‘Why should he have the right to run a country?’
Greenwich reacts to impeachment
GREENWICH — No matter how “disappointed” and “sad” Chris Winham said he is about the violence in Washington and the deep divisions in the country, he’s scared impeachment is a push in the wrong direction for the nation.
“I think that the actions of President Trump deserve to have some kind of significant repercussions,” said Winham, who was walking on Greenwich Avenue before the impeachment vote in Congress took place Wednesday. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable that the House go through with these proceedings. But, I also recognize that we have (seven) days left in this administration. I don’t think that
it sets up the next administration for a period of healing, and I think that’s clearly what we need.
“To think that we’re going to get somewhere where this environment is going to get better… we don’t get there by impeaching Donald Trump necessarily,” he said. “Whether or not it’s a valid action, there is a broader picture.”
Elsewhere on the Avenue, 17year-old Amalia Calderini was resolute in her conviction that the president should be impeached.
“If he doesn’t have the right to post on Twitter or go on any social media, then why should he have the right to run a country?” she said.
Like Winham, however, she worries impeachment could cause further problems.
“I think the government knows that if they impeach him, it is going to cause a lot of problems like what happened at the Capitol,” Calderini said.
Area residents interviewed Wednesday as Trump became the first U.S. president to be impeached twice, denounced Trump for what happened in Washington, D.C., last week. But not all were confident impeachment will produce positive results.
In neighboring Stamford, city resident Dave Beckley said the mob riot at the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday still feels fresh.
“I think it’s still settling in for a lot of people,” he said. “Time goes on, then you just realize the exponential impact of what happened.”
Without a shadow of a doubt, he said, President Donald Trump, who urged attendees at a rally he held to march on the Capitol, should be removed from office.
“He’s just so juvenile in his mentality. And he’s so spiteful, like a child would be,” Beckley said. To him, the world is watching, and impeachment is a “good place to start.”
Adam Gourchane, who like Beckley was in Scalzi Park Wednesday afternoon, said he didn’t think Trump would be removed from office
“I just think it’s going to take too long,” he said.
The prominent Republicans who’ve spoken out against Trump recently haven’t give Gourchane any cause for celebration either. It’s too little, too late, he said. The stain on the Republican Party, caused by Trump and his longtime supporters in Congress, became permanent to him long ago, he said.
More than anything else, the last week has made Paulina Flores concerned about what the future could look like for her infant daughter. Flores, 25, immigrated to the United States from Poland, where she watched far-right leaders seize government power.
“How people portrayed this country — it was supposed to be more free, but I guess I’m not really surprised,” she said. “This is how the world is. … It shouldn’t be like this, but it is.”
Though the demands of being a new mother have kept Flores from giving the news cycle her fullest attention, she too thinks the president should be removed from office.
“I’m not super following what is going on in (Congress), but based on what I saw — his posts, everything that he said, how he reacted — he started (the violence),” Flores concluded.