Gov. DeSantis is wrong. Impeachment inquiry not ‘typical Washington stuff ’
On the day that the House Intelligence Committee accused Donald Trump of conduct befitting a dictator, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gushed over the money the president would haul in at the Republican Party of Florida’s annual “statesman’s dinner” Saturday night.
“I think it’s going to raise way, way more than they’ve been able to do on this in the most recent years,” DeSantis said. The event, closed to the media, reportedly raised a record $3.5 million.
DeSantis wasn’t disappointed. But every Floridian who truly honors America should be.
The president used the event to trot out two soldiers accused of war crimes whom he pardoned over the Pentagon’s objections. The safety of our uniformed men and women depends on respecting the laws of war. Taking photos with the head of a dead ISIS fighter damages America’s moral standing. And for a president to disparage military leaders who expect better undermines our professional armed forces.
DeSantis could not have foreseen that aspect of the event, but his anticipatory enthusiasm was grossly misplaced.
Like virtually all of his Republican colleagues, the governor sounds heedless of what’s at stake in the impeachment inquiry.
“My sense, just talking to people, is I think the public generally views it as typical Washington stuff,” he said.
If he is right, then the great American experiment is over, 222 years after Benjamin Franklin, asked what the Constitutional Convention had produced, replied: “A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.”
We don’t agree with the governor’s analysis of public opinion. Neither does the public. A New York Times op-ed Thursday reported on an exhaustive national study of more than 110,000 people since July. The conclusion:
“Most people would give up their preferred outcomes on health care, the environment or taxes if it meant getting what they want on impeachment. It is an important issue for almost everyone.”
For most Democrats, that means impeaching the president. For most Republicans, it means ignoring or excusing his conduct. But for everyone, it clearly means that what’s going on is anything but “typical Washington stuff.”
What the Intelligence Committee charged against Trump has no precedents, even in the Watergate scandal that led President Richard Nixon to resign in the face of certain impeachment by the House and removal by the Senate.
It is not “typical Washington stuff ” to withhold a White House meeting and desperately needed military aid to persuade a country’s president to help our president against his perceived political rival. That’s extortion — a grotesque misuse of our nation’s highest office.
It’s not “typical Washington stuff ” for a president to stonewall every legitimate congressional request for witnesses and documents bearing on the investigation. That’s obstruction of justice, the core issue that took Nixon down.
It’s not “typical Washington stuff ” for a president to slander career public servants for their inconvenient testimony to Congressional committees. That’s called witness intimidation.
It’s not “typical Washington stuff ” for a president to invite foreign interference in our elections, which Trump has now done at least twice.
It’s not “typical Washington stuff ” for a president to demand personal loyalty from the director of the FBI, let alone to fire him after he refuses.
It’s not “typical Washington stuff ” for a president to try on at least 10 occasions — as Robert Mueller, the special counsel, found — to thwart investigation of a hostile nation’s massive subversion of our election. Trump’s attempt to enlist Ukraine into committing dirty tricks against Joe Biden reveals that the 45th president finds nothing illegal or immoral about foreign meddling in U.S. elections.
If all that isn’t impeachable, nothing is impeachable. And there is nothing to keep this president — and his successors — from assuming dictatorial powers.
In formally instructing three House committees Thursday to proceed with impeachment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi invoked American history to illustrate the danger that Trump’s conduct poses to our democracy.
The Founders, she said, “having just fought a war of independence … specifically feared the prospect of a king-president corrupted by foreign influence … and if we allow a president to be above the law, we do so sadly at the peril of our republic. In America, no one is above the law.”
The people who flocked to Saturday’s dinner to flatter Trump and pad the pockets of the Florida GOP are not fools. They know what Trump is and what danger he represents. But they have made the calculation that nothing matters but their personal interests, as in tax cuts, right-wing judges, and hostility to the Democratic Party and the entire social contract. Pelosi succinctly defined what’s at stake. “His wrongdoing strikes at the very heart of our Constitution.”
Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O’Hara, Sergio Bustos, Steve Bousquet and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.