Day 141 of Self Quarantine             Covid 19 Deaths in U.S.:  156,000

As I begin another “Groundhog Day” in self quarantine, I am gobsmacked that the impeachment of he who shall not be named occurred in 2020.  It was this year.  It seems like two decades ago.

Norm Eisen wrote a page turner of a book to present his case to the American people for why he who shall not be named must be VOTED out of office.  Having watched the Mueller investigation fail to dislodge the Trump crime family and the impeachment and Senate trial fail to move the Senate Republicans to impeach and remove the president, Eisen presents the facts to America in A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump.

“If Trump had been removed on February 5, his denial and deflection, his refusal to deal with the virus, could have been avoided. Tens of thousands of American lives could have been spared, and millions of American jobs. If any other president were in the White House, surely there would have been an effort to address the discrimination and police violence that have led millions of Americans to protest. Instead, Trump inflamed tensions and responded to complaints of excessive force with more of the same, denying it all the while. He went so far as to claim tear gas was not fired on peaceful protesters outside the White House even though the world saw it with their own eyes. In the months since the impeachment trial, we have the latest turns in Trump’s endlessly repeating pattern of abuses and obstructions. As a commentator once said, there are not many Trump scandals. There is just one. And it has turned deadly.

“You have the power to stop the next scandal, and the one after that too. By voting. By doing so in such large numbers that there can be no challenging the results or our message. By turning out across the country and making your choices known not just at the top but all the way down the ballot. By ousting not just Trump but his enablers in the Senate and the House.

“Will that solve all our nation’s problems— the underlying ills that gave us Trump? No. But until the uncivil war is over, the peace cannot begin. Judging the president in numbers too large to ignore is our starting point. The electoral judgment must be so vast that even he cannot deny it or attack it. A vote that will be loud and overwhelming is the first step to reclaiming America. Many people have worked to get you all the evidence you need about the high crimes and misdemeanors of President Trump. I have been proud to be one of them. Now it is up to you. Justice and the future of our country depend on it.

Eisen, Norman. A Case for the American People (pp. 277-278). Crown. Kindle Edition.

Eisen brings us directly into the hundreds of rooms where it happened.  My favorite images are of Eisen and his partner in the endeavor, Barry Berke, retiring to their windowless office at the US Capital for a few sips of Widow Jane bourbon to reprise the ups and downs of their day.

The impeachment was in January of 2020.  Just six months ago.  How could this be?

156,000 Americans would still be alive if he who shall not be named was removed from office.  We would not have to watch another 200,000 Americans die while we wait until January of 2021 for Trump’s removal from office.

“SHORTLY BEFORE MITT ROMNEY GAVE his historic February 5 speech, and just hours before the final impeachment votes were cast in the Senate, a group of senators from both parties gathered with senior members of the administration in a Capitol Hill briefing room. The secretary of health and human services, Alex Azar, filled them in on a new, deadly disease that had spread from Wuhan, China. A few hours later, one of the senators who had attended the briefing, Connecticut’s Chris Murphy, headed to the floor to explain why he was voting to convict the president of impeachment. It was the moving speech that I was lucky enough to catch, sitting among scattered press and a handful of others in the near-empty chamber. Murphy was already anticipating the next Trump disaster. He had laid it out earlier that day on Twitter right after leaving the briefing, stating, “Bottom line: they aren’t taking this seriously enough. Notably, no request for ANY emergency funding, which is a big mistake. Local health systems need supplies, training, screening staff etc. And they need it now.”

Eisen, Norman. A Case for the American People (p. 268). Crown. Kindle Edition.

On the same day of the impeachment vote, the administration warned of the pandemic but didn’t take it seriously.  The next waves of the Trump crime family dysfunction just kept rolling along.

I enjoy finding out what happens behind the scenes of important events.  How Jerry Nadler led the proceedings while his wife Joyce was diagnosed and treated for cancer. How Adam Schiff persevered by pounding Advil for days before he could get a root canal for a terrible tooth ache.  How so many staffers worked 24 x 7 to make sense of the volumes of information in spite of NO DOCUMENTS coming from the White House or the Executive Branch.

If you want a good insider view of a continuing very painful episode in American democracy I strongly recommend this book.

Thank you Norm Eisen for spending the time to make the case against he who shall not be named.