Showing posts with label Trump Administration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Trump Administration. Show all posts

Thursday, April 24, 2025

In Trade War, Trump Is Finding Tough Adversary in China's Xi Jinping

This is actually good. 

At WSJ, "Xi Is Ratcheting Up China’s Pain Threshold for a Long Fight With Trump":

Censorship and surveillance have helped keep the Communist Party in control and are getting stronger.

As President Trump tries to play hardball in his trade war with Xi Jinping, he faces an adversary who has armed China to play a long and potentially painful game in its contest with the U.S.

In the weeks since the U.S. president first slapped sky-high tariffs on China, Beijing has responded with defiance. A spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry posted on X footage from 1953 of Mao Zedong promising to fight to the end against U.S.-led forces in the Korean War. “We are Chinese,” she wrote. “We don’t back down.”

The Mao post and other messages from Beijing highlight what China sees as one of its core advantages against the U.S.: While Trump and his Republican backers are vulnerable to the whims of American voters, the party that Mao built is deeply entrenched, having maintained power through more than seven decades despite war, famine, political upheaval and financial crises.

Xi isn’t resting on those laurels. Since an earlier trade war during the first Trump administration, he has intensified his grip on the country’s leadership and spent lavishly reinforcing the authoritarian tools that underpin the party’s longevity, including enhancements of the world’s most sophisticated systems for censorship and surveillance. The Chinese leader wants to harden his country specifically for a confrontation with the U.S., urging officials to engage in what he calls “extreme scenario thinking.”

Trump has already struck a more conciliatory tone this week, saying he wants to enter into negotiations with Beijing and is willing to lower the 145% tariffs he has imposed on China in his second term.

The White House hasn’t said what it ultimately hopes to achieve in negotiations with China. Any push to significantly reduce the U.S.’s $295 billion trade deficit would require China to fundamentally change its economic model...

Trump to Order Investigation Into Criminal Democrat Operation ActBlue

See AoSHQ, "It's the Democrats' own Holy Land Foundation."

Monday, April 21, 2025

I Used to Hate Trump. Now I'm a MAGA Lefty

From Batya Ungar-Saargon, at The Free Press, "The president is giving the working class its best shot at the American Dream in 60 years. That’s why I support him":

My name is Batya, and I am a MAGA Lefty.

The journey has been a long one. Initially, I had Trump Derangement Syndrome—and I had it bad. In 2016, I stopped going to my favorite local bar in Sheepshead Bay because everyone there had voted for Trump. How could they do that to me?!

Like so many other Democrats, I took Trump’s victory personally. If you had told me that just eight years later, I would happily, proudly endorse Donald Trump to become the 47th president of the United States of America, I never would have believed you.

People often ask me how I deprogrammed my TDS. The journey has been a long one. The cracks came one at a time. My rabbi, the best person I know, told me offhand early in 2016 that he loved Trump, and after that I could no longer sustain the fiction that every Trump voter was a racist. Later that year and the next, I did a lot of reporting in the South for a series of essays on polarization, which further dispelled the myth. Instead of the divisiveness of the elites, I saw Americans across the political aisle and from all races and ethnicities finding unity in their communities and churches.

In 2018, I encountered a Yale study that uncovered a surprising phenomenon: White liberals dumb down their vocabulary when they talk to blacks and Hispanics—but white conservatives don’t. It was a shattering indictment of my entire worldview, which suddenly seemed based in the insulting and frankly racist view that minorities needed the largesse of white elites to thrive or even to feel human.

When a fundamental belief of ours is challenged, we start to question other orthodoxies we hold dear. It took a little while—I voted for Joe Biden in 2020, albeit reluctantly—but I finally came to the realization that I hadn’t just been wrong about Trump supporters; I’d been wrong about Trump himself.

If you get your news from the liberal mainstream media—The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, and The Washington Post—you may think, as I once did, that Trump is a far-right extremist. These outlets cast Trump as a racist, a hater, a George Wallace for the 21st century. But, in fact, when viewed dispassionately, Trump is more like a 21st-century FDR: socially moderate, anti-interventionist, and committed to America’s blue-collar workers as the backbone of this country and the locus of our power and democracy.

Think of Trump’s major convictions: He’s anti-war. He promised to veto a national abortion ban. He is respectful of religion but also pro-gay. And most importantly, he represents the working class’s best shot at achieving the American Dream that we’ve seen in 60 years.

These are the views of the hundred or so working-class Americans I interviewed when I traveled the country for my book Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women. Regardless of which party they voted for, they were intensely moderate, with a set of views that didn’t map neatly onto either party. They were pro-gay but opposed the trans agenda. They were pro-life but against abortion bans. They wanted much less immigration, and thought tariffs would put money in their pockets. They were deeply tolerant of ideological differences. In fact, they weren’t ideological at all. Many, like me, had been Democrats until they voted for Donald Trump.

Ironically, if you look beyond the bluster, if you simply look at the policies Trump represents, it’s the kind of agenda that was viewed as solidly Democratic for 100 years, because it’s all about protecting labor—and Democrats were always the party of labor. Though it’s hard to remember now, in the 1990s, it was the Democrats who supported strict immigration, on the grounds that a tight labor market protects workers’ wages. Civil rights icon Barbara Jordan in 1996 insisted that there’s “no national interest in continuing to import lesser skilled and unskilled workers to compete in the most vulnerable parts of our labor force.” Mass migration was seen as especially punitive to black Americans, who have borne the lion’s share of the negative impact of importing millions of low-wage laborers. As recently as 2015, Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders called open borders a “Koch Brothers proposal.”

The Democrats also opposed free trade on the grounds that it’s a race to the bottom in terms of wages. They were anti-war, and defended free speech, women’s rights, and gay rights. They believed abortions should be safe, legal, and rare. Meanwhile, the Republicans believed in American exceptionalism and nation building. They were pro-life and anti–gay marriage. They were the party of the country club, of free trade and corporations and big business and Wall Street and trickle-down economics.

By now, it’s no secret that we’ve just witnessed a massive political realignment along class lines, as the Democrats abandoned labor to cater to the over-credentialed college elites and Donald Trump became the candidate for the multiracial working class...

Dow Tumbles, Dollar Slides as Trump Renews Attack on Fed

Continued market chaos, with apologies in advance to your investment portfolio.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Stock Market Today: Dow and Dollar Drop on Jitters Over Fed and Trade."

The "Sell America" trade picked back up on Monday.

Stocks fell, with the Dow industrials dropping 1,200 points and on pace for their worst April since 1932, and the dollar hit fresh multiyear lows against the euro and other major currencies. Yields on longer-term Treasurys rose and gold surged to a fresh record high.

Markets are on edge about President Trump's tariff war as well as his threats to fire Fed chief Jerome Powell. Trump on Monday demanded lower rates in a post on social media...

Monday, January 6, 2025

The 'Progressive Moment' is Over

I don't know if we're talking about just a "moment." We should be burying a movement. And they're not "progressives." They're leftists, communists. Let's see them decimated over the next four years --- and beyond.

At the Wall Street Journal, "The Progressive Moment in Global Politics Is Over":

Weak economic growth and record immigration are driving gains by the right, especially populists.

The progressive moment is over—at least for now.

This past year showed that the progressive politics that dominated most industrialized countries over the past two decades or more is shifting to the right, fueled by working-class anxieties over the economy and immigration, and growing fatigue with issues from climate change to identity politics.

The return of Donald Trump to the White House is the most dramatic and important example—but it is far from the only one.

Across Europe, where economic growth has largely stalled, conservatives and populist right-wing parties are making unprecedented gains. Three-quarters of governments in the European Union are either led by a right-of-center party or are ruled by a coalition that includes at least one.

The shift is set to continue. Canada appears poised to kick out a deeply unpopular progressive prime minister and Germany is expected to dump its center-left government. Polls show the top two parties in Germany represent the center-right and the far-right.

Part of the shift is the normal pendulum of politics swinging back and forth between established parties on the left and right. The difference this time is a strong strain of populism and a growing rejection of traditional parties.

In country after country, many working-class voters—especially those outside the biggest cities—are signaling the same thing: They mistrust the establishment—from academics to bankers to traditional politicians—and feel these elites are out of touch and don’t care about people like them.

Years of increased migration and trade, coupled with low economic growth, have led to a backlash and a rise in nationalism, where people want more of a sense of control, political analysts say. The rise of social media has exacerbated divisions and led to an upsurge in antiestablishment parties.

“It’s a broad shift that goes across countries,” said Ruy Teixeira, a lifelong Democrat who now works for the center-right American Enterprise Institute think tank. “Working-class people are just pissed off—about immigration, about all the culture war stuff, and the relatively poor economic performance that has shaped the working-class experience in the 21st century.”

While one of the two establishment parties won in the U.S., the Republicans have largely been taken over by the insurgent figure of Trump, who clearly has a mandate from voters to shake things up, said Teixeira. He said he doesn’t see either the left or conventional right easily recapturing Trump’s populist, multiracial working-class majority.

In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s center-left Liberal Party looks to be careening toward a decisive election loss, trailing the Conservative Party by roughly 20 points in opinion polls. Trudeau must hold a vote by October 2025...

More.

And for Canada, see, "Trudeau to Resign as Voters Sour on His Vision for Canada."

Plus, at Instapundit, "WELL, BYE." 

And BCF, "Justin Trudeau Has Quit. Will The Legacy He Built Survive? … Well It Will Take Time To Rebuild The Ruined Nation He Leaves Behind So There’s That."

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Trump's America: Victory Changes Nation's Sense of Itself

I've been in a haze of bliss all day. I'm just really happy. Donald Trump's truly a savior. Who would have thought this on J6 2020?

A bunch at the New York Times, for example, "Populist Revolt Against Elite’s Vision of the U.S," and "Voters Were Fed Up Over Immigration: They Voted for Trump." 

More at the Wall Street Journal, "How Trump Won the Economy-Is-Everything Election," and "How Trump Gained Ground Across the Country."

And here are my comments, for now. I'm sure I'll have lots more. It's going to be a great four years:

Politics by nature divides people. This time around I don't care what people think. I don't post out rhere that much anyway. I have no skin in the game.

I wasn't even planning on voting for DJT. He lost me, ultimately, on January 6th, or shortly thereafter. It was an insurrection and I'm not going to debate the point (watch "Four Hours at the Capitol," please. 🙄) But Democrats (the actual extremist party) wanted the man dead the moment he defeated Hillary in 2016. They've been aggressively attacking, destroying, undermining the president-elect for 8 fucking years --- and the man's not only still standing, but obliterating! Damn!

So, yes, I'm gloating. NGL, I hate leftists. In most cases, it's absolutely not personal. But there are demonic Democrats who will live forever in Darkness, hiding from His light, lest the generations learn of the enormity of their crimes.

Sorry not sorry. It needs to be said.

Now, why'd the degenerate left lose? They're degenerate, obviously, QED. It's more, though. Identity politics destroys everything. It has and will continue to destroy what heretofore might have been identified as the "decent" left. Whatever decency existed to the left is now long gone, of course. It is what it is. Leftists will believe what they want, damn the facts (to the point of lunacy). The radical revolutionary leftist agenda has been crushed.

Well, at least for four years. I have no faith in J.D. Vance. He performed phenomenally as Trump's running-mate, and helped him win. But four years is a long time in politics and you'll die holding your breath hoping for change or continuity. America's been undergoing a rolling realignment since the end of O's second term. Trump won when no one thought he would in 2016, and he's only been outperforming himself in every election since. Too bad he can't run for three terms.

So, today is glorious. I'll have more in coming days, weeks, and months, but, NGL, for now, I'm elated.

Thursday, March 2, 2023

Biden Administration to Adopt Trump-Era Policy on Those Seeking Asylum in the U.S.

This is actually an amazing story. 

Sometimes policies have path dependence. Earlier policy choices can have powerful effects on what comes later, and in this case, migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. are going to be in for a shock.

At the Los Angeles Times, "News Analysis: Biden’s new asylum proposal could affect the border forever."

Monday, January 2, 2023

'Covidiots Sheeple'

This dude, at Liberals Leaving, has the rap down!

From Claire Berlinski:



Wednesday, August 3, 2022

John Eastman Was Always Looking for Election Fraud, and Looking to Get Paid

I've met this guy, years ago at the David Horowitz retreat at the Terranea, on the Palos Verdes pennisula.

He's not as he first appears, not be a long (money) shot.

At the New York Times, "Trump Lawyer Proposed Challenging Georgia Senate Elections in Search of Fraud":

On the day of President Biden’s inauguration, John Eastman suggested looking for voting irregularities in Georgia — and asked for help being paid the $270,000 he billed the Trump campaign.

John Eastman, the conservative lawyer whose plan to block congressional certification of the 2020 election failed in spectacular fashion on Jan. 6, 2021, sent an email two weeks later arguing that pro-Trump forces should sue to keep searching for the supposed election fraud he acknowledged they had failed to find.

On Jan. 20, 2021, hours after President Biden’s inauguration, Mr. Eastman emailed Rudolph W. Giuliani, former President Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer, proposing that they challenge the outcome of the runoff elections in Georgia for two Senate seats that had been won on Jan. 5 by Democrats.

“A lot of us have now staked our reputations on the claims of election fraud, and this would be a way to gather proof,” Mr. Eastman wrote in the previously undisclosed email, which also went to others, including a top Trump campaign adviser. “If we get proof of fraud on Jan. 5, it will likely also demonstrate the fraud on Nov. 3, thereby vindicating President Trump’s claims and serving as a strong bulwark against Senate impeachment trial.”

The email, which was reviewed by The New York Times and authenticated by people who worked on the Trump campaign at the time, is the latest evidence that even some of Mr. Trump’s most fervent supporters knew they had not proven their baseless claims of widespread voting fraud — but wanted to continue their efforts to delegitimize the outcome even after Mr. Biden had taken office.

Mr. Eastman’s message also underscored that he had not taken on the work of keeping Mr. Trump in office just out of conviction: He asked for Mr. Giuliani’s help in collecting on a $270,000 invoice he had sent the Trump campaign the previous day for his legal services.

The charges included $10,000 a day for eight days of work in January 2021, including the two days before Jan. 6 when Mr. Eastman and Mr. Trump, during meetings in the Oval Office, sought unsuccessfully to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to go along with the plan to block congressional certification of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6. (Mr. Eastman appears never to have been paid.)

A lawyer for Mr. Eastman did not respond to a request for comment...

 

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Ace Has Questions

Following-up, "Did President Trump Really Grab the Steering Wheel?"

At AoSHQ, "In Explosive Testimony at the January Sixth Committee, a Twenty-Five Year Old Chippie [Tramp; Prostitute] Says She Heard From Her Friends That 'The Walls Are Closing In'."


Did President Trump Really Grab the Steering Wheel?

Following-up, "Cassidy Hutchinson's Explosive Testimony Before the January 6th Select Committee (VIDEO)."

A lot of skepticism on Twitter.

From Jack Posobiec




Cassidy Hutchinson's Explosive Testimony Before the January 6th Select Committee (VIDEO)

I watched. This was extraordinary testimony, and brave.

At the New York Times, "A White House aide testified that Trump ordered security lifted on Jan. 6 though the crowd was heavily armed."

And more:

Hutchinson provided many bombshells. The shocking description of Trump wrestling the Secret Service for control of his car on Jan. 6 so he could go to the Capitol. Portraying Meadows, her former boss, as a man who abdicated responsibility to the nation and hoped to be pardoned. And saying Trump knew that his supporters had dangerous weapons when he asked them to march on Congress.

Cheney ended the hearing on a solemn note, saying that democracy is preserved by people “who know the fundamental difference between right and wrong.” People of high rank and power have refused to talk about that distinction with the committee, but Hutchinson, a low-ranking official, didn't shy from it today.

Lots more at Memeorandum.


Monday, June 27, 2022

Biden Administration Guts Due-Process Rights for College Students

From Emily Yoffe, at Bari Weiss's Substack, "Biden's Sex Police":

The White Houses's new regulations will gut due-process rights for college students accused of sexual misconduct.

Joe Biden has fulfilled one of the first promises he made upon becoming president. His administration has just announced a comprehensive set of regulations—701 pages worth—that will gut due-process rights for college students accused of sexual misconduct.

Apparently, Biden learned nothing from going through his own sexual assault accusation crucible.

During his vice presidency, Joe Biden was the Obama administration’s point man for a major domestic initiative: ending sexual assault on campus. There is no question bad, sometimes criminal, sexual behavior occurs on campus. Eliminating it is a worthy, if elusive, goal. But the Obama-Biden mandate expanded the definition of sexual misconduct so broadly that jokes, flirting, or “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” could be punishable offenses.

The Obama administration set out to change campus culture, and it did. But in doing so, it undermined women, demonized men, and diverted vast resources away from education. Under rules promulgated by Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education under Trump, many of these policies were rolled back. The Biden administration now plans to restore much of this.

Male college students (the accusers were almost always female, the accused male) were subjected to quasi-criminal proceedings on campus in which many were never told explicitly what they had done wrong and were unable to mount a defense. An adverse finding could end an education and foreclose many career possibilities.

Biden traveled the country, describing campuses as places where male classmates put young women in relentless danger (“This is a toxin on college campuses”), and where indifferent campus officials disparaged the women willing to report assault. But Biden's portrait was at odds with the way the majority of such cases unfold—often beginning as consensual encounters, then later ending up in dispute, frequently due in part to alcohol, miscommunication, and hurt feelings.

In numerous college speeches, Biden declared alarming, inflammatory, and dubious statistics on the frequency of campus assault. Biden advocated that all sexual encounters on campus be governed by “affirmative consent.” This means that each touch, each time, even between established partners, requires explicit—preferably verbal, preferably enthusiastic—agreement. Affirmative consent was adopted widely on campuses, and became a law governing student behavior in California, Connecticut, and New York.

Then Donald Trump was elected president, and Betsy DeVos, decided to reform what the Obama administration had done. In one of the most uncharacteristic acts of that chaotic presidency, DeVos went through the lengthy and burdensome process of writing actual regulations (the Obama administration had only issued “guidance”). The rules she released were, on balance, careful and thorough, providing necessary protections for the rights of both accuser and accused. I spent several years reporting on what was unfolding on campuses, and I wrote at the time that the DeVos regulations were an example of an immoral administration doing the moral thing. (See, for example, here and here.)

The DeVos rules went into effect in August of 2020, in the midst of campus covid shutdowns, so they have hardly had a chance to be tested. Now they will be struck. They will be replaced by some of the most pernicious procedures of the Obama era. (These dueling Department of Education regulations come under the aegis of Title IX, the fifty-year old federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.)

The new rules recommend a return to a “single investigator” model that was barred under the DeVos reform. This means one administrator can act as detective, prosecutor, judge, and jury on a Title IX complaint. The new rules also undo many of the procedural protections for the accused—including the right to see all the evidence, inculpatory and exculpatory, gathered against him. “It’s an evisceration of the procedural protections given to the accused,” says historian KC Johnson, co-author of The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at America’s Universities.

Under the DeVos rules, adjudication of a formal complaint required a live hearing be held that included cross examination. The Biden administration lifts this obligation. The Biden rules also call for a return to investigations initiated by third parties, even if based on rumors or misunderstandings, in which male students can be subjected to Title IX proceedings over the objection of their female partners. (Robby Soave at Reason has a good summary of the Biden proposals.)

“It’s a document that validates all of the concerns we had about due process and free speech being on the chopping block,” says Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He adds that the administration is giving schools the blessing of the Department of Education “to cut many corners that are essential for fundamental fairness.”

As vice president, Biden made clear that campuses were just the first stop in an effort to remake throughout society how males and females interact...

Keep reading.


Monday, May 2, 2022

BREAKING! Supreme Court to Overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey

As President Barack Obama once said, "elections have consequences," and boy was he right. Democrats and leftists everywhere are ruing the day Hillary Clinton was nominated as the party's 2016 standard bearer --- or at least they should be.

This is seriously explosive news, and if folks think the culture wars have been bad so far this year, well, buckle your seat belts. Elon Musk might as well have blasted the entire hardcore Democrat extremist-left abortion rights ayatollahs into upper orbit. 

At Politico, "Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows: 'We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,' Justice Alito writes in an initial majority draft circulated inside the court."

Needless to say, the forthcoming ruling will make President Trump one of the most consequential presidents in the last half-century, if he wasn't already, damn!

Leftist heads will be exploding for weeks and months, frankly right into the November midterm elections. Just wow.

*****

Even the New York Times has the story now. This is happening. See, "Leaked Supreme Court Draft Would Overturn Roe v. Wade."



Monday, October 18, 2021

Thursday, April 15, 2021

New Capitol 'Attack' Investigative Report Released: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Indeed Called for Capitol Police to 'Stand Down', and the Feds 'Botched' Everything With Clueless Mixed-Messages and Incompetence (VIDEO)

Now, as you know by now, I do check out CBS This Morning when I can, and as noted previously, it's the only national morning show I can watch, because the others previously mentioned are so far to the loony left that, well, it's just impossible for me to even contemplate taking these goons seriously. 

And very interestingly here, CBS's investigative reporter is none other than former Fox News correspondent Catherine Herridge, who is freakin' good, and I'll bet she got a hefty pay raise to take the job at CBS; and, from what I've heard, Fox News already pays its reporters handsomely, so good for her for making bank AND still being able to report honestly on this blockbuster cluster of a situation (and CBS should be lauded for that). 

My long headline above pretty much includes all the relevant points I might expand on in the post here, but I just have to note that if anyone looks bad --- and all the relevant official parties in D.C. and in the federal government look bad, except for former President Trump, who indeed requested a full deployment to the Capitol building, as a "preemptive" measure to guarantee security there, so I can't see how anyone in the leftist media can still blame him (but they will) --- it's Mayor Bowser; but of course all of the "M.S.M." ghouls will certainly find a way to praise her, so just f*ck 'em, as they're the biggest asshole lying media hacks anywhere, even worse than those in the official state media of Communist China or the evil propagandists for Vladmir Putin's extremely repressive regime in Moscow, now basically murdering dissident Alex Navalny by imprisoning him and denying him healthcare, after he came down with some mysterious new and suspicious COVID-like symptoms; but don't worry, the Biden administration will indeed find a way to beat out these two murderously un-democratic monster regimes, and that really is really something, when you think about it. 

Watch: 



CBS This Morning had another literally bombshell report, with some interesting twists involving the correspondent in question, but as I hate to post from the same sources back-to-back all the time, I'll try to add some variety of posts later today, if I have the chance. Until then, thanks always for reading my humble blog.

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino Implosion (VIDEO)

You'd think this would have been big national news, at least ahead of time, but Trump's Atlantic City hotel and casino was blown to bits this morning, it turns out. 

And NYT does have it, and the reporters were no doubt giddy as they pushed the publish button.

See, "Watch the Trump Era in Atlantic City End With 3,000 Sticks of Dynamite":


ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — It was not the biggest or the best implosion ever.

An auction for the right to detonate the dynamite to begin the implosion of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, N.J., fizzled.

Front-row seats to view Wednesday morning’s spectacle were sold on the cheap. Onlookers in cars hoping to witness the symbolic finale of the former president’s casino empire in the seaside resort city were charged $10 and herded into a lot most recently used as a pandemic-era food distribution site.

The implosion of what was once the premier gaming destination in Atlantic City came less than a month after its best-known former owner, Donald J. Trump, left the White House after losing re-election and became the first president in history to be impeached twice. He was acquitted on Saturday of inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

The tower came down shortly after 9 a.m. amid a huge cloud of dust and an eruption of cheers.

“It’s an end of a not-so-great era,” said Jennifer Owen, 50, who bid $575 to win a front-row seat at a V.I.P. breakfast in an oceanfront pavilion with a direct view of the implosion...

This Ms. Owen must've been a "Never Trumper." She paid $575 to watch? Pfft. It's obviously not that exciting, but Trump haters gonna hate, and watching a Trump property come crumbling down could be replacement therapy after the former president was acquitted during his "snap" impeachment ordeal on Capitl Hill last week.