With all due respect to Nancy Pelosi, there is an urgent and compelling need to impeach Donald Trump. I totally get and appreciate the speaker’s concern and pragmatism. Wrangling for months in the nuanced weeds of the Mueller Report could give Trump a perfect platform for his victimization-by-witch-hunt narrative, and thereby boost his reelection chances.
So forget the Mueller Report. Instead, the articles of impeachment need to focus on what a majority of Americans are only too painfully aware of: the president’s racism. His bigotry, meanness and hatred are tearing the country apart. As conservative columnist Bret Stephens wrote in the New York Times this week, Trump “is a disgrace to his office, an insult to our dignity, a threat to our Union and a danger to our safety.” It doesn’t get much more impeachable than that.
As a matter of fact, the Constitution’s impeachment clause was crafted in 1787 with visions of Trump dancing in the founders’ heads. One of them, Benjamin Franklin, argued that some future presidents might “render (themselves) obnoxious.” In such a case, Franklin posited, impeachment offers a more rational alternative to assassination. (Back in those days, the assassination of Julius Caesar still weighed heavily on the minds of the ruling – and sometimes dueling – elite.) James Madison suggested that impeachment should be used in the case of a president’s “perfidy”, meaning someone who could not be trusted. Alexander Hamilton said the impeachment option is designed to remedy “injuries done immediately to the society itself.”
Donald Trump is not merely obnoxious and untrustworthy, he is inflicting a level of injury on this country that escalates daily. In another time and place, the Mueller Report’s abundant and substantial evidence of obstruction of justice would have removed any president from office. Given the moral paralysis of the Senate’s Republican leadership, it will not remove Trump. Through the lens of the past several painful weeks, a prolonged – and ultimately unsuccessful – impeachment battle over the legal intricacies of the Russia investigation would deflect the focus from the much larger Hamiltonian issue. This president’s racism and toxic narcissism are creating endless “injuries done immediately to the society itself.”
The prospect of protracted legislative hearings over what the Donald said to James Comey or Donald McGahn two years ago pales in comparison to the abject damage Trump’s culture of fear and hatred has inflicted on our country. He has made America far worse than any of us could have imagined. For that, he needs to be impeached.
To be sure, Senate Republicans will refuse to remove him from office. Yet, it is far better to proceed on a basis that viscerally resonates with voters, than on one that amounts to a sequel to Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony. Only 37 percent of voters say the Russia investigation warrants impeachment. On the other hand, 59 percent called many of the president’s tweets “un-American”. Six in 10 people found Trump’s actions to be bad for Hispanics and Muslims. Another poll found that 56 percent of voters believe the president has made race relations worse. Some 57 percent said Trump is a racist.
Every day of this deplorable presidency is filled with horrid moments, the likes of which no dystopian novelist could have ever conjured. On Sunday, hours after a shooter, using Trumpian phrases like “Hispanic invasion” and “send them back”, killed 22 people in an El Paso Walmart, the president’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, went on television to say that the alleged mass murderer developed his anti-immigrant views before Trump was elected. And how did Mulvaney, know that? Turns out he lifted the line from the alleged shooter’s “manifesto”. Another White House first: political spin ghost written by an accused mass murderer.
Then, later in the week, Trump made the mass shooting circuit, ostensibly to comfort traumatized communities in El Paso and Dayton, where nine people were killed early Sunday. He attacked local politicians in both places, and regaled medical providers, still weary from caring for the wounded and dying, about crowd sizes at his political rallies. When none of the still hospitalized shooting victims in El Paso would meet with him, Trump’s team had family members bring a baby who survived the shooting to the hospital for a photo op. The two-month-old infant lost both his mother and father in the Walmart shooting. Totally oblivious to the gravity and somberness of the moment, Melania held the newly orphaned baby and beamed widely with her husband who flashed a victorious thumb’s up for the camera. For that alone, he should be impeached.
Based on Hamilton’s standard of “injuries done immediately to the society itself”, there is overwhelming evidence supporting impeachment.
For example, Trump:
LAUGHED when someone at a political rally yelled that immigrants should be shot.
REBUFFED Department of Homeland Security efforts to make combating domestic terror threats, such as those from white supremacists, a greater priority.
USED the word “invasion” or “invade” to refer to migrants in tweets 10 times this year.
CUT funding for a federal program designed to undermine neo-Nazi groups and other violent domestic terrorism.
WAS named as the motivating force by countless perpetrators of hate crimes.
REPEATEDLY attacked people of color with blatantly racist tropes (here, here and here).
CALLED Mexican immigrants “rapists”, Syrian refugees “snakes”, and countries of black and brown people “shit holes”.
Impeachment should never be used to get rid of a merely bad president. That’s what elections are for. Yet, our wise founders envisioned the possibility that a day could come when the leader of the free world might be way worse than bad, so toxic, in fact, that our entire society is left in spiraling agony. Alas, that tragic day has arrived.
As damning as the Mueller evidence is, this no time to thread a legal needle over whether the president obstructed justice or merely obfuscated it. All along, the smoking gun was hiding in plain sight, in the president’s tweets, his rally speeches, his everyday actions.
Donald Trump is a disgrace to his office because he has totally failed to insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty, in accordance with the Constitution he swore to faithfully execute. It is hard to fathom a more compelling case for impeachment.
Wonderful, Bruce. I realized when I read that this is the perfect approach. The legal system isn’t up to the challenges Trump presents; he only uses the system against itself and the country.
This has to move from a legal framework to, dare I say, a moral and spiritual approach–not a religion, but of the spirit. We have to do what is right, and let the legalities be handled independently of impeachment.
So much easier and so much more understandable for the people. It may throw the country into a spiritual crisis about who we are as a nation. That’s a conversation well worth having. We may collapse or we may grow: grow or die.
Brillant piece. Thanks.
I agree with Tom, that this approach would be a spiritual test.
But, as we discussed during your writing process, the alternative (to use the Mueller Report as grounds for impeachment) would turn Trump into a victim which he would then use to further inflame his base.
Ben Franklin had it right when he expressed his concerns over having an “obnoxious “ future president.
However I expect Mr. Franklin would be shocked to see how far past “obnoxious “ the bar has been raised.
He is just trying to make America Great again