Donald Trump's claim to be a wartime president is a colossal understatement. And no, I'm not referring just to Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, nor anywhere in the Middle East.
Some of the president's most ardent "Never-Trump" adversaries were encamped within his own party.
Granted, his brass knuckles stumping style earned some competing 2016 Republican presidential candidates excellent reasons for large doses of personal umbrage. And they later fully paid him back in-kind.
Sen. John McCain, R- Ariz., passed along an opposition research file to the FBI, the notorious "dirty dossier" falsely suggesting that Trump had been involved in various nefarious Russian affairs and lewd activities. The file was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steel, and later passed on to Hillary Clinton campaign organizers and the DNC.
McCain's Trump payback didn't end there. He literally left his hospice bed to vote down a Republican health bill that would have ended and replaced the Affordable Care Act (aka, Obamacare.)
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, got in his own vengeful smack-down licks by casting a dissenting vote that would otherwise have resulted in Trump's unanimous exoneration of any impeachable offenses by GOP Senate members.
Two Democratic congressmen, Reps. Brad Sherman of California, and Al Green of Texas, filed the first proposed article of impeachment in July 2017. It charged President Trump with obstruction of justice over his firing of former FBI Director James Comey.
Impeachment obsession later went full-frenzy after Dems won control of the House.
Bands of House Democrats scurried about looking for threads of evidence attaching Trump to impeachable grounds much like Lilliputians tying down slumbering Gulliver.
Beginning in December 2019, Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, commenced official hearings to dig for any possible Trump actions potentially linking him to collusion with Russian operatives. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., of the Ways and Means Committee set out to investigate Trump's business tax history. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, of the Committee on Oversight was dispatched to probe alleged miscellaneous scandals. But it was Intelligence Committee chair, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who really ran the transparently partisan impeachment show trial; with everyone realizing full well that the Republican-controlled Senate would end it.
Meanwhile, special counsel Robert Mueller's anxiously-awaited April 2019 investigation report debunked media ballyhooed Democrat charges that the Trump campaign had conspired with Russian operatives to influence the 2016 presidential election.
A new pseudo impeachment opportunity soon arose again when an anonymous "whistleblower" accused the president of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 election."
Ginned-up controversy associated with the charges centered upon Trump's now-famous April 21 call to the Ukrainian president stating, "I would like you to do us a favor though," then asking later that Zelensky "look into" activities by potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in Ukraine.
The accusation implied that Trump's request for "favors" was implicitly tied to a quid pro quo understanding conditioned upon release of $391 million of congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine. In mid-November, Trump publicly released a transcript of the brief 16-minute-long conversation that the Senate later determined suggested no such inference.
Plus, the money had already been released well before the Ukrainians even realized there might have been any issue.
Undeterred in her mission, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., unveiled two approved articles of impeachment against Trump on December 10, charging him with "abuse of power and obstruction of justice."
On February 5, the president was acquitted of the two charges following two long months of political theater.
During the time all Senate attention was focused on the impeachment charade, the president's attention and actions were concentrated on a far more serious matter.
On January 4, ignoring bad information and advice from the World Health Organization that a deadly new COVID-19 virus that was spreading in Wuhan, China, posed no human-to-human transmission threat, President Trump shut down all flights from that country.
Nearly two months later, on February 24, House Speaker Pelosi spent several hours in San Francisco's Chinatown to encourage people to visit shops and restaurants that had lost customers amid growing fears of exposure to the COVID-19 virus.
"You should come to Chinatown. Precautions have been taken by our city. We know there is concern about tourism throughout the world but we think it's very safe to be in Chinatown and hopefully, others will come," Pelosi said.
Speaker Pelosi's opinions on the mater had changed dramatically by April 19 when Fox News Sunday Morning host Chris Wallace questioned her criticism of protestors who were "taking to the streets, pushing back against some more stringent [stay-at-home] restrictions in some states." Wallace then asked her, "Can you understand why they're doing that?"
Pelosi responded, "No, not, not really because what we have to do is, is, is shelter in place. That is really the answer."
She is following her own advice. Having shut down business of the nation's House, she is now safely sequestered in her own.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of several books, including "Cyberwarfare: Targeting America, Our Infrastructure, and Our Future" (2020), "The Weaponization of AI and the Internet: How Global Networks of Infotech Overlords are Expanding Their Control Over Our Lives" (2019), "Reinventing Ourselves: How Technology is Rapidly and Radically Transforming Humanity" (2019), "Thinking Whole: Rejecting Half-Witted Left & Right Brain Limitations" (2018), "Reflections on Oceans and Puddles: One Hundred Reasons to be Enthusiastic, Grateful and Hopeful" (2017), "Cosmic Musings: Contemplating Life Beyond Self" (2016), "Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom" (2015) and "Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax" (2011). He is currently working on a new book with Buzz Aldrin, "Beyond Footprints and Flagpoles." Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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