By Clint Confehr
NASHVILLE, TN — There’s good news in bad news, Metro’s congressman says reflecting on 2017 and what it means for 2018.
What to do about a “bigoted” president is why Rep. Al Green (D-Houston) introduced articles of impeachment that failed 364-58 on Dec. 6. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) alleged obstruction of justice and, among other things, profiting from foreign patronage of his businesses; the latter, dismissed by a federal judge Dec. 21.
“The vote we had was premature,” Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Nashville) said about articles of impeachment he helped defeat. “None of the Democratic leadership supported it.”
Still, Cooper is “super critical of the president’s mistakes.” Trump’s behavior activates America.
Cooper recalls bipartisan support to impeach Richard Nixon. A lack of bipartisan support now would make “it look more like the Clinton impeachment effort which was a travesty; a partisan effort. The country was not brought along. It was completely Republican. We don’t want to repeat that mistake.”
After Special Prosecutor Robert Muller concludes his investigation, Cooper is “hopeful that we can have hearings and get the truth out to the public, whatever the truth is.”
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean agrees, telling MSNBC, “The Trumps have engaged in money laundering.”
If not impeachment, Cooper says, “it may be the 25th amendment … impairment … another avenue for removing the president… Every person I’ve talked to who has met with the president in the White House has concluded that he’s mentally unstable.”
Sen. Bob Corker said as much tweeting about the “‘adult day care center’ … so this isn’t a partisan statement,” Cooper continued, congratulating Corker “for being brave enough to tell the truth. It would have been much more convenient for him to just coverup things like a number of other Republican senators are doing.”
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) “uses the word insane,” Cooper said.
“Psychiatrists changed their rule saying they shouldn’t do remote diagnosis,” Cooper said.
The New York Times published a letter from forensic psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee at Yale’s School of Medicine saying thousands of mental health professionals came forward “to warn against the president’s psychological instability and the dangers it poses.”
Narcissists are: extremely selfish; have a grandiose view of their talents; crave admiration; are self centered; and have an excessive or erotic interest in one’s self and one’s physical appearance.
“Almost everything (Trump) thinks about has to do with himself. That’s … supremely dangerous because the world does not rotate around Donald Trump … He’s the scariest president we’ve had in my lifetime.” Cooper, 63, said.
He remembers Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 campaign against Barry Goldwater.
In an interview, Goldwater discussed using low-yield atomic bombs against North Vietnam. Campaign buttons said “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.” Johnson used a TV ad including a girl plucking petals from a daisy and a countdown to detonation of an A-bomb.
The daisy ad “made Goldwater look like a nuclear nut,” said Cooper noting remarks Trump made to Pentagon leaders before November 2016. “There’s that letter signed by 30-40 generals saying ‘Don’t elect this guy because he really can’t be trusted with the nuclear codes.’”
As for what’s happening with North Korea, Cooper says Trump “has gotten down on the same low level as the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un.”
The daisy ad ends asking people to vote: “The stakes are too high for you to stay home.”
“The good news about the Trump Administration,” Cooper said, “is that it activated … sensible people; people who’d been asleep … not focused on politics, so … we’re entering a new era of activism … The black vote in Alabama is what got Doug Jones elected” over Republican Roy Moore Dec. 12 when more people voted than Alabama’s voter turnout when Trump was elected.
“That’s unheard of to have a special election, an off year election, generate such huge interest and turn out,” Cooper said just before returning to Nashville for Christmas. “If we can maintain that level of activism, we can return the government … to common sense.”
