The ideal solution to the current constitutional crisis – a crisis five years in the making, metastasizing in plain sight every step of the way – is for Donald Trump to resign. Like, right now.
But naturally that won’t happen, because Trump and his congressional fellow travelers seem to believe that inciting a violent coup and getting people killed are trivial offenses. After all, he wasn’t caught horsing around in old photos, like Al Franken was. In Washington, that is what’s deemed to be grounds for resignation.
So the next best solution – the proper one, under our Constitution – is to impeach Trump forthwith, as the House of Representatives is poised to do this week. This is a no-brainer on the merits, because, as Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey pointed out yesterday, “the president committed impeachable offenses.” One of his GOP colleagues, Lisa Murkowski, said: “I want him out. He has caused enough damage.”
If Trump isn’t impeached for violating the most fundamental presidential oath – to protect and defend the Constitution – then the impeachment provision will forever have less value than a wad of soiled tissue. And we will have forever betrayed what we profess to stand for: the rule of law.
It ultimately doesn’t matter whether the Senate would vote to convict and oust Trump with scant time remaining on the MAGA clock. We should impeach because it’s right thing to do. We should impeach because if a wild animal isn’t held accountable for seeking to overthrow a free and fair election by violent means, we’d be conspiring in our own collapse. And we should impeach because it’s imperative that all House and Senate Republicans be put on the record for history. Force them to choose between tyranny or democracy.
So far – and I know this is shocking – most of them have been mute. Do they not believe that incitement of insurrection warrants impeachment and removal? That shouldn’t be a tough call, not when the evidence unfolded in real time for all the world to see. Not when he declared on live TV that his weaponized cultists should march on the Capitol to show “strength” in support of his Big Lie about a stolen election – hastening them forward like the Wicked Witch of the West dispatching her flying monkeys.
No need this time for lengthy House hearings on the significance of a call to Ukraine. No need this time for the Senate to ponder a vote on whether to call new witnesses. Not this time, because everyone witnessed everything, breaking our hearts all day long. If Congress doesn’t stand up for the constitutional order, and procedurally avenge the unprecedented attack on its own duly elected members, then we are lost.
Even now, after all that’s happened, many Republicans are predictably concocting excuses for doing nothing. A year ago, they said it was wrong to impeach Trump so close to an election. Let the people decide, they said. Then the people decided, and they tried to override that by amplifying Trump’s Big Lie. Now they say it’s wrong to impeach because the election is over and Trump is going. Their new mantra is that it’s time to “move on,” that impeaching Trump for insurrection would further divide Americans and impede healing and unity.
That’s rich, coming from people who – from Day One of this dystopian era – indulged a guy whose feral instinct was to divide Americans and sow disunity. Their two-month quest to overturn the election results – to disenfranchise the votes of 81,000,000 people – was merely their most toxic assault on unity. Sorry, folks, we shouldn’t forgive and forget the worst political crime ever hatched in the Oval Office, in the service of moving on.
First you have a reckoning, then you move on. “If we conduct these trials and hold these fascists accountable, we’ll further divide the people and never have healing,” said no Nuremberg prosecutor in 1946.
Ideally, a full reckoning would mean that Trump would be barred from running for federal office again, and that he’d lose the perks normally awarded to a former president. Short of that, let’s make the Republicans vote on whether to exonerate Trump or defend democracy. At least one party congressman, Peter Meijer, has seen the light: “If the Republican prty ever hopes to regain the public’s trust and lead the country forward after this heinous assault, it must first be honest with itself.”
And they don’t have to worry about Trump on Twitter anymore! As former GOP strategist Rick Wilson said yesterday, “Hey, all you chickenshit Republicans who have told me a hundred times, ‘Oh, I don’t like Trump but he might tweet something bad about me.’ Now’s your moment, you gutless worms.”