The farce of the Democrats’ impeachment of Trump has finally come to an end. How much did this impeachment cost the taxpayers! Seven Republicans voted to convict Trump faced a backlash from within the party.
Republican Party Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Sunday that and Trump spoke in Mandarin about the Republican Party’s next move.
Texas Congressman Ted Cruz on Saturday (Feb. 13) opened up several questions lawmakers want to ask of the House impeachment manager, one of which is if Hunter Biden is invited to join the board. Will the Keystone Pipeline be built if Biden is invited to join the board?
New Yorkers are fleeing in droves to Palm Beach, Florida, and New York businesses are following suit.
Graham and Trump speak Mandarin about next steps for Republicans
U.S. Senator Graham, a federal Republican, said Sunday (Feb. 14) that after impeachment, former President Trump’s next step will be to begin rebuilding the Republican Party in order to retake the House and Senate for the GOP in the 2022 midterm elections.
On Saturday (Feb. 13), the Senate voted on Trump’s impeachment and ultimately acquitted him of all charges. Afterwards, Graham spoke with Trump.
In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Graham said, “He’s (Trump) ready to move on, rebuild the Republican Party, and be excited about 2022.”
Graham also said he will travel to Florida next week to meet with Trump.
Graham emphasized that the Republican Party cannot be rebuilt without Trump and Trump’s strong popular base. He called it a “Trump +” formula.
“I said, ‘Mr. President, this MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement needs to continue. We need to unite this party. Trump + is the way to 2022 (for Republicans to take back Congress).'” Graham said, “He (Trump) is angry at some people, but I understand that.”
He said the Republican goal must be to win in 2022 and to stop the Biden Administration‘s “radical agenda.”
Graham added, “We can’t do this without Donald Trump. So he (Trump) is ready to go, and I’m ready to work with him.”
Referring to the Senate impeachment results, Graham said Trump expressed his gratitude to the impeachment defense lawyers.
Graham is the highest-ranking Republican senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He denounced in a tweet Saturday that impeachment initiated based on partisan differences appears to be becoming the norm, suggesting that future presidents will face impeachment challenges.
Graham tweeted, writing. “I hope I (am) proven wrong, but it seems impeachment based on partisan differences is becoming the norm, not the exception.”
Graham added, “I fear that if this pattern is followed in the future, it will become the norm to initiate impeachments based on partisan animosity that disqualify people from office.”
He said the goal of the House (Democrats) has never been to find out what really happened on Jan. 6 and then hold people accountable. Their goal was to put the blame “squarely and completely on Trump” no matter what.
Graham also suggested on Twitter that there were key procedures and practices that were removed during the impeachment trial.
He said, “For the good of this country, I hope this will be the last Time the Senate impeaches a president … a president who was impeached without (the other side) presenting witnesses and a trial record based on hearsay.”
Cruz: If Hunter is invited to join the board of directors whether the Keystone Pipeline can be built
Texas Congressman Ted Cruz on Saturday (Feb. 13) made public several questions lawmakers wanted to ask of the House impeachment manager, one of which was, “If Hunter Biden is added to the board, will we be able to build the Keystone XL (Keystone) pipeline?”
The question was said to mock Hunter, the second son of former Vice President and current U.S. President Joe Biden, who was offered a lucrative position on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holding (Burisma) despite his lack of experience in energy production and his lack of knowledge of the local language.
On his first day in office, the Biden administration announced the cancellation of the construction of a pipeline to deliver energy from Canada to U.S. refineries. The move resulted in losses to the energy construction industry and the elimination of 11,000 jobs. This practice has led to discontent from the industry, and the Texas government, a major energy producing state, has repeatedly criticized this policy as unreasonable.
On Feb. 13, the day of the Trump impeachment vote, Cruz commented in a tweet that “the impeachment trial is a mess. He claimed that Democrats had just announced that they were calling witnesses and then the House manager changed his mind in the morning. “Schumer is blindly doing it again. Crazy and disorganized, and they’re still talking about what to do next.”
Cruz said, “While we’re waiting for them to figure out what they’re going to do, I thought I’d share some of the questions I didn’t get a chance to ask yesterday. (These are real, from different senators, and they want to remain anonymous.)”
Cruz revealed that others wanted to ask questions about one of the House impeachment managers, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), in his scandal with female spy Fang Fang.
He said some lawmakers wanted to ask Swalwell to “talk to us about Fang Fang” and “have any other House managers had inappropriate relationships with Chinese Communist Spies? Please explain.”
New Yorkers Flock to Palm Beach, New York Businesses Follow
Many New Yorkers and businesses are flocking to Palm Beach, Florida, where there are no undue restrictions on business and where the cost of living is one-third cheaper than in New York City, due to New York’s strict Epidemic control policies and the cold climate, Fox Business News website said in an article Saturday (Feb. 13).
Photo:Trump’s Sea Lake Estates Resort in Palm Beach, Fla.
Two weeks ago, temperatures in New York City plunged below 20 degrees Fahrenheit and indoor dining remains banned, making New Yorkers’ social lives miserable, the article said. But in Palm Beach County, Florida, in the southern United States, restaurants and bars are full of people, customers are laughing and talking, as if there is no such thing as a plague pandemic.
Tavern La Goulue recently opened a new location in Palm Beach, identical to its old tavern in Manhattan. The store’s bar and tables are now full every day.
Jean Denoyer, the tavern’s owner, says, “I escaped New York! Every guest takes their temperature when they come in, and we keep the doors and windows open to keep fresh air circulating.”
Philippe Delgrange, owner of the restaurant Le Bilboquet, also recently opened his new restaurant in Palm Beach. His New York City restaurant has just been allowed to open at 25 percent of its indoor capacity after being forced to close for two months. I’ve seen so many old friends here, I can’t believe it,” he says. All of our staff in New York have asked to come here to work.”
Although masks are required at all Palm Beach County businesses, they can be removed while eating and drinking, and there are no specific social distance rules. As a result, it is not uncommon for restaurants to be filled with people who also do not wear masks.
Those coming from the north feel as if they are in a parallel universe where old friends can meet again in a favorite, sunny spot.
Joe Wagner, 63, a real estate developer, arrived in South Florida in late January, originally planning a two-week stay, but decided to stay until March. He often enjoys indoor dinners at La Goulue restaurant in Florida. “Sometimes I feel a little insecure,” Wagner said, adding that in New York he was stuck at Home, though it’s clear that people are more relaxed when they get here.
Wagner said he’s not ready to go back north anytime soon. A friend of mine sent me a picture of himself at La Goulue restaurant (outdoor dining) in New York, wearing a hat and two scarves, and said his fingers were frozen blue,” he said. I sent him a photo of my pool.”
As of Feb. 12, New York restaurants were finally allowed to host indoor dining at 25 percent of capacity, but Palm Beach has long been free of restrictions.
New York’s Café Boulud will close until the end of 2021, but at its branch in Palm Beach, patrons can hang out on the lushly landscaped patio. New York restaurants such as Bice, Sant Ambroeus and Almond all have locations in Palm Beach. Even some restaurants that closed down in New York have been resurrected in Palm Beach.
It’s hard to find an empty seat in any of Palm Beach’s popular restaurants. “I can’t believe how many people have come running here this year, it’s like a jailbreak!” said John Lehmann, 59, who lives on the island and runs a sports marketing company.
“I’ve been reborn again. I could move here for the rest of my Life,” said Erica Holzer, a 47-year-old Long Island housewife. She and her husband are staying at the beachfront Opal Grand Hotel for eight weeks. They took precautions, but they weren’t ridiculous,” she said. We went to the bar and had a good time. It was so freeing to be here.”
That feeling of freedom is not limited to the restaurant.
“I arrived here last week and it felt like another world,” said Charles Rosenberg, a resident of Soho, N.Y., who works in commercial real estate. The 30-year-old plans to stay in Palm Beach for several weeks.
Trump faces party backlash as seven Republicans vote to convict him
The seven Republican senators who said former President Donald Trump (R-Texas) was guilty of sedition have faced backlash from within the Republican Party. Trump has remained popular after leaving office and remains a popular figure in the Republican Party.
The executive committee of the Louisiana GOP said in a brief statement that they voted unanimously to condemn Sen. Bill Cassidy’s (R-La.) conviction vote. The party made it clear last week that it was “deeply disappointed” when Cassidy stood with five other Republicans and all Senate Democrats to declare the trial constitutional.
Another guilty vote, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), also received condemnation from his home state, the North Carolina Republican Party.
Pennsylvania Republican Party leader Lawrence Tabas also condemned Senator Pat Toomey’s decision to vote to convict Trump, saying, “I share the disappointment of many grassroots leaders and volunteers in Senator Toomey’s vote today.” “The Senate’s final vote to acquit is the constitutionally correct result.”
The other four Republican senators who are on the same side as Democrats are Mitt Romney (R-Tenn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Ariz.) and Ben Sasse (R-Calif.).
As of noon Sunday (Dec. 14), Republicans in Utah, Maine, Alaska and Nebraska had not responded to statements about the convicting votes of congressional senators from those states.
Democrats impeach Trump, how much did the trial cost taxpayers?
The impeachment trial of former U.S. President Donald Trump ended on Saturday (Feb. 13) with a “not guilty” verdict for Trump. As lawmakers end the dramatic charges of “sedition by Trump,” some wonder: How much did the trial cost taxpayers? And how much money did Trump lose for his eventual “not guilty” verdict?
Roll Call, a U.S. legislative and political media outlet, estimates that the first impeachment trial in January 2020 will cost $1.83 million. Another estimate from the Heritage Foundation puts the price tag for the trial at $3.06 million, which includes the salaries of not only lawmakers but also 106 congressional staffers and six lawyers.
While these estimates do not include the cost of the Senate trial in February 2021, the total estimate for the Trump impeachment trial as of December 2020 is substantially less than the cost of the congressional impeachment investigation and trial of President Bill Clinton 20 years ago.
The 1994 impeachment investigation of Clinton cost taxpayers $80 million, CNN reported.
But the first impeachment trial against Trump took much longer than the second, with the Senate debating Trump’s impeachment for two weeks and six days in 2020, but only five days in 2021.
Yahoo Finance estimates the first impeachment against Trump at $11.5 million. It is calculated to cost $0.0000026 for every $1 paid in taxes in 2019, against the backdrop of $4.4 trillion spent by the federal government in 2019.
Security around the Capitol was reportedly beefed up in light of the Jan. 6 attack, and an additional $519 million was spent on it.
Meanwhile, the cost of Trump’s defense cannot be confirmed at this time, but it will not be paid for by tax dollars.
Trump’s personal attorneys Jay Sekulow and Jane Raskin have been on Trump’s legal team since 2017, and the Republican Party has paid their law firm $225,000 as of November 2020.
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