The Trump administration is no stranger to investigations, but the latest one has the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, bringing impeachment charges upon our President. Is this the right move, or is the House decision going to create a Nation divided?
Calls for the potential impeachment of President Donald Trump are raising a multitude of questions across our divided nation. Although the Trump administration is no stranger to controversy, announcements of a formal impeachment inquiry are bringing the drama to a historic escalation. The question now is: What would a Presidential impeachment do to our nation?
Would an impeachment divide us, or unify us over a common cause? Is there enough evidence of wrongdoing and constitutional violation to remove Trump from office, or this merely a ploy to sway voters ahead of an upcoming election?
The call for potential impeachment is arising in light of a recent phone call where Trump reportedly asked the Ukranian president to investigate former Vice President and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden. At the time of the phone call, Trump had not yet sent the $400 million in U.S. aid that he had promised to the European nation. A Vox article by Sean Collins and Alex Ward perfectly stated the implications of this phone call: “You want your aid? Help me dig up dirt on my 2020 political rival.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is leading the charge for a trial, stating in her public remarks on the issue that she “can say with authority the Trump administration’s actions undermine both our national security and our intelligence and our protections of whistleblowers.”
The House is more divided than ever, with Democrats and Republicans alike aligning with those on their respective sides of the aisle. USA Today recently reported that 74 percent of Democrats support impeaching the President, while only 17 percent of Republicans are backing the movement.
These statistics support the conclusion that a presidential impeachment would only split apart our nation further, and greatly expand the already wide partisan divide.
CNN’s Ronald Brownstein reported that as long as GOP voters continue to back Trump, Republican leaders will most likely stick by his side. With the Senate currently under Republican control, even if the House were to pass a vote on the articles of impeachment, the odds of Trump being convicted under trial are unlikely — unless more concrete evidence of wrongdoing emerges. Trump has been under fire a multitude of times throughout his Presidency and has never faced an impeachment inquiry before, which begs the question: why would the Democrats make this move now?
A Time article by Tara Law detailed what it takes for a President to be removed from office, and although the Constitution states that a public official must commit an act of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” the biggest decider is actually whether or not members of the President’s own political party are willing to vote against them.
The Monika Lewinsky scandal and the Watergate scandal served as “smoking guns” in both the Clinton and Nixon presidential Impeachment hearings, and without a more clear point of precise wrongdoing it is hard to imagine that the Senate would vote to convict.
Clinton lied under oath in regards to his affair with Monika Lewinsky and asked White House staff members to lie on his behalf, but even his irresponsible and reckless actions did not result in removal from the Oval Office.
The most likely outcome from an impeachment trial is that the Trump Administration would be highly scrutinized in the public eye, causing every wrongdoing of the President to be brought to the attention of American voters. As a result voters could be swayed in opposition of Trump, causing his 2020 reelection to be higly unlikely.
The other potential outcome is that Republican voters would cling even more tightly to their President, aligning with him in a time of great national scrutiny.
The least likely option of the three is that President Trump is actually removed from office. And the Democrats calling for his impeachment are fully aware of that.
In what could be seen as either a brilliant political move by the Dems, or as a true cry for justice from major political leaders, one thing is clear: the divide between both parties is only expanding as we near the 2020 election.