Mike Thinks: Ralph Nader: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.” Really!

Does the President of the United States have unquestionable power? Can he/she do whatever he/she wants? President Trump seems to believe that his power is u questionable. Activist Ralph Nader has weighed in on the questions above.

Ralph Nader offers his views on the current impeachment of President Trump in a recent letter:

“I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.” Really!

It is time for the House of Representatives to announce comprehensive articles of impeachment against the chronic outlaw and violator of the public trust—President Donald J. Trump who won the Electoral College, but lost the popular vote.

Six House Committees have been investigating and assembling for months the necessary evidence. Mr. Trump himself has taunted the House to impeach him. He has openly and brazenly defied Congressional subpoenas for documents and block subpoenaed witnesses from testifying. This obstruction of Congress is an ongoing impeachable offense—a grave one in the opinions of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and the other framers of our Constitution, who knew the importance of critical separation of powers.

These Committees are documenting his massive obstruction of justice, otherwise known as blocking law enforcement and the rule of law through intimidation, firings, and other forms of political coercion. They are filling in the details of the ten categories of obstruction described in the Mueller Report. They are cataloguing all the ways Trump is using his office to enrich his businesses—openly promoting his hotels before foreign governments and their agents.

Committee investigators are peeling off layer after layer of Trump’s demanding from Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine to investigate a possible opponent to his re-election—Joe Biden and his son, having suspended nearly $400 million in U.S. aid to Ukraine to pressure Mr. Zelensky.

The “abuse of the public trust,” in Alexander Hamilton’s phrase is overflowing. Over ten thousand Trump lies mean cover-ups, secrecy in government, deceiving innocent citizens about the air, food, water, and workplace danger, megalomania, about drug prices and health insurance for all. Lies matter; they tell us something about the President’s mental instability, his detachment from reality, and the willingness of a large minority of the people to believe the fibs—even when they are about their own crucial livelihoods, health, and safety.

Being a serial sexual predator and earlier bragging about how he accosted women are a brutish model for youngsters. Legislators like Senator Al Franken lost his position for doing one percent of Donald’s criminal and tortious acts. What would Hamilton also think of the Commander in Chief saying that if he is impeached, there might be a civil war? Incitation to mass violence for his political survival is not a minor matter.

Then there are the lawless uses of armed force abroad anywhere Trump wants, regardless of the absence of Congressional appropriations or declarations of war. Dragnet enforcement without judicial warrants are a federal crime. The same for threatening registered federal whistleblowers.

The House of Representatives already has enough evidence of Trump spending money for purposes not authorized by Congress, such as shifting $3.5 billion from Pentagon schools and other services to building his porous wall. If he reads the Constitution, the “power of the purse” was exclusively given to Congress.

That previous presidents have done some of the latter offenses does not exonerate Trump’s violations. The Congress has to draw the line and stop the ever-faster drift under both parties toward executive tyranny in the White House.

The polls are moving over 50% in favor of impeachment. Other people wish Congress would focus on kitchen-table issues. They need to know that Trump’s impeachable offenses include wholesale taking the federal cops off the corporate crime beat. He is making your air, water, food, and workplaces more hazardous by removing or weakening health and safety standards that save lives and diminish sicknesses. He’s allowing more greenhouse gases to be emitted, worsening the climate disruptions which he says is a “Chinese hoax.”

Law enforcement to protect your family budget has reached a record low. The loan sharks, credit, insurance, and banking industries know that. Fines imposed on wrongdoers by Trump’s agencies have dropped precipitously (see Public Citizen’s report, “Corporate Impunity”). With Trump, you’re paying higher taxes as the wealthy classes get off and savor their large Trumpian tax escapes.

The foregoing is to urge House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to deliver a full hand of serious impeachable offenses to the Congress and the American people. The Ukraine shakedown is important, but not sufficient to let people realize all the other things Trump is doing to them, their families, their Constitution, and their democracy.

The full, despicable portrait of Donald J. Trump must be revealed to provide the maximum possible public understanding. For over two and a half years, too many of his absurd tweets and assertions have gone without official rebuttals. His tactic is to dominate the news cycle every day as if his presidency is a reality show and he is the star.

The mass media is starting to wise up about being used and abused by Trump’s fulminations and incitements. It is time for the mass media, and its broadening coverage of the forthcoming, nationally televised House impeachment proceedings, to prove it too can expose Trump’s assault on both our Constitution’s law of the land and the citizenry.