Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead
President Donald J. Trump speaks with reporters after disembarking Air Force One Thursday, Sept. 26, 2019 at Joint Base Andrews, Md.
At the top of the list of really dumb things to wish for, we should put President Donald Trump’s mistaken idea that relentlessly goading Democrats into impeaching him would be a sure-fire way to guarantee his reelection.
Trump considers himself an awesome political genius, but he’s probably deluding himself by assuming his own impeachment will resemble Democratic President Bill Clinton’s exoneration, rather than the devastating investigation that drove Republican President Richard Nixon from office in disgrace. That’s odd since Nixon’s sleazy and corrupt presidency, with burglars operating out of the White House and hush money being raised to silence witnesses, looked a lot more like the 24/7 sleaze and corruption of Trump’s own presidency.
Perhaps, Trump prefers comparing himself to Clinton because both survived sex scandals. But the country has never considered the sex lives of presidents—Franklin Roosevelt’s, Dwight Eisenhower’s, John Kennedy’s or Clinton’s—of sufficient national importance to justify impeachment. That’s why Clinton’s approval ratings actually went up after House Republicans impeached him, and he was acquitted in the U.S Senate.
But Trump already got a pass for his sordid sex life, even his creepy taped admission about crudely grabbing women’s genitals. But that doesn’t give Trump a license to commit other crimes as president to win reelection or hide his tax returns from congressional investigations into presidential corruption.
Trump was already leaving U.S. Congress little choice but to pursue impeachment by refusing to cooperate with all congressional oversight of the executive branch. Then, Congress suddenly received an enormous gift incriminating Trump.
It was an anonymous whistleblower’s “urgent” and “credible” complaint against the president that Trump’s Justice Department tried to withhold, even though it was legally required to be submitted to Congress. The complaint reported multiple White House officials were disturbed about a telephone call Trump used to pressure newly elected Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky into producing dirt against a possible Trump Democratic opponent in the 2020 election. The details emerged quickly. Trump had frozen nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine to force Zelensky into launching a criminal investigation into unsubstantiated charges against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who’d served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
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Trump went ballistic when his call became public. He described it as “a perfect phone call” that only touched on past corruption in Ukraine. He immediately ordered the release of a rough transcript proving exactly how “perfect” that call was. That’s why everyone assumed any transcript Trump released would be the most innocuous, innocent telephone conversation imaginable.
Just the opposite. The transcript was Trump’s second-dumbest mistake on impeachment. Trump sounded more like a mobster, extorting Ukraine’s president into whacking the head of a rival gang. Trump began by describing how generous the U.S had always been to Ukraine, but said it wasn’t always reciprocal. “I would like you to do us a favor, though,” said Trump. The favor turned out to be opening a Ukrainian criminal investigation into Biden and his son. “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution [of Hunter in Ukraine], and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do . . . Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it,” continued Trump.
Foreign Intervention in U.S. Politics
Actually, Vice President Biden did just the opposite. He pressured Ukraine to fire a former prosecutor for failing to prosecute government corruption. Biden’s son was never accused of wrongdoing in any investigation. It was Trump’s personal lawyer, the raving Rudy Giuliani, who was making wild, unsubstantiated accusations about the Bidens committing crimes in Ukraine. Trump actually offered to have Giuliani and U.S. Atty. Gen. William Barr assist Zelensky in uncovering criminal activity by the Bidens. Barr is a U.S. attorney general sworn to uphold the nation’s laws, including the one against soliciting outside intervention by foreign governments in U.S. presidential elections.
Trump’s rough transcript reportedly stunned many Republicans (though only a few said so publicly) and prompted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to finally launch an impeachment inquiry. It confirmed many of the details about Trump’s actions contained in the whistleblower’s complaint.
Now Trump, himself, is completely unhinged and raving about having somebody killed. Trump equates the whistleblower, whose identity is protected under U.S. law, to a spy committing treason. He longs for how spies were treated “in the old days;” namely, having them shot. Trump claimed if Republicans committed any of the imaginary crimes he and Giuliani attribute to Joe Biden, “they’d be getting the electric chair.”
Impeachment can’t possibly fire up Trump’s minority of rabid supporters any more than they already are. But it could endanger Republicans who fail to stand against a lawless president openly violating the Constitution. Most U.S. voters won’t be attending Trump’s next hate rally where “Lock her up!” is likely to escalate into bloodthirsty cries to “Fry Joe!”
