Impeachment inquiry against Trump is justified
The impeachment proceedings launched against Donald Trump this week threaten the future of the president, the people who ordered them and, most of all, America itself.
Not only is Trump the most polarizing president in U.S. history, he has contributed to a deepening rift between the American people that leaves them more divided today than they’ve been since the Vietnam War in the 1960s and, arguably, the Civil War a century before that.
For the millions of Americans who believe Trump’s scandalous behaviour both before and after entering the White House renders him unfit for office, the prospect of getting rid of him now is a dream come true.
For them, the allegations Trump violated the U.S. Constitution by requesting the help of a foreign government to besmirch a political rival are too serious to ignore. Indeed, the partial transcript of a July 25th phone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky released Wednesday goes a long way to supporting this grave charge.
Yet for the millions of other Americans convinced their leader is being relentlessly persecuted by Democratic demons, the formal impeachment inquiry ordered into Trump’s actions will be seen as the final outrage, proof positive of how far and low the president’s foes will go to topple him.
Depending on what happens now, these two, massive American solitudes will either be brought closer together or, which seems more likely, driven further apart than ever and left peering incomprehensibly at one another on opposite sides of a political Grand Canyon.
As for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who personally initiated the impeachment proceedings, and the other Democrats who cheered her on, they’ll be judged by historians according to what should now be revealed.
So be it. Based on the incomplete transcript now in the public domain, Trump is on record asking his Ukrainian counterpart to begin investigating former vice-president Joe Biden, now a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination and potentially Trump’s opponent in next year’s presidential election.
Trump also wanted President Zelensky to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. In their telephone conversation, Trump referenced claims that in 2016 Joe Biden engineered the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor, who was investigating an oil and gas company on whose board Hunter Biden served.
What makes Trump’s position more untenable is the fact that just days before his call to the Ukrainian president, Trump froze US$391 million in military aid to Ukraine to help it resist Russian-backed insurgents. So, did Trump threaten to damage Ukrainian security unless its president boosted his re-election prospects?
To impeach a president is to indict that individual. It’s not the same as ousting a president, which could only be done follow hearings and a congressional vote. Moreover, because Trump’s Republicans control the Senate, the odds they would ever dismiss him from office are still slim.
But the next presidential election is just over a year away. Voters need to know what their chief executive did in his entreaties to Ukraine before they cast their ballots.
An investigation should proceed, as fairly and free of Democratic Party one-upmanship as possible. The goal must be the truth, not defeating Trump in the next election. But this investigation should proceed.