Impeachable?

If you went out on the street and asked people if President Trump should be impeached and removed from office, you might very well get a preponderance of “Yes!” responses.  Donald Trump is…let’s not pull any punches…a scumbag.  We all know that.  He does what he wants without much concern for the consequences.  (That’s partly why a lot of people like him.)

But some people – let’s call them “Trump-haters” believe that he is unfit for the office of president, never should have been elected president, and should be removed from office ASAP by any means possible.  This last qualification is a little awkward.  Trump-haters want him gone.  They feel that he’s committed enough impeachable crimes to warrant it.  But the term “impeachable” as they use it is kind of, well, squishy.

Because if you were out on the street and asked people what crimes, exactly President Trump has committed that are impeachable offenses, you’d get a lot of hemming and hawing and foot-shuffling.  The more intelligent respondents might say that he violated the so-called emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution which says you cannot accept any gift, reward or thing of value from a foreign government.  They’ll say that by asking Ukraine President Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, Trump was looking to personally benefit in the 2020 election.  

(Notice though that the Constitution says that a president may not accept any gift, reward or thing of value – it does not say that he can’t solicit such things.  You can ask; you just cannot receive.)

And so we get back to: What exactly has President Trump done to warrant impeachment?  

You cannot impeach a president and have him removed from office simply because he’s a dirtbag and you don’t like him.  You cannot impeach a president because he tweets mean things…or treats people badly, or even because he an egotist and a liar.  It doesn’t work that way.  There has to be a clear impeachable offense…somewhere.  

The American people, however, can impeach a president – sort of.  They can simply not vote for him in the next election.  We have that power!  If the people don’t like Donald Trump, they’ll vote for someone else.  And that form of impeachment might happen in about a year from right now.  But it might not! 

Democrats don’t want to take that chance.  They’ve been talking about impeaching Trump ever since he was sworn in.  Here in November of 2019, Democrats want to make damn sure that Trump is not re-elected next year.  So they’ve…you’ll pardon the pun…trumped-up these charges, claiming that asking President Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden violated the emoluments clause.  It’s weak, I know, but Democrats are running out of time!

Despite what some polls indicate, I don’t think that the American people are convinced that President Trump has done impeachable things.  Maybe I’m wrong, but the people I talk to are getting fatigued over these impeachment proceedings.  (And I’m an Uber drive; I talk to a lot of people in any given day.)  Not everybody in the country is rabidly Left or Right.  Moderate people of both parties actually do see it as a “witch hunt” or at least an act of desperation by Democrats who want to overturn the 2016 election.  They’re starting to lose interest.

I have no doubt that the House of Representatives will vote to impeach President Trump.  But remember, impeachment does not mean removal from office.  For that, the Senate has to weigh-in.  And they’ll never…never! vote to impeach/remove.  But even if they did, it would not prevent Trump from running in 2020. He might not be able to run as a Republican, which would be no big deal because he isn’t much of a Republican anyway.  And if he runs as an Independent, he very well might win again.