Editorial: Unfit to be president
Actions demand impeachment, removal from office.
The question was never if Donald Trump did something wrong.
Of course he did. The president of the United States got on the phone and asked the leader of a foreign power to investigate a domestic political opponent. Only the most cynical partisan would think that’s OK.
The question is whether he ought to be impeached for it, and the answer is yes.
Evidence offered during a series of hearings made clear the president used the power of his office as leverage to have Ukraine announce it was investigating Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Trump wanted another favor: Investigate a loopy conspiracy theory that Ukraine tried to rig the 2016 U.S. elections.
To get his way, the president withheld military aid. He withheld a meeting with Ukraine’s president.
It requires a fantastic leap of the imagination, and the suspension of everything we know about this president, to accept he was using the powers of his office to ensure Ukraine was rooting out corruption. Please. Trump wanted Ukraine to help his election chances by smearing a Democrat who leads Trump by 9 points in the latest Quinnipiac poll.
After Trump got caught, thanks to a whistleblower’s complaint, the president ordered members of the executive branch not to comply with congressional subpoenas for testimony and documents. He obstructed an investigation — an impeachment investigation — to shield himself from jeopardy.
On Tuesday, congressional leaders unveiled two articles of impeachment. One accuses the president of abusing the powers of his office; the other accuses him of obstruction.
The House Judiciary Committee, which includes five members from Florida, will debate the articles and vote on them, possibly this week. If approved, the articles will move to the full House for a vote.
We don’t expect to offer any arguments that will change the minds of Florida’s Republican House members. They cannot be persuaded. They’re all in for Trump, seemingly regardless of what he says or does or how he manages to further debase the office of president and national institutions.
Most of our representatives haven’t even entertained the notion that Trump was wrong to ask Ukraine’s president for the “favor” of an investigation into Joe Biden. How times have changed from when
Barack Obama’s political opponents questioned the president’s motives for wearing a tan suit.
We know how this movie is likely to end: The House will vote for impeachment without a single Republican vote and the Senate, after conducting a trial, will vote to acquit, probably along party lines.
Then we’ll have an election next year — along with the attempted interference of foreign interlopers, no doubt — and the American people will decide.
Why bother with impeachment then? Because President Trump’s actions — in this instance and in the past — demand it. Time and again he has shown himself to be uniquely unsuited for the office. His temperament, his vanity, his self-interest at the expense of the nation demonstrate on a near daily basis the danger he poses to this republic.
In June, we wrote there was no possibility the Sentinel’s editorial board could endorse Trump for re-election in 2020 unless — unlikely as it seemed — he changed his ways.
He didn’t. Trump’s lies, taunts, bluster and impulsiveness have continued unabated and unchecked by those closest to him.
More to the point of impeachment, just one day after Robert Mueller testified to Congress in July about his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump was on the phone to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asking him to interfere in the 2020 election. (In October, he publicly asked China, a U.S. political and economic rival, to also investigate the Bidens. China declined.)
If this is the kind of risk a president seeking a second term is willing to take, every American should be terrified at the prospect of what he might do if granted another four years in office.
The House should vote to impeach him. The Senate should then vote to remove him from office.
If those things don’t happen, the public should put an end to this circus next year by voting to replace Donald Trump with a new president. Editorials are the opinion of the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board and are written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Mike Lafferty, Shannon Green, Jay Reddick, David Whitley and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.