Michael Medved: Why President Trump should not run for a second term

Michael Medved has said before that he approaches the president day-by-day. Sometimes, President Trump has a good day, and others, not so much. A House committee hearing Wednesday with Trump’s former lawyer proved to be a very bad day for the president, according to Medved.

So bad it merits asking if Trump should get a second term.

“With every fiber of my being, I hope not,” Medved told KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross. “Even those people who are very strong supporters and great admirers of President Trump should pause for a while and think about if this is the fight we really want to have. And what are we fighting for by defending this very, very flawed chief executive?”

“My feeling here is, watching Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows and some of the Republicans on that committee — who are all advertised as Christian Conservatives — just basically treating this like a football game without any recognition that we have some accounting to do for corruption on our side, it’s very sad, it’s depressing to me,” he said.

Medved argues that Republicans should start making high-level deals between the president, the vice president, and other DC officials to organize the next presidential campaign without Trump — he should finish his term, but not run for a second. Under the current circumstances, Democrats could be angling for impeachment (though it is unlikely the Senate would vote in favor of that), and evidence is mounting against the president’s character.

Ross: Can we believe Michael Cohen after he cried ‘wolf’?
Medved: Michael Cohen’s remarks undermined both himself and Trump’s defenders

“As a Conservative, I’m just feeling so embarrassed by the Republicans on the committee,” Medved said. “Because Michael Cohen is not the issue. The President of the United States is the issue.”

Michael Cohen and President Trump

Michael Cohen was once the president’s personal lawyer and spent more than 10 years serving him in the Trump business organization. His title was “lawyer,” but he was commonly referred to as a fixer for Trump, paying off women Trump allegedly had affairs with to keep stories quiet, among other duties. One such payoff reportedly was given to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Cohen testified in 2017 to a Senate committee that negotiations with Russian officials to build a Trump Tower in Moscow had ceased when the president took office. But Cohen was convicted of lying about that when it became evident that the deal continued into Trump’s term. Being a convicted liar cast doubt on his statements Feb. 27, when he appeared before a House committee to testify against the president. He called the president a racist, conman, and a cheat. Cohen said he was through lying and covering for Trump, and brought documented evidence to back up his allegations.

Some lawmakers appeared open to Cohen’s remarks, while others — mainly Republicans — rallied against him, calling him a lair and challenged his credibility. But Medved feels the committee’s questions merit a follow-up: why this man, if he is so morally questionable, could spend so much time as an intimate associate of the president, and why would he keep him close?

“Right now, he desperately needs the total loyalty of all Republicans,” Medved said. “But I do know some of the players here. For people of conscience, you don’t want to spend your life, or put your career on the line, to basically defend hush money payments to porn stars. There’s no doubt after this testimony; nobody is questioning the idea that President Trump authorized these payments.”

“This is all uncharted territory,” Medved said. “He was accused of racism, multiple felonies; credibly accused because there is documentary evidence here to go along with Cohen’s testimony. Cohen said he heard the president in conversation, behind his desk with Donald Jr, about the Trump Tower meeting (for Moscow) …. If President Trump knew his son, and campaign manager, and son-in-law were all sitting down to meet with this representative of the Putin regime to ‘get dirt on Hilary;’ if that’s not collusion, if that’s not cooperation with the Russians, what does it take?”

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