Waiting To Remove Trump Is More Dangerous Than The Cost Of Allowing This "President" To Remain

Alan Grayson: "He has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, and he is unfit for office. You can’t un-ring those bells. This is why we have impeachment in the Constitution."

On CBS' Sunday Morning, Pelosi responded to a question from Jane Pauley about Congress' ability to reopen the government by saying that "the Speaker has awesome power. But if the President of the United States is against governance and doesn't care whether people's needs are met or that public employees are paid or that we can have a legitimate discussion, then we have a problem, and we have to take it to the American people." Does that sound like a prelude to impeachment talk? After all, the fact that Congress and neo-fascist Trump advisor Stephen Miller-- speaking through a nearly brain-dead "president-- is not amount an amount of money that can be compromised up or down but about whether building a vanity-wall as a monument to xenophobia, racism and Trump is something even a dime should be spent on. And whether or not Congress should buckle to the threats of an illegitimate "president" spewing threats and holding government hostage to his unpopular whims. Yesterday, the Washington Post quoted GOP strategist Alex Conant: "Trump’s base is unhappy after the three M’s: midterms, Mattis and market fall. Manufacturing a crisis around border funding unites and excites Republicans at a time when Trump’s base is softening. As long as Trump feels pressure from his base, he’s going to have trouble folding on the wall." (In contrast, notice how rapidly he folded on removing U.S. troops from Syria.)

When Pauley asked her if the new Congress will "be remembered for impeachment, or will they be remembered for something else," Pelosi replied that the Democrats won the elections by talking about "lower healthcare costs by reducing the cost of prescription drugs and preserving pre-existing condition benefit; building bigger paychecks by building the infrastructure of America. "So, pressed Pauley, "impeachment not high on your agenda?"

"Well," replied Pelosi, as though there were no Constitution, "that would be depending on what comes forth from the Special Counsel's Office. If and when the time comes for impeachment, it will have to be something that has such a crescendo in a bipartisan way." Impeachment should stem from an investigation by the House Judiciary Committee, not by a branch of the Executive. It's imperative that Nadler-- a Pelosi puppet-- get started immediately.

Saira Rao was the Denver-based progressive Democrat who took on establishment zombie Diana DeGette last cycle. Like many of us, she's very simpathetic with the views expressed by Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) last week. This morning she told me that "Representative Tlaib's comments on impeaching Trump and calling him by name, namely a motherfucker, has shaken establishment Democrats to their core. First, she's exposed their inability to deal with the motherfucker. He should have been impeached last year. They passed the buck then and she's right to call for impeachment now. Waiting for Mueller is absurd-- and underscores just how ineffective the Democratic Party is. Second--- and perhaps more importantly-- Tlaib is a brown Muslim woman who speaks her mind. That's reason enough for establishment Democrats to hate her. Add to that a 'bad word' and she's practically a criminal in their minds. Those of us not living in the corporate establishment Democratic bubble applaud the FUCK out of Representative Tlaib."

In a WBUR interview with David Leonhardt about his powerful NY Times column calling for a commencement of impeachment hearings, Leonhardt asserted that "the dangers that President Trump presents to the country are growing. You can see that the moderating influences in his administration like Gen. Mattis are leaving. You can see him acting on more of his impulses, like pulling troops out or shutting down the government. And so we have long known that he is unfit for office, but Republicans are starting to have a sense for the political costs he creates for their party... [H]e already has less support from his own party in Congress than any other president in memory. So Republicans have not defied him the way I wish they would, the way I think it's their patriotic duty to do. But they have also not supported him the way Obama or Bush or Clinton or Bush or Reagan... were supported by members of their own party. I think his support right now is broad but shallow, and it would not shock me if he struggles to keep that support as Robert Mueller issues his report and as the year goes on."

Leonhardt's indictment of Trump, The People vs. Donald J. Trump-- He is demonstrably unfit for office. What are we waiting for?, is this week's first must read. He began by reminding his readers that "The presidential oath of office contains 35 words and one core promise: to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.' Since virtually the moment Donald J. Trump took that oath two years ago, he has been violating it. He has repeatedly put his own interests above those of the country. He has used the presidency to promote his businesses. He has accepted financial gifts from foreign countries. He has lied to the American people about his relationship with a hostile foreign government. He has tolerated cabinet officials who use their position to enrich themselves." The idea of not opening impeachment hearings seems ludicrous... or worse.

To shield himself from accountability for all of this-- and for his unscrupulous presidential campaign-- he has set out to undermine the American system of checks and balances. He has called for the prosecution of his political enemies and the protection of his allies. He has attempted to obstruct justice. He has tried to shake the public’s confidence in one democratic institution after another, including the press, federal law enforcement and the federal judiciary.

The unrelenting chaos that Trump creates can sometimes obscure the big picture. But the big picture is simple: The United States has never had a president as demonstrably unfit for the office as Trump. And it’s becoming clear that 2019 is likely to be dominated by a single question: What are we going to do about it?

The easy answer is to wait-- to allow the various investigations of Trump to run their course and ask voters to deliver a verdict in 2020. That answer has one great advantage. It would avoid the national trauma of overturning an election result. Ultimately, however, waiting is too dangerous. The cost of removing a president from office is smaller than the cost of allowing this president to remain.

He has already shown, repeatedly, that he will hurt the country in order to help himself. He will damage American interests around the world and damage vital parts of our constitutional system at home. The risks that he will cause much more harm are growing.

Some of the biggest moderating influences have recently left the administration. The defense secretary who defended our alliances with NATO and South Korea is gone. So is the attorney general who refused to let Trump subvert a federal investigation into himself. The administration is increasingly filled with lackeys and enablers. Trump has become freer to turn his whims into policy-- like, say, shutting down the government on the advice of Fox News hosts or pulling troops from Syria on the advice of a Turkish autocrat.

The biggest risk may be that an external emergency-- a war, a terrorist attack, a financial crisis, an immense natural disaster-- will arise. By then, it will be too late to pretend that he is anything other than manifestly unfit to lead.

For the country’s sake, there is only one acceptable outcome, just as there was after Americans realized in 1974 that a criminal was occupying the Oval Office. The president must go.

Achieving this outcome won’t be easy. It will require honorable people who have served in the Trump administration to share, publicly, what they have seen and what they believe. (At this point, anonymous leaks are not sufficient.) It will require congressional Republicans to acknowledge that they let a con man take over their party and then defended that con man. It will require Democrats and progressive activists to understand that a rushed impeachment may actually help Trump remain in office.

But if removing him will not be easy, it’s not as unlikely as it may sometimes seem. From the beginning, Trump has been an unusually weak president, as political scientists have pointed out. Although members of Congress have not done nearly enough to constrain him, no other recent president has faced nearly so much public criticism or private disdain from his own party.

Since the midterm election showed the political costs that Trump inflicts on Republicans, this criticism seems to be growing. They have broken with him on foreign policy (in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Syria) and are anxious about the government shutdown. Trump is vulnerable to any erosion in his already weak approval rating, be it from an economic downturn, more Russia revelations or simply the defection of a few key allies. When support for an unpopular leader starts to crack, it can crumble.

Before we get to the how of Trump’s removal, though, I want to spend a little more time on the why — because even talking about the ouster of an elected president should happen only under extreme circumstances. Unfortunately, the country is now so polarized that such talk instead occurs with every president. Both George W. Bush and Barack Obama were subjected to reckless calls for their impeachment, from members of Congress no less.

So let’s be clear. Trump’s ideology is not an impeachable offense. However much you may disagree with Trump’s tax policy-- and I disagree vehemently-- it is not a reason to remove him from office. Nor are his efforts to cut government health insurance or to deport undocumented immigrants. Such issues, among others, are legitimate matters of democratic struggle, to be decided by elections, legislative debates, protests and the other normal tools of democracy. These issues are not the “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors” that the founders intended impeachment to address.

Yet the founders also did not intend for the removal of a president to be impossible. They insisted on including an impeachment clause in the Constitution because they understood that an incompetent or corrupt person was nonetheless likely to attain high office every so often. And they understood how much harm such a person could do. The country needed a way to address what Alexander Hamilton called “the abuse or violation of some public trust” and James Madison called the “incapacity, negligence or perfidy” of a president.

The negligence and perfidy of President Trump-- his high crimes and misdemeanors-- can be separated into four categories. This list is conservative [details of each category is here]. It does not include the possibility that his campaign coordinated strategy with Russia, which remains uncertain. It also does not include his lazy approach to the job, like his refusal to read briefing books or the many empty hours on his schedule. It instead focuses on demonstrable ways that he has broken the law or violated his constitutional oath.

• Trump has used the presidency for personal enrichment.
• Trump has violated campaign finance law.
• Trump has obstructed justice.
• Trump has subverted democracy.

The most relevant precedent for the removal of Trump is Nixon, the only American president to be forced from office because of his conduct. And two aspects of Nixon’s departure tend to get overlooked today. One, he was never impeached. Two, most Republicans-- both voters and elites-- stuck by him until almost the very end. His approval rating among Republicans was still about 50 percent when, realizing in the summer of 1974 that he was doomed, he resigned.

The current political dynamics have some similarities. Whether the House of Representatives, under Democratic control, impeaches Trump is not the big question. The question is whether he loses the support of a meaningful slice of Republicans.

I know that many of Trump’s critics have given up hoping that he ever will. They assume that Republican senators will go on occasionally criticizing him without confronting him. But it is a mistake to give up. The stakes are too large-- and the chances of success are too real.

Consider the following descriptions of Trump: “terribly unfit;” “erratic;” “reckless;” “impetuous;” “unstable;” “a pathological liar;” “dangerous to a democracy;” a concern to “anyone who cares about our nation.” Every one of these descriptions comes from a Republican member of Congress or of Trump’s own administration.

They know. They know he is unfit for office. They do not need to be persuaded of the truth. They need to be persuaded to act on it.

Democrats won’t persuade them by impeaching Trump. Doing so would probably rally the president’s supporters. It would shift the focus from Trump’s behavior toward a group of Democratic leaders whom Republicans are never going to like. A smarter approach is a series of sober-minded hearings to highlight Trump’s misconduct. Democrats should focus on easily understandable issues most likely to bother Trump’s supporters, like corruption.



If this approach works at all-- or if Mueller’s findings shift opinion, or if a separate problem arises, like the economy-- Trump’s Republican allies will find themselves in a very difficult spot. At his current approval rating of about 40 percent, Republicans were thumped in the midterms. Were his rating to fall further, a significant number of congressional Republicans would be facing long re-election odds in 2020.

Two examples are Cory Gardner of Colorado and Susan Collins of Maine, senators who, not coincidentally, have shown tentative signs of breaking with Trump on the government shutdown. The recent criticism from Mitt Romney-- who alternates between critical and sycophantic, depending on his own political interests-- is another sign of Trump’s weakness.

For now, most Republicans worry that a full break with Trump will cause them to lose a primary, and it might. But sticking by him is no free lunch. Just ask the 27 Republican incumbents who were defeated last year and are now former members of Congress. By wide margins, suburban voters and younger voters find Trump abhorrent. The Republican Party needs to hold its own among these voters, starting in 2020.

It’s not only that Trump is unfit to be president and that Republicans know it. It also may be the case that they will soon have a political self-interest in abandoning him. If they did, the end could come swiftly. The House could then impeach Trump, knowing the Senate might act to convict. Or negotiations could begin over whether Trump deserves to trade resignation for some version of immunity.

Finally, there is the hope-- naïve though it may seem-- that some Republicans will choose to act on principle. There now exists a small club of former Trump administration officials who were widely respected before joining the administration and whom Trump has sullied, to greater or lesser degrees. It includes Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn, H.R. McMaster and Jim Mattis. Imagine if one of them gave a television interview and told the truth about Trump. Doing so would be a service to their country at a time of national need. It would be an illustration of duty.

Throughout his career, Trump has worked hard to invent his own reality, and largely succeeded. It has made him very rich and, against all odds, elected him president. But whatever happens in 2019, his false version of reality will not survive history, just as Nixon’s did not. Which side of that history do today’s Republicans want to be on?