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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNewsweek: REMEMBER PAUL MANAFORT PICKED MIKE PENCE
https://www.newsweek.com/next-president-donald-trump-pence-manafort-1085151A now convicted felon and a Russia asset, Paul Manafort, picked Mike Pence to be V.P..
The astonishing claim by Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen that he was directed by the president to pay hush-money to two women before the 2016 election has some renewing the call for Trump's impeachment.
While it is unlikely that Trump will be charged for breaking federal campaign finance laws due to longstanding regulations within the Justice Department that a sitting president cannot be indicted, Congress can still determine if Tuesday's events are grounds for impeachment. Former Trump aide Steve Bannon told White House Bloomberg reporter Jennifer Jacobs that "today clarifies that November is a referendum on impeachment, an up or down vote."
If Trump were to be removed from office, Vice President Mike Pence would take his place as commander-in-chief for the remainder of Trump's first term until 2020. Pence has dutifully stood by the president during his time in the White House, but little attention has been paid to how the former governor of Indiana rose to the position of the vice presidency during the 2016 election.
Before Trump officially announced that Pence would be his running mate, campaign chairman Paul Manafort was the man behind the mirror making sure it happened, according to a New York Times report from 2016.
Manafort was found guilty by a jury on Tuesday on eight counts of financial crimes, including tax fraud, hiding foreign bank accounts and bank fraud. The case was the first to be brought to trial as part of Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
manor321
(3,344 posts)Was he really completely out of the loop? We'll see.
Mopar151
(9,965 posts)Or anybody else, for that matter? My personal take is that the guy is a couple steps behind Dan Quayle
Botany
(70,291 posts)My guess is that Pence was a Russian asset or he had Russian connections.
PatSeg
(46,794 posts)material on him too. There is no way Pence is squeaky clean.
Fritz Walter
(4,281 posts)Two years ago, that meant a LOT. How else could a serial breaker of most/all 10 commandments appeal to the thumpers? Enough to get out the vote in the fly-over states.
atreides1
(16,046 posts)What appealed to the thumpers most, was that their support of Trump would get them a place at the table! They wanted access to the power...and now they're trying to push their agenda, with the backing of the White House!!!
ToxMarz
(2,154 posts)or an evil genius. I guess time will tell.
dchill
(38,320 posts)"I remember, don't worry, how could I ever forget
It's the first time, the last time we ever met
But I know the reason why you keep your silence up, oh no you don't fool me
Well the hurt doesn't show, but the pain still grows
It's no stranger to you and me
I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord
Well been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh Lord"
Phil Collins
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)and the Pence abomination that is part of it
NYETNYET
(212 posts)Not only did manafort set it up with pence, he had to fake 'plane' trouble to do it. It wasn't easy to make sure pence was picked. Keep in mind, pence took over the transition team. Pence is the one that gave the go ahead to flynns appointment. Pence is the one that made sure no one looked real close at Flynn or a few other unsavory actors joining the WH. staff. His job has been to stand quietly behind the idiot with a really creepy look on his face. I would trust a starving rabid jackal before him.
In a world of carnival barkers and media hounds, Pence could stand back with that impenetrable facial expression and blend into the curtains. There is no way that he knows nothing and I would find it hard to believe that Mueller isn't looking at him just like the others.
alwaysinasnit
(5,037 posts)Please see dixiegrrrrl's post
https://upload.democraticunderground.com/10029892213
wiggs
(7,788 posts)you!) aren't saying more about how careful we should be allowing an illegitimate, small, compromised, lying potus continue to do damage to the country every day.
They know more than we do...and the conspiracy and potential compromise is clear for all willing to look.
I understand why McConnell, Ryan, Rohrbacher are silent...they may be involved up to their necks....but for supposedly normal republicans who have seen the intel what are they waiting for? Waiting for dems to come along and fix everything? Waiting for journalists? Waiting for Mueller to expose everything and then wipe the egg off their faces? Or are they waiting for everything to hit the fan and hope that a new RW supreme court will keep the power with the gop for at least another two years?
getagrip_already
(14,248 posts)that if they come out against trump they will be destroyed in both the short and long term. These guys usually end up with some very cushy place to call work when they leave office. It could be a think tank, or lobbying firm, or law firm. They are set for life, as long as they don't piss off the money managers.
They know it isn't just the republican voters that will punish them for coming out against trump. It's future employers and benefactors that can abandon them as well. They fear that as much as losing the power and prestige of being senators.
Cowards. But they have reason to be afraid. It's easier to just keep low and be an enabler.
Racerdog1
(808 posts)He saw an asshole that would agree to anything, including selling out to putin.
certainot
(9,090 posts)he was cochair of the mccain campaign when limbauhg refused to support mccain until mccain picked palin - just in time to save the GOP convention.
manafort had russian connections then
has limbaugh been working for putin too?
getagrip_already
(14,248 posts)and russians like to document those.
Remember he was arrested returning from jamaica with viagra under someone elses name. He bought a felony for that. Now there is nothing wrong with a guy wanting to enhance private times, but consider where rush was coming from.
Jamaica is rife with child prostitution.
Connect the dots. They are as big as volkswagons.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)while this hired man was supposedly choosing Trump's successor? Simply not credible. It's widely believed that Trump didn't want Pence, not his kind of person at all, and that Manafort along with Trump's family and others, helped push Pence on Trump.
But that this menial agent (by billionaire standards) would pick the Republican Party's mostly likely next president? No.
Remember, Pence was a Koch alliance-approved candidate for their man in the WH well before. So was Paul Ryan and so was Orrin Hatch, for #1s, 2 and 3 in the presidential succession.
A number of those who were first named to Trump's cabinet, to act as agents of destruction of government from inside (and thus incidentally in line also), were also positioned by or acceptable to the Kochs and people like them.
Both SCOTUS nominees were ALSO provided to Trump by the Koch alliance-backed Heritage Foundation, on a list that was pre-approved by the Koch alliance (Kavanaugh was approved and added later).
These people, and others of their sort, own and control the Republican Party. None of that's coincidental, and the idea that the right's #1 presidential successor, especially given the extremely likely event that Trump would be removed from office, was not their choice is simply not credible.
Another thought is that, though Manafort is strongly believed to have been serving Russia's interests as Trump's campaign manager, so far Pence's only known connections with Russia are via the inevitable proximity through his presence in the campaign after being named VP. If hired-man Manafort chose Pence (impossible), it would be reasonable to think Pence was actually Putin's choice. And what would the Koch alliance of several hundred (at least) American wannabe centi/billionaire kleptocrats be doing while that was going on?
jmbar2
(4,832 posts)Xtian Dominionists have long dreamed of having one of their own as President. Pence is "the annointed one". Russia was hoping that Trump would quickly lift sanctions, and then implode, leaving a weak president who would be solely focused on an insular religious agenda. The evangelical right is easily manipulated. Keep them in power and Russia can do its dirty work in peace.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Keep it simple. But yes about the religious right being involved.
However, just imagining, from there I'd guess a different course. If the temporary alliance on the right between extremist billionaires and the religious right (a fair amount of overlap of course) ever succeeded in taking over a good part of our nation, my guess is we'd see a lot of imprisoned or even dead secular rich people as dominionists consolidated power, if only temporarily. Trump would likely be disposed of the first day.
Pence? He's waiting. Beyond that couldn't guess if his intensely discipline would end with him as a viciously ruthless agent of someone above him in the hierarchy, a viciously ruthless person at the top, or dead. Just who's his competition for power?
Russia? Dominionist leaders seek ultimate power. Extremists are really bad cooperators, they don't believe in negotiating, and Russia's a pissant little nation. Our military could take it out any time, and they might just choose to remember that Satan was supposed to have massed his forces in Russia and Iran.
Not that I think it could happen or result in anything but civil war and reestablishment of democracy, state by state. Authoritarian government operating a faux democracy like so many other fallen democracies is my guess for most likely worst possibility. But for sure we know dominionist leaders operating behind curtain #4 are doing doing their best.
jmbar2
(4,832 posts)I suspect the Russians would view them as easily co-optable. The Doms have been focusing on getting their own into military leadership positions over the past decade. (See Military Religious Freedom Foundation MRFF for background). Russia is also bolstering its religious extremists. Perhaps they are hoping that they will eventually tie up together in a manner similar to how organized crime has crossed international boundaries.
Could be a huge miscalculation on their part.
There is a lot of overlap between Dominionists and the US oligarchy, so they will probably integrate fairly well. Just a hunch.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)I believe this would require a degree of extended cooperation that hard-core social and religious right wingers are simply not capable of. Wherever they get power, these are the planet's big, bloody troublemakers, for themselves and everyone else. And they'd all have armies and WMD.
Fun speculation, kind of like a short alternative to turning on a horror movie.
Blue Owl
(49,913 posts)n/t
Lonestarblue
(9,880 posts)Pence has more in common with Trump than one might suppose. His family business, Kiel Bros. Oil Company, declared bankruptcy in 2004, leaving the states of Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois to clean up the sites they had polluted so badly. So far, Indiana alone has spent over $21 million on cleanup, and the job isnt done yet. Meanwhile the remaining sites are polluting everything around them. Pences business tactics are just like Trumps: take as much money out of the business as possible and then leave investors with nothing, or in Pences case leave taxpayers with the bill for cleaning up their mess. So much for his nonexistent Christian values.
The Liberal Lion
(1,414 posts)We Americans have dug ourselves into a DEEP hole allowing that orange gollum to illegally sit in our white house. This nightmare is bigger than trump, he's only the face of it. The entire GOP has orchestrated a coup. This is not hyperbole, this is history. Impeach trump and you still have the full mechanism in place that defrauded our country in the first place. Win the midterms (at least the House) and you still have the mechanism in place that carried out this fraud sharing power. The situation we Americans are in, those who don't support trump whatever their political confession is, is perilous. No matter what we do America will lose. Keep trump, and America continues to receded from the world stage while economic and social catastrophe looms, Get rid of trump and not only do you deal with the millions of those in the trump cult who will act out in a emotional way, but you still have in place the corrupt mechanism that got him into the White House in the first place. There is no easy road here.
Rene
(1,183 posts)duforsure
(11,882 posts)Many other ruthless murdering and corrupt criminal dictators, yet trump wants people to believe he's a fine guy. He was installed in that position for trump by Putin more than likely. Just like others were also .