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 12^th, 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.