The impeachment of a president

Democrats never did accept the results of the last election, and therefore it has been a foregone conclusion that at some point during his term President Donald Trump will be impeached by the democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.  Democrats have been looking for two and a half years for any charge or charges they could find that would serve as grounds for impeachment.  In his most hospitable way, Donald Trump handed it to them on a silver platter.

This all started with the Russia investigation.  Democrats were convinced that the Trump campaign was in cahoots with the Russians.  Turns out the democrats ace in the hole, FBI Director Robert Mueller, blew a hole in that conspiracy theory.  So, democrats were desperate to find another avenue, and President Trump gave it to them.

In a telephone conversation with Ukraine’s new president, President Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to investigate Hunter Biden, former Vice-President and candidate for president Joe Biden’s son.  Accusations of a quid pro quo quickly surfaced when Mr. Trump seemed to imply to the Ukraine president that foreign aid would be withheld until that investigation began.  From here the democrats who despise Donald Trump no matter what he does had all the ammunition they needed to push forward an impeachment inquiry. The committee process was rigged from the beginning. Democrats put up a false front of bipartisanship while easily and methodically moving the articles of impeachment through the committee process.

President Trump has only himself to blame for his troubles.  He is his own worst enemy.  His demeanor is not always presidential.  His tweets can be vulgar and unbecoming for the leader of the free world. His recent tweet aimed at a 16-year-old climate change activist was not a shining moment for the president.  In short Mr. Trump makes unnecessary enemies by being crude and rude to others. 

Mr. Trump’s telephone call with the Ukrainian leader was listened in on by several White House employees, a common practice whenever our president speaks to a world leader.  The content of that conversation was disclosed, and it implied that President Trump was using $400 million in foreign aid to Ukraine as a carrot to get that country to investigate his political opponent.

It does not take a genius to figure out that such a conversation is wrong.  No president should use the office to get a foreign country to investigate a political rival.  With the Russia conspiracy debunked, Mr. Trump handed democrats the issue they needed to impeach him.  It was called Ukraine.  And if that is not enough his failure to cooperate with the Congressional inquiry resulted in a second impeachment charge of obstructing congress.

Don’t forget for one moment, however, that if the shoe was on the other foot that those same democrats yelling for impeachment would be calling this investigation and impeachment proceeding a witch hunt, and republicans, the same folks attacking democrats for pursuing impeachment, would be forging forward toward impeachment no matter what.  This hypocrisy is what Washington style politics is all about.  As I have said before, listening to CNN or MSNBC, the anti-Trump version, or Fox or Newsmax, the pro-Trump version, will confuse you totally.  Try it.  You will not believe that you are listening to multiple news outlets reporting the same set of facts and circumstances but with different slants.  The reason is simple.  Politics.  It is all about politics.  And the major news outlets are no better than their cable counterparts.

For the next two months or so you will witness the impeachment and trial of a president of the United States.  The final Senate vote will be well short of the two thirds vote needed to convict Mr. Trump and remove him from office. Partisanship and rancor in the congress will grow stronger.  Mr. Trump will be more emboldened to continue his rants and his base will love it.  Democrats, not totally convinced that Donald Trump will lose the election next year, have begun their campaign to unseat him by impeaching him.  Will it work?  I suspect the election in November 2020 will turn on Mr. Trump’s demeanor and the state of the economy, and this impeachment will be a thing of the past, a distraction, in the already distracted world of a dysfunctional Washington, D.C.