Congress Announces Articles of Impeachment for Trump; Looking Back on 2016 and Forward to 2020
Here we finally are. It’s early December of 2019 and the
Democrat Majority Leader and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has finally directed
the House of Republicans to file Articles of Impeachment against the President
of the United States, who in case you missed the last several years, is none
other than Donald Trump.
To be clear, I am a Liberal-leaning Democrat born and raised
in the belly of Texas. I’ve had no love for Trump from the time he started
campaigning and onwards since he became president. I can admit that I’ve always
found him to be an entertaining figure in the celebrity culture and of course
saw him many times growing up while my Mom watched The Apprentice.
So I recognize that my party affiliation plays a part in my opinion
on the current President of our great Country.
But the manner in which Trump has conducted himself for the
entirety of his Presidency has been unprofessional and unbecoming at every step
of his tenure in the once highly respected office. He conducts himself and his
administration not with poise, thought, or consideration but instead with unrepentant
behavior, ever shameless as he pitches more lies to the American media outlets
on the lawn of the White House.
He lied to his supporters in 2016 when he said that he was
going to get what I believe to be an unnecessary wall built on our southern
border and even went so far to claim that Mexico was going to pay for it.
He lied to the American people when he said he’d put
American’s and America first.
He lies on a daily basis without hesitation.
His actions throughout his time as President have been
consistently gross, unbecoming of any individual in a leadership position, and
align well with the actions of a man who seems to consider himself before considering
anything or anyone else.
The outrage against Trump and all that he stands for started
quite early on in his presidency. In fact, on January 21, 2017, the day after
Trump was inaugurated into office, the largest protest to ever occur in a
single-day in the U.S., The Women’s March with some 4 million strong across the
country got out and protested Trump’s swearing in as the President.
Let me run a quick reel of lowlights for this administration
and then we can consider what all of that collectively points towards as far as
a solution for our Country as a whole in moving forward.
Trump issued a Travel Ban that specifically targeted
countries of Muslim majority populations which confirmed for many that this
President was ill-informed and making important decisions based on a foundation
of racism and hate towards the people outside of our Country.
The behavior was obvious prior to his election and even more
so once he came into office. Whether during his tirades such as the one in his
Campaign Launch Speech, where he casually stated,
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their
best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people
that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re
bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume are
good people.”
Once in office, many of the far-right or alt-right groups
that had been hiding in the shadows became more emboldened to take their
disgusting behavior to the streets and express their hatred and backwards
ideals to the public.
This shift in behavior was evident in August of 2017, when
there was a Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally by White Sumpremacists and
Nazi Sympathizers who were protesting the removal of Confederate statue of
Robert E. Lee, from Charlottesville’s Lee Park.
On August 12th, one of the individuals who was
there in support of the Unite the Right rally, rammed his car into
counter-protestors, injuring 19 people and killing Heather Heyer. In response
to this awful event and the life lost that day, Trump “condemned hatred, bigotry,
and violence on many sides,” with many sides being the key word that most of
the media keyed in on.
He later on tried to clean it up but of course tripped over
himself even further stating that there were “very fine people on both sides,”
which again lit a fuse in the liberal media machine as they tore to shreds his
thinly veiled attempt to create some moral equivalence between the Unite the
Right supporters and the counter protestors within the city.
Trump’s inability to come out and strongly reject white
supremacy in a clear and succinct way was more than worrisome and now, looking
back, was just one clue in the many that should have shown the American public
that this man was not fit for office.
Nearly a year after the dust settled from Charlottesville,
another storm was kicking up at the southern border. Trump had made the
decision to implement a “zero-tolerance” policy on the border which as a direct
result, caused many children of asylum seeking parents to be separated from their
parents.
Instead of building the wall on the southern border and
having Mexico pay for it, as Trump had promised on the campaign trail, he
locked up children and separated them from their parents without any true
justification, other than to create a policy so awful and horrible, that it
would serve as a deterrent to future illegal immigrants or asylum seekers.
Despite our country being founded by immigrants and America
being touted for many generations as the “melting pot” of the world, our
President was firmly telling non-American’s that they were unwelcome,
untrusted, and had little chance of participating in the American dream.
While some of our great presidents such as JFK, were looking
within themselves to see how they could best serve America, Trump has spent a significant
portion of his time decrying the media, demonizing immigrants, alienating
non-Trump supporters, and discussing his favorite topic, himself.
Trump has taken so many actions that have eroded away at the
so called norms of the Presidency that it can be challenging to keep up. In
fact, almost every action that this president takes is either for his own
benefit, or for the benefit of someone around him who he seems to want to
please.
The giant tax cut that Trump pushed through the Legislative
branches while he still had a congressional majority? Disproportionately
benefited the very wealthy while doing nothing to recoup the lost tax revenue.
The tax relief for the middle class? Temporary and built to fall off in the
2020’s. The tax relief for corporations? Indefinite with no expiration.
Trump was ready to tear down the Affordable Care Act or
Obamacare as it is more commonly known, without a ready or even close to
competent replacement plan and would have succeeded, had John McCain not voted
no in the Senate to pass that legislation.
In the last few weeks Trump has announced a change in food
stamp policies that will kick 700,000 people off of the food stamp program
established to help American’s in poverty and struggling. In other words, Trump
is punishing the lower income American’s while reducing financial obligations
via Taxes for the richest American’s and corporations.
Beyond taxes and healthcare, Trump’s foreign policy has been
a nightmare. He has an understaffed State Department with rampant turnover in
the top positions within his administration. He has started a trade war with
China, praised our
enemies, and undercut the confidence of our allies all in the span of a few
years, yanking the US out of numerous key trade agreements and destabilizing
our traditional support of our international allies.
In very short order, America has gone from the undeniable
leader in the international community, to the literal laughing stock of the
leaders within NATO.
Beyond policy decisions, take a look at Trump’s day to day behavior.
Trump’s unusual adoration of the Russian leader, Vladimir
Putin? In the Obama years being pro-Russia would have lost you an election. Now
the entire GOP has embraced the talking points that Trump pushes out after
fully capitulating on July 16, 2018. That was the day in which Trump held a
press conference with Vlad in Helsinki. In that presser, Trump stated:
“I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will
tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial
today.”
It was a sad day for our country as our President recognized
the most powerful and robust intelligence community in existence on Earth, but
in the same breath expressed doubts about their findings and instead sided with
one of the most corrupt and malicious leaders in modern times.
Not to be outdone by his own seeming affection for Putin,
Trump would later provide lavish praise for an equally awful and deadly
dictator. None other than the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He spent time at
a campaign rally praising Kim,
“I was really being tough and so was he,” Trump said. “And
we would go back and forth. And then we fell in love. No really. He wrote me
beautiful letters.”
The joking tones aside, Trump has a clear obsession with
power and an even clearer admiration of those with the ability to exercise
their power without regard for rule of law.
Which bring us back full circle to where we are today. Congress
has announced their intention to file Articles of Impeachment against Trump
because he wielded the leverage of 400 million dollars in aid to Ukraine as a
weapon, demanding through formal and informal channels that Ukraine announce an
investigation into the Biden’s in order for Ukraine to receive a formal White
House meeting and the 400 million in upheld aid.
While Trump, Foxnews, and other bumbling idiots such as
Devin Nunes and “Gym” Jordan have all been touting the same lines of defense,
it has been made clear through key witness testimony that Trump wanted an
investigation into the Biden’s and would not release 400 million in defense aid
until he got what he wanted.
This isn’t based on hearsay, this has been confirmed by key
individuals who served under the Trump administration and felt obligated to
speak out in the midst of such utter disregard for rule of law. Trump’s stooges
have also touted Ukraine as potentially being behind the election interference
which undercuts what intelligence community has underlined over and over, as
the FBI has definitively stated that Russia was behind the election
interference.
The Ukraine interference that Trump is referring to, is
unsurprisingly a hoax, a debunked theory which has no basis in reality. His thinly
veiled statements saying that he was only interested in fighting corruption, is
a bad faith statement that bears no reflection of the reality of this
administrations actions throughout the entirety of Trump’s presidency.
Let’s not forget that Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort,
key advisors such as Roger Stone, his personal attorney in Michael Cohen, and
many others from the Trump campaign staff were convicted by the United States
for lying to the FBI amongst other charges that easily fall under the tent of
corruption and are currently or will soon be serving time in Federal Prison. The
Russian hoax? Not so much a hoax as many people believe to this day, in fact,
were it not for Attorney General William Barr’s blatant partisan behavior and
utilizing his Attorney General role to act as the personal attorney of Trump,
impeachment may have already gone through in relation to the Mueller
investigation.
Beyond all that he has done wrong and all that he continues
to do wrong, the fact of the matter is this: Trump is and has always been unfit
for office. He is corrupt, apathetic, and lies nearly every time he opens his
mouth.
I’ve been asked by Republicans and Conservatives alike in
the recent months, “why do you hate Trump so much?”
It’s not out of hate for Trump that I push for his
impeachment. It’s out of a love for America. It’s out of a love for our
Constitution. It’s my patriotism for this great nation that convicts me to
speak out against Trump. I want to see our constitution upheld and I want to
see our governmental bodies function as they were intended by our founding fathers.
Trump is a symptom but he is not the disease. We have to
stop treating politics as if it is a sports team, and start putting people into
power who are the best and brightest of us. Otherwise Trump will be the beginning,
not the end of unjust politics that circumvent the norms of our government and
seek to upend those structures, abandoning those norms and instead seeking to
consolidate power.
Trump has shown a bright light on the darkest patches of
American history and illuminated all of the rot that still remains from our
countries imperfect past. He has stirred up hatred, distrust, bad faith actors,
and is unwilling to do any work at all that could potentially bring our country
together. He has highlighted the divisions and closed the doors on potential
unity or compromise.
He is a wolf, among us without even the decency to dress up
and pretend to be a sheep within the herd. Instead he touts his nature as a
tool, a weapon, an attribute of power to be respected.
All I see is an old, tired man who has been lost from the
moment he walked into the doors of the White House.
The reality of the situation still stands that Republican
Party has the majority in the Senate. They hold the power to convict or not in
trial that is sure to occur in the Senate once the Congressional body passes the
Articles of Impeachment.
Unless pressure is applied by all sides of the American
public, it is doubtful that Trump will be removed from office. However, voting
in 2020 is still by and large the best avenue that we as the voters have of
removing him from power.
Showing up in 2020 is our best shot at resetting the clock
and mending the wounds that Trump has opened up in our great nation.
I hope to see you at the voting booth.
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