THE US PRESIDENT DOESN’T SEEM TO REALIZE THAT HE HAS BROKEN THE LAW

…Utah Senator, Mitt Romney

In his ignorance, Trump doesn’t realize that he is violating Article 1, Section 9, of the US Constitution.

As a Democrat, I never thought there would be a day that I would be in support of today's Republican Senator from Utah, Mitt Romney.

But when President Trump attacked the senator this weekend calling him a “pompous ass”, I had to re-think who I would want to support. 

The president had the gall to continue his rant with the following Tweet, “Somebody please wake up Mitt Romney and tell him that my conversation with the Ukrainian President was a congenial and very appropriate one, and my statement on China pertained to corruption, not politics. If Mitt worked this hard on Obama, he could have won. Sadly, he choked!” Trump tweeted.

But he did not stop there, Trump continued….“Mitt Romney never knew how to win. He is a pompous ‘ass’ who has been fighting me from the beginning, except when he begged me for my endorsement for his Senate run…..I gave it to him…. and when he begged me to be Secretary of State…I didn’t give it to him….. He is so bad for R’s!”

Oh, and some hours later, Trump suggested, with absolutely no evidence, that all Utah voters regretted their choice and that Romney should be impeached….?  Romney was elected with 62.6% of the Utah vote in 2018, way more than Trump.

President Trump has continued to say that he is “very proud” of his call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski, even though the basic transcript of the conversation shows that he was asking a political favor of the Ukraine President for help with his re-election.  That’s a pure case against Article 1, of the US Constitution, by the US President..

But again, Trump didn’t stop there by going again to his favorite political tool….Twitter.

“’I’m hearing that the Great People of Utah are considering their vote for their Pompous Senator, Mitt Romney, to be a big mistake. I agree! He is a fool who is playing right into the hands of the Do Nothing Democrats! #IMPEACHMITTROMNEY,” Trump tweeted.

This president just doesn’t know when to stop.

For example, our know-noting president doesn’t know that a US Senator cannot be impeached.  Instead, the US Constitution gives the House or the Senate the power to expel one of its own members by a two-thirds vote.

This approach to Romney is obviously what Trump and his administration have decided to do against any Republican in Congress that comes out against the president.

Trump and his allies have decided to launch similar attacks on any other GOP members who have criticized the president.  This is all part of their broader effort to keep rank-and-file members in line.  Republicans dissidents who speak out will now become targets of any viral disinformation.

After Trump had suggested on the White House lawn that China investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, Romney denounced the president.  He is one of the few Republicans to do so.  By asking China to do this, this is also against the rules as stated in the US Constitution.

“When the only American citizen President Trump singles out for China’s investigation of his political opponent in the midst of the Democratic nomination process, it strains credulity to suggest that it is anything other than politically motivated,” Romney tweeted on Friday. “By all appearances, the President’s brazen and unprecedented appeal to China and to Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden is wrong and appalling.”

Only one other GOP senator has criticized Trump’s behavior, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse.

“Hold up: Americans don’t look to Chinese commies for the truth,” Sasse told the Omaha World-Herald. “If the Biden kid broke laws by selling his name to Beijing, that’s a matter for American courts, not communist tyrants running torture camps.”

But to keep the president from going after his ass, Sasse was careful to critique Democrats too.  In the same interview, he said the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) was “running a partisan clown show in the House.”

It is important for every American to understand the complicated relationship between Romney and the president.

Trump, who started and pushed the birther conspiracy theory about President Barack Obama, he had publicly endorsed Romney for president.  But after Romney’s loss to Obama, Trump went after Romney and his 2012 campaign performance.

Most people don’t understand that just as Trump was envious of the reputation that John McCain had with the American people, Trump knows that Romney’s loss to Obama showed that Romney actually outperformed Trump in the popular vote.  Romney won 47.2% of the vote in 2012, to Trump’s 46.1 percent in 2016.  But unlike Trump, Romney had failed to win enough smaller states to secure an electoral college victory.

Another strike against Romney from Trump is that Romney had been critical of Trump during the 2016 campaign, calling Trump a “phony.”  But Romney decided to break bread with Trump after he won the presidency.  At the time, Trump was actually considering Romney for his Secretary of State, but he settled on Rex Tillerson for that position.

Another strike against Romney is that when he won his Senate seat in 2018, he promised in an op-ed article before his swearing-in that he would stand up to Trump as needed. 

However, until this week, Romney has stayed mostly on the sidelines.

The hope of the Democrats is that more Congressional Republicans will become like Romney and speak out the truth about their president.

Copyright G. Ater 2019