It’s the new America and the exposed plot of the moment is to hold a Senate trial on removing Donald Trump from office when he is no longer in office. A question comes to mind. Can the Senate then do the same thing to other living ex-presidents if some malfeasance or the other is brought to light? Should they be shivering — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — knowing they too could be stripped of what they no longer have?
Of course, the point isn’t so much to do what’s already been done by an election, but to make an exclamatory statement about Trump while assuring he never returns to the Oval Office. Trump can be excluded from a 2024 comeback attempt if there is a two-thirds vote finding that he prompted an insurrection attempt, but there won’t be. A vote in the Senate on whether the proceedings would be constitutional found 45 Republicans saying no, meaning that two-thirds is out of reach and a trial would be nothing but a reality TV show.
The Republicans point to impeachment House proceedings more nearly emotional screeches than due process, and the Constitution plainly says impeachment is about public officials, not private citizens. The Constitution also says the chief justice shall preside over a trial and Chief Justice John Roberts has already said no thanks. Even if contrary legalese carries the day, we’re talking about something any citizen should dread. As varied analysts have said, the Senate would then have expanded, unwarranted powers making it more worrisome as a confused gotcha institution.
But, yes, it’s understandable up to a point why Democrats would want to go this route. After the election, Trump became obsessed with the idea that it was stolen, thanks in part to the encouragement of opportunists even if others such as Attorney General William Barr said no, drop that stuff. Trump seemed to pretty much forget the pandemic and wandered around depressed while doing really, truly stupid and despicable things.
One was to veto a bill funding our troops because the Pentagon was changing the names of forts named after Confederate officers. Here was someone proud of his contributions to the military wanting to reward slavery-protecting traitors through machinations threatening patriots.
A Trump rally is said to have inspired the bloody, deadly attack on the Capitol, with the lives of legislators just possibly endangered, and it no doubt played a role although new information indicates the catastrophe was preplanned by participants. The business of his lying about a stolen election encounters the problem of a lie being an intentional deception. He almost surely believed what he said as a consequence of two factors. The first was his huge, never-lose ego and the other was the fact that his political enemies had been trying to remove him from office from the day the 2016 returns were in.
There were the illegal leaks of classified information, misuse of the Clinton dossier and the loudest screech of all, the disruptive Mueller investigation. Here was a phony conspiracy theory that he or at least his campaign was in cahoots with Russian criminals in crimes that did nothing much to change a vote. This charade will be a permanent scar on America’s face.
It’s said that predictions are next to impossible when they are about the future but it seems to me unlikely that the Trump following will maintain its attachment. People are already moving out of his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. He is powerless. His haters number in the millions. He appears deep in debt. He could face criminal charges on pre-presidential matters and some in the Republican Party want him gone. His own energy seems depleted. Other possible 2024 GOP candidates include at least a couple of wonders.
What’s on Trump’s side is oppositional overreach.
(Jay Ambrose is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service.)
