‘Game of Thrones’ has nothing on this political drama
It is becoming highly likely that Donald Trump will be impeached. But it is just as likely he will not be removed from office.
In the byzantine world of D.C. politics, House Democrats are now fervidly divided on whether to start impeachment proceedings, even with proponents knowing full well the Senate Republicans will either ignore what the House does or vote against conviction.
Meanwhile, the Trump White House is doing everything possible to ignore Congress, from outright ridicule, to ignoring subpoenas, to denying routine requests for information, to forbidding aides to appear on Capitol Hill, to refusing to make a deal on infrastructure. It is a power struggle, with the executive branch determined to become more powerful than the legislative branch; not what the Founding Fathers intended.
Trump openly is taunting Congress and inviting impeachment, knowing that Senate Republicans will protect him. He will then claim he was “exonerated” and run again for president in 2020, just as he falsely claimed the Mueller report found him innocent of obstruction of justice. It did not. Oddly, most members of Congress have not even read the Mueller report although it was read aloud on the House floor to get past Trump administration efforts to quash it and prevent open testimony in Congress about it.
“Game of Thrones” intrigue and corruption have nothing on Politics along the Potomac except that reputations are being slaughtered, not bodies.
You think there was and is no Russian collusion? Get this:
Washington imposed economic sanctions on Russian oligarchs for helping the Russian attack on U.S. elections in 2016 and beyond. The Trump administration exempted Oleg Deriposka, a billionaire buddy of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Deriposka is also a Trump supporter and former business partner of ( jailed) Trump campaign manager Paul Manfort who owed the Russian $17 million.
The House voted overwhelmingly to reinstate sanctions against Dariposka. But under the urging of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Senate let the exemption stand and said Deriposka could continue to do business in the U.S.
About the same time, David Vitter, a lobbyist and former GOP member of Congress ousted after a tawdry sex scandal, told McConnell that a Deriposka-connected company would build a huge $200 million aluminum plant in McConnell’s home state. Not long after that, the Senate approved Vitter’s wife for a lifetime seat on the federal bench despite huge cries that she is unqualified. The new Judge Vitter is a staunch Louisiana anti-abortion activist who refuses to say whether she agrees with the landmark school desegregation decision Brown v. Board of Education.
Yes, the Trump administration’s agenda is to get as many anti-abortion judges in place as possible, pass slews of strict state anti-abortion laws and ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade, which has made abortion legal since 1973 and is supported by seven out of 10 Americans.
Trump’s goal is to make as much money as possible as president and ride the carefully choreographed anti-abortion wave into a second term with the support of his solid base.
Trump’s problem is that he is running afoul of actual laws aimed at preventing people from using the presidency to become as wealthy as all the other autocrats around the world. And the number of friendly court decisions he can count on is finite, no matter how much court-packing he does.
Thus, he is running out the clock, using every delaying strategy he and his henchmen (such as Attorney General Bill Barr) can devise. Trump is also bad-mouthing every Democrat and the one or two Republicans who get in his way and desperately trying to prevent his tax and accounting records from being seen despite the clear intent of the law that they be made public. (And the confidential IRS memo that Trump has no right to keep the documents out of congressional hands.)
Democrats are torn between not wanting to let Trump get away with making a precedent-setting mockery of the presidency and the rule of law and not playing into his hands by starting an impeachment process they cannot win, even if they convince a reluctant public that impeachment is necessary to save the Constitution. If impeachment dominates the political arena, Democrats’ hopes of talking about income inequality, health care and other economic concerns of most American families go unrealized. If the public doesn’t want Trump impeached, Democrats will pay the price at the polls.
“Game of Thrones” is over but, honestly, you couldn’t make up the serious stuff that is unfolding in your nation’s capital.
Ann McFeatters is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service.