There Is No Evidence to Impeach Trump
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 14 votes and with 14 points ahead, the winner is...
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I will forfeit the first round so that Con can tell us why Trump should be impeached.
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.
There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it...It sounds horrible to me.
On Day One of public impeachment hearings, the top American diplomat in Ukraine revealed new evidence that President Donald Trump was overheard asking about political “investigations” that he later demanded from Ukraine in exchange for military aid.
- Pro had essentially forfeited his right to definitions by failing to present them in his description and his R1, so it’s immoral to provide definitions now.
- My thesaurus definition is better than his, plain and simple. Let’s use a real world example to demonstrate why this is so:
Con mentions the transcript which clearly shows Trump wanting an investigation into Hunter Biden and Burisma. No one denies that, not even the White House. However, the transcript clearly shows that there is no bribery. Infact, Trump does not even demand an investigation, he is only encouraging one.
CBS news has actually released the call and the paraphrased transcript of it, in which Trump says:There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that. So whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it...It sounds horrible to me.First, this is evidence, because I am presenting it in support of the claim that it is “to impeach Trump”. Pro frankly worded his resolution poorly, so the could be “to impeach Trump” or that Trump should be impeached. Both are correct, as the House report is being used to impeach Trump by the House and being used to support the claim that he should be impeached, which I am doing right now.Second: just in case Pro says something along the lines of “Well it’s not good evidence so it’s not evidence*” (which is false) this actually is an impeachable offense. It is bribery, defined here as:"persuade (someone) to act in one's favor, typically illegally or dishonestly, by a gift of money or other inducement."Which Trump did.
- Persuasion, which is:
Contributions and donations by foreign nationals in connection with elections. A foreign national shall not, directly or indirectly, make a contribution or a donation of money or other thing of value, or expressly or impliedly promise to make a contribution or a donation, in connection with any Federal, State, or local election.
Pro Forfeited. Bad Conduct. Con wins.
Pro ff the majority of the rounds, that's poor conduct!
From the description, apparently the pro wasn't expecting this development.
Pretty clear definitional debate.
Highlight's from pro, are obviously the syllogism:
"P1. If I provide evidence suggesting Trump should be impeached, I win the debate
P2. I’ve done so
P3. I should win the debate."
Going to briefly review pro's case...
He did exactly what con predicted in R1. I don’t see how pro thinks his definition would change anything. Trying to determine the truth, evidence is considered... does he want us to dive down a rabbit hole of bad definitions to think that evidence is not facts onto itself but rather a living room sofa we sit on while considering facts? Anyway, even he agrees the phone call happened, it's been leveraged as evidence in the case; if it's good evidence or not, is irreverent.
Additionally, pro only offered a single round, then forfeited the rest.
Nearly full forfeit, certainly enough to justify a vote.
Pro forfeited over half the rounds.
As the Pro side forfeited more than half of the rounds, I grant Con the victory.
In one way I'm glad pro forfeited; otherwise I suspect I would be having to remove votes which are based on the conclusion of the case, rather than debate content.
R2 Analysis?
Never a good sign for a case when one side does exactly what the other said they'd do.
R2: Pro says something along the lines of “Well it’s not good evidence so it’s not evidence.”
R1 analysis.
Forfeit:
Around here we would call that a waived round. A truly forfeited round is misconduct to the degree that it results in a default negative point allocation.
BoP:
Had con tried to say BoP is on wholly pro, I would side against him. Shared BoP is what we end up calling this. But yes, pro cannot prove a negative, so his BoP is to disprove anything offered as not being evidence.
Definitions:
These make sense, and intuitively set a good scope limit (what Trump did 30 years ago, has nothing to do with any conduct in the presidency, so is not evidence related to it).
Contentions:
I'll withhold reviewing these until pro has responded to them. This breakdown was just of the preamble, and basically to say it's a good setup.
The BoP on pro is yuge.
Please don’t drag this one out with Gish Gallops...
ruh roh
Oh you for sure want to change the wording of the res before someone snipes this for a free win.