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He’s in the right

Only three times has this happened in the history of the United States. Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and now Donald Trump are the only presidents to ever be impeached. Both Johnson and Clinton were eventually acquitted by the Senate, and if not much changes, the same will most likely occur for Trump. What makes this different is that it was the first fully partisan impeachment case: only two Democrats voted against and no Republicans voted for both articles of impeachment. Many Democrats have been calling for his impeachment from the day he took office. For example, Maxine Waters, a high ranking Democrat, vowed to stop at nothing to impeach Trump. Democrats have been actively pursuing a case for impeachment as a means of removing Trump from office. Impeachment should not be the desired outcome of an investigation, instead, it should be weighed as punishment for a crime. Regardless, the crimes that Trump has been charged with are not sufficiently proven to justify removal from office. When the partisan nature of this impeachment, the abuse of power, and the misapplication of law are all noted, the case against Trump is effectively nullified. Unlike every previous impeachment, the vote was almost entirely partisan. Two Democrats voted against Article I of Abuse of Power, and three voted against Article II of Obstruction of Congress. By contrast, the number of votes against an article in Bill Clinton’s impeachment was upwards of 81 Republicans for Article IV. In addition, Clinton was also acquitted by ten Republicans in the Senate. There were votes from both Republicans and Democrats in favor of and against impeachment. A minacious partisan impeachment vote allows a party to simply remove a president they disagree with. Now, this does not invalidate their Articles of Impeachment necessarily, but it does cast serious doubts on the intentions of House Democrats. The call for impeachment from Democrats is not new. Trump has been accused of collusion with the Russians even before he was elected, which was based on speculation and resulted in no definitive answers. Many of the faces of the Democratic party presented little reasoning why besides the fact that they simply did not like him. They have made outrageous claims such as collusion, witness intimidation, and obstruction of justice. But no actual evidence has been used to support these cries. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made it a campaign issue to impeach Trump in a district where Trump is highly unpopular, neglecting the fundamental aspect of supplying a proven example of a “high crime or misdemeanor.” Impeachment has simply become a Democratic talking point, and could lead to an abuse of power not by Trump, but by the Democrats. While one may wish to point out these arguments as nothing more than speculation, the fact of the matter is that the charges brought against Trump have not yet been proven. Article I claims that Trump abused the power of office by withholding aid from the Ukrainians if they did not investigate potential presidential contender Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. This may seem plausible, but whether or not there was intent is still unknown. One can (as do I) strongly feel that Trump wished to bring down an opponent rather than simply fight corruption, but without evidence “beyond an unreasonable doubt,” there is no way to come to such a legal conclusion. Article II, Obstruction of Congress, is a different story. It states that “President Trump directed Executive Branch agencies, offices, and officials not to comply [with subpoenas].” Put simply, a subpoena is an order to go to court. However, Trump has the right to have a subpoena challenged. Trump does not have to comply with a subpoena if he wishes to have it challenged. Only after having his case heard by the courts does he have to comply, and thus Article II is falsely applied. When the whole picture is looked at, a full argument against Trump cannot be constructed. This does not mean that he is entirely innocent, and neither does this protect him from further investigations. What this does mean is that there is no certainty “beyond an unreasonable doubt.” The concept of innocent before proven guilty is at stake here. If the highest office in this country is subjected to an improper legal system, then every individual may have one of their most basic rights—presumed innocence—stripped away. Ike Mittman ’22 Source Confrmation Editor

Have you ever encountered an item or service was too expensive but subsequently proceeded to buy it? This scenario should seem familiar to Democrats for they have spent hundreds of million dollars to try to prove that they are right. Like children in a playground squabble, they refuse to relent until their viewpoint is ruled to be just. Furthermore, the senators and congressmen who agree with the impeachment of President Donald J. Trump aren’t even doing so under valid motivations, but to follow the other Democrats blindly. They are following the ones that they believe to ‘right’, but not making sure their opinions are factual or logical. Yet somehow they get reelected every election. American’s interest in the trial decreased after the 1st day. According to the Intelligencer, “A dip to 20 percent in daytime viewership may be the best indicator that Trump’s impeachment is not a concern to many.” Though many people were in support of the impeachment, little cared enough to even watch the second day of trial. Most of the Democrats are like sheep, easily guided towards the direction the herder wants. They do not support the impeachment out of of reason but rather just for the sake of agreeing or spiting President Trump. Also, President Trump’s approval ratings have gone up from 34 percent on November 20, 2019, to 53 percent of people who approve on January 22, 2020, according to the Rasmussen Reports. Thus, the trial may be counterproductive for the Democrats, and may show the people the logical fallacies in their argument, expanding President Trump’s support. We have lost an exorbitant amount of money to this trial so far. Senators and congressmen on average make $174,000 per year. That equates to $476.71 per day per representative. After three days of the trial and the pay for all one hundred senators was $143,013.70. One can feed a person for only seven dollars every day according to the USDA food budget, so this equates to 20,431 people that could have been fed had the Democrats chosen not to pursue this trial. Additionally, the Mueller report cost 3.06 million dollars which equates to 437,143 people that could have been fed. The cost for the impeachment process has not been published yet but I predictthat it will cost us close to ten million dollars. This cost does not include the time wasted watching and waiting for the results from this trial. Further, once the impeachment inquiry was in the House of Representatives, for 38 with 435 representatives. That equaled $7,880,016.30, meaning 1,125,716 people that could have been fed for a day. All in all, we could have fed 1,583,291 deserving people food for a day, but the liberals would rather put one man in a bad spot light. Due to their selfish actions, people are still dying, starving, and freezing. The entire impeachment process is a waste of money and time, thus, should never have happened. The Democrats have burned through several million dollars of our cash to in a feeble attempt to demonstrate that they are correct. The most terrible part is that our representatives and congressmen who concur with the reprimand of Donald J Trump aren’t in any event doing it to support their prospects: most follow different dissidents lacking individual thought. The liberals are neither kind nor selfless, but are mean and selfish people who are attacking a man on no defensible grounds. Jonathan Sommer ’21 Opinions Editor Graphic by Chris de Santis ’20/Staf

Trump’s defendable action

Jonathan Xu ’22 Copy Editor

It was a chilly, somber evening at the Baghdadi International Airport on the night of January 3, 2020. Two figures, enveloped in the twilight haze, stepped off a private jet and into a small motorcade, deep in conversation. Barely fifteen minutes into their ride, the sky suddenly came alight in a flash of flame and fury as missiles from a circling U.S. drone buried themselves into the convoy, eviscerating it in an instant. And at that very moment—in the blink of an eye—one of the most brutal and diabolical people to have walked the Middle East ceased to exist. That man was Qassem Suleimani, the leader of the infamous Quds Force, a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) specializing in military intelligence and espionage—a man whose face was known all across the world, revered by some, whilst held in deep animus by others. For decades, Suleimani had conspired behind the scenes to advance Iran’s geopolitical agenda in the Middle East, contriving numerous schemes and conflicts to aid the regime in its goal of disseminating chaos and obliterating regional stability. It was no secret that Suleimani’s abiding presence in the Middle East was one tainted with the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians, from the bloodstained battlegrounds of Iraq and Syria to the far reaches of Thailand, New Delhi, Lagos, and Nairobi. Funding terrorism, orchestrating mayhem, authorizing the massacre of hundreds of opposition party members, and so much more contributed to the phantom legacy of a man whose priorities lay only in the dictatorship he served with fervor, not in the appreciation or recognition of human life. And yet, upon the proclamation of Suleimani’s death, the mainstream media was swift to point to the hotheaded aggression and jin

goistic penchants of the current administration, bluntly ignoring the context surrounding the hit. Instead of illuminating the horrid transgressions and tarnished reputation of Suleimani, news circles instead painted him as a “hero in Iran—brave, charismatic and beloved by the troops,” while commenting that President Trump’s actions were “motivated by retribution” and constituted an “act of war,” in the words of CNN. In the aftermath of his death, a furor spawned by the ostentatious media fanfare even led to the website of the Selective Service System, which is responsible for the draft, collapsing due to “high traffic volumes.” Such gaudy and embellished reporting, while perhaps well-suited for splashy headlines, is completely irrelevant to what matters: protecting American interests and the lives of American citizens. From the moment Suleimani was consigned leadership over the Quds Force, he presented a clear and present danger to all peoples of the Middle East, especially Americans. In recent months, Suleimani had gone way out of his range to flaunt Iranian military superiority over the region by shooting down an American drone over the Strait of Hormuz, seizing a British tanker in the Strait of Gibraltar, violently pillaging the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and even authorizing a rocket attack that killed an American contractor in Iraq. The United States’ response throughout the period prior to the Suleimani hit had largely been both retroactive and subdued; as the IRGC doubled down on its efforts to play the aggressor, the US instead responded with either diplomatic or political measures that clearly had no effect on the former’s course of action. What became quite evident was that deterrence, the action of preemptively discouraging an enemy from pushing its agenda, was not working Suleimani would continue to endanger American lives in the Middle East without fear of reprisal. Deterrence does not work without a deterrent. Striking Suleimani was an inevitable outcome that could only two ways: preemptively or too late. Suleimani’s leadership over the Quds Force caused the deaths of thousands of civilians and American troops and propagated a reign of terror within the Middle East fundamentally inimical to the interests of the United States. At the end of the day, taking out the vicious commander was the only way to reinstate the principle of deterrence that had been foregone over the last several years as the American stance against Iran steadily waned. It also constituted the only action that both punished Iran for harming innocent civilians and communicated a hardline message promising more if the IRGC does not desist from its treacherous agenda. Iran may have tried to respond with the facade of a retaliatory strike on an American airbase, but the fact that Iran informed U.S. allies prior to their own impending maneuver is damning evidence that such efforts were only show, not substance. When looking back at the great terroristic threats of our modern era, which include those from Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, it is quite clear that while some of them may have rivaled Suleimani in reputation or track record, none of them were as insidious or perilous a threat as the Iranian general upon their termination. Suleimani was the greatest weapon of the Iranian regime to extort and exploit the world; incapacitating him was the only viable solution on the table. Graphic by Christopher de Santis ’20/Staf