He cut down his father’s cherry tree

Enough is enough!

In July, long before the impeachment trial began, Representative Al Green (D-Texas) told NBC News, “I’m concerned if we don’t impeach this president, he will get reelected.” We are currently living in an era in which the 2020 Democratic debates are not focused on healthcare or education, but instead on a candidate’s ability to beat Trump. Trump’s 2020 presidential bid is hanging like a dark cloud over the Democrats, who think that such a nightmare cannot possibly become reality. The Democrats have been discussing impeachment since the first day of Trump’s presidency, which seems positive to many in their party. However, what they didn’t realize was that all their talk of impeaching Trump over whatever they could find was actually an impediment to convicting the president. For the past two years, Democrats have been scratching their heads and jumping at anything that might incriminate Trump. Now that Trump actually did something incriminating, due to the previous “witch hunt” talk, the impeachment proceedings were made out to be a joke. Ideally, Trump should have been removed from office. But in this crucial election year, the impeachment route may have not been the best course of action. Plenty of Democrats wanted him impeached before the Ukraine information came out, and Nancy Pelosi, the current speaker of the house, tried to hold out as long as she could. Despite cries from several of her colleagues for impeachment, Pelosi waited until there was something substantial enough to fuel a legitimate impeachment inquiry. However, the impeachment was really just a spark for Trump’s base. They felt that what he did with Ukraine is fine, and with the Republicans rallying solidly behind him, there’s no suprise he wasn’t removed. This is a problem because many people who hold more moderate views or are undecided about who they’re voting for are unhappy with the impeachment. The concern is that these critical voters are starting to lean towards the right because of this “witch hunt” mentality, presenting a concern that will follow the Democrats long after the Senate hearing. Because of Trump barring key witnesses from testifying, the whole inquiry turned into a farce. There was enough evidence for the Democrats to impeach him, but nothing incriminating enough for Republicans to turn on their own president. Despite constant reports that something big was coming, the Senate voted not to hear from witnesses nor subpoenaed evidence, undermining Democrat attempts to bring down Trump. Americans became bored with the impeachment, even as new developments continue to arise. News anchors on MSNBC and Fox News received more viewers than the impeachment trial did. Another issue was that Nancy Pelosi held onto the Articles of Impeachment instead of sending them directly over to the Senate. While there was a perfectly reasonable excuse for this, by the time she sent them over, Republicans and Democrats alike were tired of the standoff, indicating cracks in a Democratic Party that didn’t have as strong a front as they would have liked in the first place. While removing Trump was a good idea, the way the Democrats approached the impeachment provided a high chance of backfiring in the 2020 elections, and it would have been a better idea to think through the full consequences of beginning the inquiry before proceeding. Now, as the Senate trial has concluded, and we saw what Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, could pull out of his sleeve, we know the President will remain in his position for at least another year. Ella Johnson ’22

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters,” Donald Trump boasted to a room of supporters as a presidential candidate in Iowa on January 23, 2016. Since then, every corrupt action of President Trump’s has served as a test of both his supporters’ and Republican members of Congress’ blind loyalty. The impeachment hearings were their final exam and they passed with flying colors as they spewed theories and hollered over any facts brought to the table by those testifying. As Representative Adam Smith (D-WA) described, their strategy was to “wear you down.” While Republican messaging is often inconsistent, this strategy is long-standing. Rolling back footage from the eleven hour Benghazi or the Kavanaugh hearings you’ll notice the same rhetoric, poking at witnesses and attempting to divert from the core focus. These members of congress are not shouting out their comments because they’re driven by genuine passion, but rather to cover up that they have no substantial defense for the president’s criminality. The representatives repeatedly diverged into rants about the impeachment process rather than focusing on the crime itself, spitting out illogical arguments in an attempt to paint the trial as a hoax. They threatened to out the whistleblower—undermining the Whistleblower Protection Act stating that those who raise concerns have a statutory right to anonymity—and demand Vice President Biden and his son Hunter Biden testify, even though President Trump’s actions are on trial, and not the possible corruption in the past administration. When they did get to discussing the designated topic of the hearings, abuse of power, they attempted to normalize the act. Representative John Ratcliffe (RTX) was quick to jump to the president’s defense: “Is it ever okay to invite a foreign government to become involved in an election, involving a political opponent? The answer is ‘yes.’ It better be—we do it all of the time,” a comment dripping in falsity and criminality but disguised through rhetoric as a common sense stance. This technique is eerily similar to the idea of “big lie”, a propaganda tactic stating that the bigger, the louder, and the more repetitive the lie, the more people will believe it. Democrats are able to see the case straightforwardly laid out: the president abused his power and obstructed Congress by leveraging aid for his own personal and political gain. On the other side of the aisle, Republicans have to juggle cries about the Bidens, witness intimidation, and the normalization of confessed crimes all wrapped up into a “Big Lie.” Much like the president, these representatives know their choices are unconstitutional but don’t care as long as they manage to convince their constituency to blindly follow, destroying the system of checks and balances in their path. The articles passed through the house with zero Republicans and 229 Democrats voting yea. This division is felt amongst the people as well, with Trump’s approval rating at 42% at the time and support for impeachment at 49% on average. The Senate trial has exposed the U.S. as a nearly evenly divided nation. Republican leaders’ repeated failure to rise above party lines in defense of the constitution made it clear that the split on the issue of impeachment was not simply because one party supports the presidents’ policies and the other doesn’t, this split was because one party has integrity and the other doesn’t. “I mean, I asked it very pointblank, because we’re looking for corruption. There’s tremendous corruption. Why should we be giving hundreds of millions of dollars to countries when there’s this kind of corruption,” President Trump stated in a live interview with Fox & Friends in November 2019, admitting that he held back funds until Ukraine investigated a disproven conspiracy theory. Just as the President asserted at that Iowa campaign stop in 2016, he can commit a crime in broad daylight and cowardly Republicans will let him get away with it. Despite the outcome of the Senate trial, impeachment was a permanent stain on Trump’s legacy and the Republican party as a whole, representing a time when they put their loyalty to a lawless president over their loyalty to the Constitution. Madison Halpern ’21 Graphic by Chris de Santis ’20/Staf