by Shelton Bumgarner
@bumgarls
I hate to break it to House Democrats, but there’s no political will to do anything about Trump being a criminal, possibly treasonous president. We’ve moved on. It’s baked into the cake, as they say.
Having said that, if you really want to give Trump the black stain of impeachment, don’t go after the complex stuff that can’t be fit into a tweet. Go after his tweeting.
Now, him Tweeting is not, in itself, a crime. But what he has done over the last few years via tweet is. We’ve had witness tampering and intimidation. We’ve seeing a great lowering of respect for the office he holds. We’ve seen any number of other things that at least rise to the level of “misdemeanor” in a Constitutional sense. Add to this that two of the last three presidents — at least — who got impeached were charged with things they said in speeches or the ill repute they brought on the office and, well, there you go.
I’m not saying don’t look into the wide-range of criminal things Trump’s done that could lead to is impeachment. Go for it. But I am saying going after his tweeting gives House investigators something really, really compelling to show on TV: psychiatrists under oath saying they think the president’s nuts.
But there are some conditions to this proposal. One, things have to get worse. So much worse that it’s difficult for Trump to simply tell his cult followers that he was “joking.” The economy would also have to begin to slow noticeably. Lastly, and this is the crazy part, there would have to be a white-knuckled political calculation on the part of Republican leadership that they could actually have a better shot of winning the White House again with Pence instead of Trump. If you don’t have that last piece, then, well, all of this would, in fact, hurt Trump politically. But there’s a decent shot (greater than 50/50) that he will win re-election somehow. I say this because in general populist autocrats don’t lose.
Another key point is a lot of people who support Trump don’t support his manic tweeting. So that would at least give House leaders some cover politically. It’s a lot less likely that they would face the same fate as the Republicans who impeached Bill Clinton. Though, it must be noted, the after affects of that impeachment lead directly to Gore not being able to win decisively in 2000.
Do I think this will happen? Not right now. Things could go either way right now. Either Trump continues to hold on to just enough sanity that he is able to function — at least in public — or he slides into far more dangerous territory and what I propose begins to make a lot more sense.
