A moral obligation to act
A growing corps of House Democrats, furious over the invasion of the Capitol on Wednesday by a mob inspired and encouraged by President Trump, is pushing to rapidly impeach the president a second time — hoping to force Trump from office even a few days early rather than allow him to leave on his own terms.
Removing Trump by constitutional means is a tall order for the 12 days remaining in his presidency, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has not made a formal determination to move forward with a second impeachment, even as she consulted Friday with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about curbing Trump’s ability to launch nuclear weapons.
That ability should be not so much curbed as removed entirely.
“We have a great sense of unity that we have a moral obligation to act,” said Rep. Daniel Kildee (Mich.), a Democratic deputy whip. “If we can shave any number of days of the threat this president represents off the calendar, we will have done public good, but there’s also another important aspect of this. . . . It would be a more accurate view of history if this president suffered the ultimate penalty for his crimes against his country, no matter how many days are removed from his tenure.”
That. That’s actually really important. He absolutely should not be able to get away with it unscathed. There needs to be that giant blot on his record.
Two draft articles of impeachment have been circulated among House Democrats that cite Trump’s incitement of the mob and his delayed decision to encourage it to disperse as high crimes and misdemeanors necessitating removal.
“We just suffered the most massive, violent invasion of the U.S. Capitol in American history since the War of 1812,” said Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), author of one of the drafts. “It is unthinkable to me that we would allow this simply to be, you know, one more unfortunate faux pas by the president. He has counseled and invited an attack on the Congress of the United States itself.”
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Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) told “CBS This Morning” on Friday that he could “consider” any impeachment articles forwarded by the House.
“He swore an oath to the American people to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,” Sasse said. “He acted against that. What he did was wicked.”
Now get 16 more Republican senators to agree.
Any Republican Senator thinking about running for the presidency in 2024 (which means practically all of them) would do well to remove him after an impeachment to guarantee that he can’t run again.
Well yes, but then they’d lose the primary, and as we all know that’s the most important thing of all…
I would like to be wrong on this, but I fear that those who trashed the Capitol were a fairly typical sample of his electoral base of 74,222,958. I cannot see him picking up votes out of all of this, and he may well lose quite a few..
What an amazing passage.
Maybe Pence will get to be president for a few minutes after all. :P
Maybe, but they’ll have to time it just right if they want Pence’s presidency to beat Louis-Antoine’s reign as King of France in 1830 for just 20 minutes.