his interpretation of the law, his supporters, and the institution is the Republican party.
Scary times and what’s scarier is that he’s doing this with nearly unanimous approval of the GOP.
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