In Congress where it’s very partisan — obviously very partisan
Trump is justifying his defiance of Congress by saying it’s “partisan.”
In an interview with The Washington Post, Trump said that complying with congressional requests was unnecessary after the White House cooperated with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe of Russian interference and the president’s own conduct in office.
“There is no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress where it’s very partisan — obviously very partisan,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments came as the White House made it clear that it plans to broadly defy requests for information from Capitol Hill, moving the two branches of government closer to a constitutional collision.
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In his interview with The Post, Trump maintained that the White House Counsel’s Office has not “made a final, final decision” about whether it will formally assert executive privilege and try to block congressional testimony. But he said he opposes cooperation with House Democrats, who he claimed are trying to score political points against him.
“I don’t want people testifying to a party, because that is what they’re doing if they do this,” Trump said.
It’s almost funny, to see Trump complaining about “partisanship” and testifying to a party. If it weren’t for partisanship and party-first, Trump would have been dead meat within days of taking office. For that matter he would never have been elected, because most of the Republicans would have campaigned hard against him. It’s only because they’re complete party hacks that they keep defending this execrable shell of a man no matter what he does.
The thing is, because of the electoral college, the presidency is not necessarily all that democratically elected (i.e. Dubya and Trump, both having lost the popular vote). The Congress, on the other hand, is a much more democratic (little d) than any other branch, and the House the most so. Of course, who would expect Trump to understand that, since he has no knowledge of the Constitution, the governmental structure, the history of the country, the role of Congress, the role of the President – or anything else, for that matter, except how to glom onto things.
Not to mention that Trump would never have won the election if it weren’t for the Republicans doing umpteen different Benghazi! investigations for sheer partisan reasons, during the course of which they stumbled across the emailz issue that hamstrung Clinton (with an assist from Comey).
During the campaign, when it looked like Trump was going down to defeat, Republicans like Jason Chaffetz were already bragging to reporters how they were going to tie up President Hillary Clinton in subpoenas and committee hearings for the next four years.
Nothing partisan about that, nosiree!
Not to mention, what the hell kind of argument is that?
“It’s political, so I don’t need to do it.”
It’s a trumpian kind of argument!
@iknklast:
I’d make the argument that the Senate is even less democratically elected than the president due to shithole country having even more influence there than in the electoral college. Sure their votes count more than say they do in California, but they get two senators even if they have only one representative.
BKiSA, that’s why I said the House was the most democratic. Both the Senate and the President are weighted to give the lesser populated middle of the country a huge advantage. And this is the part of the country we always hear screaming that they have no voice, that they are unheard, that no one cares about them or listens to them (as if it’s possible to shut them out). What they mean is that occasionally they get someone they don’t like, like Obama, in the White House. They have a huge voice in the Senate, and even in the House, the larger states often kowtow and bow to the wishes of the South and the Midwest because, hey, they’re the salt of the earth (these areas where once it was considered okay to own other people – yes, part of what we now call the midwest, too). This area is touted as the moral arbiter of the nation, so we give them louder voices because they are better than the rest of us – but they aren’t.
On a broader note: I’m getting really really tired of this constant use of “partisan” as a dismissive sneer. Not by people here, I mean in the discourse generally. Centrist political pundits are the worst for this.
In practically every other country on earth, it’s understood, accepted, and even appreciated that (1) voters have differing ideologies and policy preferences; and (2) political parties are a logical, sensible, and inevitable way to organize along ideological and policy lines and get things done. Of course, it’s generally acknowledged that there are times to set aside partisanship and come together in a crisis, or to call out corruption and wrongdoing within your own party, but the general idea of political parties isn’t treated as some filthy shameful practice.
Only in America (as far as I can tell), is that the case, thanks to the Founding Fathers having a bug up their asses about political parties, and relatedly hoping that America would somehow be “spared” that vulgar practice. As a result, American political institutions are designed to produce gridlock under fairly mild conditions. The only reason shit ever got done, aside from brief intervals of one-party dominance, is that for huge stretches of history, American parties were these weird coalitions of ideologically incoherent groups, where northern lefties and racist southern reactionaries would belong to the same party. And so you could peel off some liberal Republicans to support liberal policies, or some Southern Democrats to support conservative policies. And yet those were the supposed “good old days” — when parties really were more like the Red Team and the Blue Team rather than any principled differences in policy.
But of course we’re going to have to play this game again, where the eventual 2020 Dem nominee has to pay lip service to how he or she will magically find a way to get Republican Congresspeople to support his or her policies. Joe Biden is particularly going to make me nauseous with tales of the good old days when he would hang out and drink with GOP senators, because you can’t let a little thing like opposition to civil rights get in the way of enjoying the old boys’ club! And Chris Matthews will get all weepy at the thought of Reagan and Tip O’Neill coming together over a glass of whiskey, and oh, how Irish eyes were smiling, and can’t we go back to those halcyon days….
Same here. Hitchens was ferocious on this subject.
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