Without any crimes cited, the impeachment of President Trump is doomed to failure in the Senate:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/without-any-crimes-cited-the-impeachment-of-president-trump-is-doomed-to-failure-in-the-senate/

The two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — are not criminal violations under either federal or state criminal codes, nor are they bribery or treason. Yet, Article II, Section 4 of the Federal Constitution says that the President can only be removed for a crime: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” In fact, the Framers anticipated that a President, upon removal, would then be subject to prosecution for the crimes that he was removed from office for, under Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution, “the convicted party shall… be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment, according to the law.” Having failed that most basic obligation to charge the President with a crime in order to have him removed, House Democrats should not be surprised that they face an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled Senate, which is already skeptical of the charges that allege President Trump abused his power when he temporarily paused military assistance to Ukraine while he considered requesting a rescission of the funding from Congress, namely because the President has the power to consider and request such a rescission, and that otherwise, under Article, the President is in charge of foreign policy. What do you think?

If Bolton says Trump ‘wanted’ to freeze $391 million of military aid to Ukraine until investigations were announced, why was it never communicated to Ukraine?
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/if-bolton-says-trump-wanted-to-freeze-391-million-of-military-aid-to-ukraine-until-investigations-were-announced-why-was-it-never-communicated-to-ukraine/

The New York Times has previewed potential testimony by former National Security Advisor John Bolton at the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, where the President allegedly told Bolton in August “he preferred sending no assistance to Ukraine until officials had turned over all materials they had about the Russia investigation that related to Mr. Biden and supporters of Mrs. Clinton in Ukraine.” And yet, neither the White House nor the State Department never conveyed any such conditions to Ukraine, despite the aid being frozen in July, until after Politico broke the story of the aid being frozen on Aug. 28. Even then, the only official who conveyed such conditions, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, said in House testimony he was simply presuming the aid was being conditioned: “No one told me directly that the aid was tied to anything. I was presuming it was.” According to both former ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor and former Senior Director for European Affairs at the White House and the National Security Council Tim Morrison’s testimony, Ukrainian officials were unaware of any pause in the funding until the Politico story was published a month after President Trump spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25. Zelensky later said in September there was “no pressure.” But even if there had been, these are all things Presidents have the power to do under Article II and this boils down to a policy disagreement between Bolton and Trump, not a high crime or misdemeanor, and certainly not bribery or treason. If this is all the House has, the President’s acquittal is all but certain. What do you think?

NAFTA no more as President Trump wins USMCA passage in Senate, keeps signature campaign promise to put America first on trade:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/nafta-no-more-as-president-trump-wins-usmca-passage-in-senate-keeps-signature-campaign-promise-to-put-america-first-on-trade/

A little more than a year after President Donald Trump promised to withdraw from NAFTA if Congress did not adopt the USMCA — on Dec. 1, 2018, he said, “I’ll be terminating it within a relatively short period of time. We get rid of NAFTA. It’s been a disaster for the United States… And so Congress will have a choice of the USMCA or pre-NAFTA, which worked very well…” — on Jan. 16, the Senate has overwhelmingly adopted the USMCA 89 to 10. Senate passage came after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) finally relented and allowed the trade deal to come up on the House floor, followed shortly thereafter by House passage 385 to 41 on Dec. 19, 2019. None of this is surprising. President Trump won in 2016 in the Rust Belt particularly on the political strength of his trade agenda, uniting conservative and union households and savaging Hillary Clinton as a pro-NAFTA pretender. Now, Trump’s success in reshaping American politics around trade has now been confirmed by the massive bipartisan support for the USMCA. Both Democratic Michigan Senators Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters voted for it. That tells you everything you need to know right there. The blue-collar Democrats who supported President Donald Trump in 2016 and put him over the top ended up supporting the Trump trade agenda, making passage of the USMCA a political certainty even as Democrats in Congress were itching to impeach Trump and get the Senate trial underway. This tells you there was greater political risk in going against Trump on his signature issue than anything else. What do you think?

President Trump is overseeing the best peacetime labor market and economy in modern history as 2020 election looms:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/president-trump-is-overseeing-the-best-peacetime-labor-market-and-economy-in-modern-history-as-2020-election-looms/

With 3.5 percent unemployment, the lowest since 1969 when U.S. involvement the Vietnam War was still at its height, and 6.7 million jobs created since Jan. 2017 — President Donald Trump is presently overseeing the best peacetime labor market conditions in modern history. And it could get even better, the reason being because working aged adults 16-to-64 continue to pour into the U.S. economy at levels nobody expected prior to 2016. In 2019, 1.1 million more 16-to-64-year-olds found jobs, even as the population of 16-to-64-year-olds decreased by 238,000, according to the latest average, annual, seasonally unadjusted data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the good news economically is those developments will continue for the next several years, which, barring a recession, promise to drive unemployment even lower than its currently historically low numbers. This economy is great, making a strong case for Trump’s reelection in 2020, where he can point to his tax cuts, deregulation and new trade deals as being big difference makers, and where everyone who wants a job can find one. It’s tough to argue against success. What do you think?

Iranian terrorist general would still be dead under Senate resolution on use of force:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/iranian-terrorist-general-would-still-be-dead-under-senate-resolution-on-use-of-force/

Iranian general Qasem Soleimani would still have been a legitimate military target in Iraq under a resolution proposed by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), that on the surface promises to limit the use of force but in reality simply accepts the status quo of U.S. forces in Iraq and the Middle East. The resolution “directs the President to remove United States Armed Forces from hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of its government or military… unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force.” So, except as otherwise authorized to use force by Congress, the President cannot engage in hostilities with Iran. Which means, given standing authorizations use force against Iraq and against terrorists globally, the drone strike in Iraq by U.S. forces against Soleimani would have been authorized as a legitimate military target, and he would still be dead even if this resolution had been in place. What do you think?

Experts predicted Trump trade recession in 2016 if he won, instead the opposite happened:
http://dailytorch.com/2020/01/experts-predicted-trump-trade-recession-in-2016-if-he-won-instead-the-opposite-happened/

In 2016, experts warned that if elected, President Donald Trump would levy tariffs and the world would fall into recession, or maybe even another Great Depression. A Moody’s Analytics prediction by Mark Zandi in 2016, prepared for the Washington Post, predicted that as many as 4 million jobs would be lost and the U.S. economy would either flatline or go into recession if President Trump levied tariffs against China and Mexico. Zandi called tariffs a disaster, saying, “This is a pretty ugly scenario, one that I think any rational person would want to avoid.” It turns out that, quite rationally, Americans voted in their economic self-interests in favor of the Trump trade agenda in 2016, and Trump won the election. Trump never levied additional tariffs against Mexico — although he briefly threatened to do so — but he did levy them against China. But the outcomes were not as expected. Instead of losing 4 million jobs, in the establishment survey published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 6.6 million jobs have been created since Jan. 2017. Moody’s said we would only have 139 million jobs. Instead we have 152 million. They were only off by 13 million. Unemployment is at a 50-year low of 3.5 percent. As for the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), it has stayed very much in the positive, with mid-2 percent growth levels, with no recession in sight.And rather than provoking too much trade retaliation, Trump’s tariffs and tariff threats respectively have resulted in new trade agreements with China and Canada and Mexico. Who are the American people going to believe in 2020, the critics or their own lying eyes?