OpinionTrending Commentary

Another ‘for no good reason’ impeachment of President Trump

For the second time in the last 13 months, the House of Representatives voted to impeach the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, for no good reason. Last year, the impeachment was for not communicating properly. This time it’s for being too zealous.

In the first impeachment, Trump was charged with abuse of power and obstruction of justice. Neither charge resulted in a conviction. The charges were based on Trump asking the government of Ukraine to “do me a favor” and investigate corrupt activities by any US officials including former Vice-president Joe Biden.

In Trump’s impeachment phone call his meaning for “do me a favor” was just that the US did not have access to all the necessary needed information and that Ukrainian officials did have the information. In business, it is common to ask those with whom someone has a business relationship to do favors. In politics, “do me a favor’ often leads to corrupt behavior.

Trump is a businessperson and not a politician. Because he spoke as a businessperson, he was impeached for no good reason in December 2019.

Today, all Americans are extremely emotional and worn down from the events of the last year. The death toll from COVID, the tanked economy, the severely curtailed lifestyle and the lockdowns have us all feeling frustrated and angry. Add the political anger and the result is the huge increase in violence that we have seen all over America during the past year or so.

That violence hit a peak last week when people who were attending a peaceful rally, marched to the Capitol Building and attacked it. The act was horrific. The FBI will find all of those who broke the law and prosecute them fully. All of the guilty people should be sent to jail.

Who are the guilty people? Anyone involved in the siege or anyone that encouraged the terrorists. The House of Representatives claims that Trump fits into the category of encouraging terrorists. An examination of Trump’s speech shows that there are no direct words that would incite protestors to become terrorists.

Trump spoke of marching to the capitol building. He said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

The Democrats in the House of Representatives claimed that Trump incited an insurrection when he told the tens of thousands of generally peaceful protestors to march over to the Capitol Building. While his tone and style did add to the furor, is that enough to impeach a sitting president? Especially a president who will leave office in a matter of days.

Most believe that Trump made a bad situation worse with his words. Trump told his followers to “fight” for what they believed to be true. Congress said that using the word “fight’ was enough to incite the crowd.

Of course, that is ridiculous. Every single politician while campaigning says if elected they will fight for Americans’ rights. How many times have we heard a politician say they will fight to raise the minimum wage? Or fight to give health care to every American? Or fight to open our borders and let more immigrants enter?

President Trump should, at worst, have been censured for stoking the crowd. He did not commit any impeachable offensives. The most recent information indicates that the attack on the Capitol Building was pre-planned and would have occurred regardless of what Trump said during the rally.

Impeaching a president is very serious. Indeed, prior to Trump, it was used only twice in our history, both times for clearly impeachable offenses. The two impeachments of Trump were really for no good reason. This is very dangerous, especially the most recent impeachment which happened so quickly it is being referred to as a “snap impeachment.”

Does this mean that every time Congress is controlled by the opposite party of the president, impeachment could follow when there is strong disagreement with policy or disagreement with the words that the president uses?

For the good of the country, if impeachment is necessary, it should be for valid reasons. Impeaching the president for no good reason is just bad for the health of the country.

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Michael Busler

Michael Busler, Ph.D. is a public policy analyst and a Professor of Finance at Stockton University where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Finance and Economics. He has written Op-ed columns in major newspapers for more than 35 years.

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2 Comments

  1. The political culture in Washington and elsewhere is so inimical to a constructive dialog between the Left and Right. Nancy Pelosi is among the prominent reasons many Americans find many of our leaders and the institutions they lead to be hostile to the interests and values most Americans hold dear.

    I am biased. I am on the Right and I watch the political scene daily through the lens of TV news and intenet news and opinion sites. For those reasons, I am not the perfect arbiter of what is always good and bad, but I am a Normal person who can only judge how certain cultural phenomena offend Normal Americans. Normal Americans are those who are not counted among the cultural elites. We believe in American exceptionalism, American traditional values like belief in God, self-determination, the Constitution and its Amendments. We believe in working for what we have and giving our employer a full days work for a days pay. We belive and support immigration, but we don’t support open borders, or in extending voting rights and the full array of social support to undocumented immigrants. When they are granted citizenship they will have earned those privileges of citizenship.

    We believe in pro-life policies that believe in the sanctity of human life. Normal women would never consider elevating their careers, education or personal endeavors over the human life they may be nourishing in their own bodies. Child-birth and adoption are the responsible, Normal options.

    Normal Americans treasure the racial diversity of America. We are not motivated by White Supremacy, or QAnon conspiracies or beliefs. We are so thankful that outreach to the non-white communities over the last four years have resulted in many outspoken black, brown and other non-white people joining the ranks of conservatism and taking leadership roles in the movement. People like Candace Owens, Gianno Caldwell, Lawrence Jones, Jack Brewer, Leo GTerrell, Larry Elder, John James, Vernn Jones, Herschel Walker, Deneen Borelli, Immanuel Jarvis, Deroy Murdoch, Rob Smith, Allen West and countless others. (I must note that many of these Normal Americans adopted their Normal values in the distant past, but I have become aware of them in the recent few years.) Conservatism is a diverse ideal and, just as for the liberal, progressive and socialist ideologies, there are ouliers along the extremes who will always give your ethos a bad name.

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