"Do You Think Donald Trump Will Be Impeached? "
Do you honestly think that Donald Trump will be impeached? And to honest question, and answer, I have asked my colleague's and created polls. Here is what most polls and answers had to say. It really depends on Mueller's investigation. But at the same time, I still wonder to why the FBI is waiting so patiently to impeach Trump. I suppose they're waiting to impeach Trump because of a potential Cory Booker announcement run for office.
Donald Trump's announcement for office was held in Florida. And Cory Booker's is yet to be announced. Although, there has been plenty of talk and rumors that he is a potentiality candidate in which he collects or collected big Pharmaceutical money from "BIG PHARMA" And is currently receiving pretty serious death threats.
So as returning back to statistics on whether what people think of impeachment of Donald Trump, here is what a few had to say about Trump's Presidency.
1.Anonymous
David Brooks wrote a column the Friday after Trump was elected, that closed by asking “What are we worried about? The guy will resign or be impeached in the first year.”
From his mouth to God’s ears.
As someone else has already pointed out, Trump was subject to impeachment the day he was sworn in, for violating the Emoluments Clause. That is still true.
It is likely that he will be found to have lied about his Russia connections. Remember that Nixon was not threatened with impeachment for the Watergate break in but for the coverup. Bill was not impeached for fooling around with Monica, but for lying about it.
As a column in the New York Times points out this morning, Trump lies like no other President in history. So yes, if he hasn’t uttered it already, he will eventually utter the lie about Russian dealings that, if judged by the same standard as that applied to Clinton, will make him impeachable for that utterance.
Will impeachment actually happen?
Yesterday’s hearing is not encouraging. As the same article pointed out that I just cited, above, the GOP members of the Congressional committee were behaving, not like a third and coequal branch of our government, but as Trump’s aides, attempting damage control. We already know the topic of this week’s SNL skit.
Let’s recall also that a President is subject to removal under Article 25 on the grounds of being unfit to serve. Trump has already given indisputable proof of this. If Pence, the Cabinet, and Congress don’t have the stomach to do this over the whole “Obama wiretapped me” fiasco, then that remedy is just about hopeless.
Let’s recall also that if Trump is impeached for any reason whatsoever, the likelihood is there will be rioting in the streets, with armed gangs of “Oath Keepers” brandishing rifles, demanding “loyalty oaths” of passersby, “making an example of” random Muslims, etc.
What could cause Trump to actually be impeached? Here are some possibilities, as I see it:
- He orders the arrest of a federal judge.
- He orders the arrest of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
- He orders the Pentagon to move troops into Mexico to “take care of bad dudes.”
- He orders the Pentagon to send troops to Chicago and declares the city under martial law, for the same reason.
- He orders the seizure of Iraqi oil.
- He seems about to launch nukes under circumstances where the United States does not seem to be under attack.
- Wikileaks discloses a security secret directly traceable to Trump that he let slip in conversation with a member of the Russian government, not out of malice but simply because he can’t control his mouth.
Trump is perfectly capable of any of the above. He is also hemmed around by a self-interested group of people who will do anything they can to keep him from leaning over so far that he quite falls off the cliff.
So will he actually be impeached?
He certainly should be, and proceedings ought to start this afternoon.
But whether or not it actually happens is still an open question. Given what we know of his Administration and Congress, we haven’t reached that point yet.
Edit, March 21, 2017: Opinion | Trump’s lies are failing him, and it is making him deeply frustrated
2. Anonymous.
Jeremy Scahill Mike Pence Has Militant Agenda Against Women, the Poor, Immigrants, LGBTQ People (You Tube)
I don’t want Trump to be impeached.
As a Liberal, I’m far more depressed about the man who will REALLY run this country: Mike Pence.
Many of us called Cheney, “President Cheney.” President Bush was never smart enough to be president. Bush was a good salesman, gave a good speech, and did what Cheney and others told him to.
President Trump will be a “chairman of the board” President Trump will give speeches, make money for his brand and blast any source who speaks ill of him.
Mike Pence and his Republican buddies in Congress have an agenda.
Pence looks like a guy who watched too many episodes of “Mary Tyler Moore” as a kid and came away imprinted by the character of Ted Baxter, the pompous and self-deluded silver-haired newsman, whose perpetual cluelessness amused millions of TV watchers across the country. Little Mike appears to have seen Ted’s uninformed close-mindedness as a virtue and grew up to become an unapologetic evangelical social conservative who sees the last 40 years of progress on abortion, gay rights, civil rights, criminal justice reform and race relations as a disaster for the country.(Huffington Post)
Pence wants the 1950 era back. I grew up then. Gays stayed in the closet. Rich women had abortions ,poor women died. Women’s rights didn’t exist. People of color were openly discriminated against. I lived in the era, I saw it.
Indiana Governor Mike Pence’s approval ratings in Indiana have droppedinto the 40s in 2016 polling, which experts in that state largely attribute to his socially conservative positions on LGBTQ issues and abortion, souring women on his leadership.(Heavy News)
Unless you’re a Conservative and want a country to follow your beliefs. prepare to start fighting battles we thought we won.
I wish all the people who never voted in 2016 ,well living under “President Pence.”
3. Anonymous
Originally Answered: When, if, or do you think, Trump will be impeached?
I don’t know.
It will really depend on what the Mueller investigation finds.
Do I think there is something to find? Definitely. There is a ton of circumstantial evidence that some kind of illegal coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia happened.
We have evidence of Trump on video telling us that he fired James Comey over Russia.
It looks like Mueller has goods on Michael Flynn’s son, which means that Flynn will start singing if he doesn’t want his son to go to jail. And Flynn will have to give someone higher up like Kushner or Don Jr.
Trump will be very tempted to fire Mueller at that point, which would result in a constitutional crisis. Republicans in Congress have so far decided that the imperative of tax cuts is so important that they’d rather help Trump cover up his misdeeds than lose the opportunity to cut taxes for the rich.
But if he fires Mueller, maybe a few invertebrates will grow a spine… who knows?
In any case, we’re a bit far out, but if I had to put my money on what will bring Trump down (if something brings him down), I’d say it will be the Mueller investigation.
I’m not super optimistic, though. Mueller could uncover something huge. The conservative mediasphere would only have to rally behind the cry of “fake news” for conservatives to dismiss anything Mueller finds. And if the voters decide that it’s fake news, the elected officials who know better have already demonstrated that they don’t have the balls to face the ire of the Republican base. So, we will just have to wait and see what unfolds.
4. Anonymous.
I wrote a post on the day of the inauguration that I thought that Trump would be impeached or otherwise removed from office (eg because of criminal activity) pretty quickly, and I stand by that. I based that opinion on charismatic theory, most specifically Max Weber's conceptualisation of charisma in statu nascendi(existent only in a state of formation). Charisma theory would predict that the powerful charisma that propelled Trump as a revolutionary outsider into the White House would dissipate quickly, as soon as that charisma became routinized (i.e. when he gains the role of POTUS and is no longer a revolutionary figure, but the embodiment of the establishment, and where vague, distal goals immediately become fact-checkable and must deliver).
When the charismatic leader feels his popularity and hold on power becomes threatened, he resorts to bullying, force and other malfeasant, usually criminal acts. As charisma is strongly associated with narcissism, he might well have used malfeasant acts, crime and force to gain power in the first place (charisma is amoral).
It would suit completely the arc of Weber's charisma for Trump to be propelled to power quickly, to lose charismatic power from the 1st day of office (if there is nothing extra, apart from charismatic appeal, to sustain his popularity), for criminality or malfeasance to emerge soon after and for a tussle involving power struggles, threats and all kinds of craziness to burst out on his way down. These things never end well. Lots of people who hung on to his coattails of power during his rise to power will be left with an almighty hangover of some description, too.
5. Anonymous
Believer in our "civic responsibility" to be informed *before* taking a position
Originally Answered: Is it likely that Trump will be impeached during his 4-year term as President?
My original post on this topic was written poorly enough that I felt it was inaccurate— not by intention; just by lazy writing. I’ve rewritten some of this posting in the hope that I don’t accidentally mislead anyone.
A Trump impeachment (Step #1) would happen with a House of Representatives that was willing to bring charges against Trump. Basically, that involves House Republicans waging a war with the hope of replacing Trump with Pence. For the impeachment to have the effect that most people assume, the impeachment charges that are approved by the full House move on to the Senate, where a hearing is held and a decision of whether to convict the POTUS of the impeachment charges occurs. Two-thirds of senators must vote for conviction (Step #2). Before the full House considers the merits of impeachment, the House Committee on the Judiciary has to do enough investigation that they come up with one or more instances that could be deemed impeachable offenses. Gathering those instances is not the current priority, as far as I can tell.
Would the U.S. House of Representatives vote for impeachment of Donald Trump? Not at this time. The process is daunting. This Republican Congress currently has a lot to lose if they find Trump guilty of impeachable offenses.
Would the U.S. Senate vote for conviction of Donald Trump? Here is where we have to consider a probability of a probability of a probability of a probability.
Probability #1: The House Committee on the Judiciary finds evidence of impeachable offenses— enough evidence that they feel a full House hearing is appropriate. They may a recommendation for an impeachment hearing. At this time, I give this a 30%-40% probability.
Probability #2: The full House hears the evidence, there’s more investigation, and they vote to impeach Trump. At this time, I give this a 10%-20% chance of happening… unless the investigation of Trump’s campaign entourage leads to a smoking gun (i.e., Trump knowing that some of his people were in contact with the Russians for nefarious purposes). Under that condition, I give the impeachment vote about a 50% chance of a “guilty” conclusion.
Probability #3 (which goes beyond your question of impeachment, but might be the actual question behind the question: Could Trump be kicked out?): The Senate then considers the merits of the impeachment and to what extent that should result in a conviction. Remember that the House is delivering to the Senate their considered opinions on what the evidence indicates. As you may recall, President Clinton was impeached by the House but not convicted by the Senate for conduct unbecoming (etc.). The Senate is generally a more predictable chamber of the legislative branch. While there is a spread of political ideology across the American spectrum, the Alt-Right/Nationalist end of the spectrum does not seem to make as loud a noise as those with an interest in winning elections in less extreme states. With impeachment, I would give conviction about a 50% chance. If the Senate hearings came after the 2018 elections, in which we can predict a slight change to the center of the political spectrum, a 50% chance seems appropriate. If it were to happen before the 2018 elections, it would depend more on the mood of the swing voters as most senators want to be re-elected. Let’s keep it at 50%, since these probabilities are guesstimates.
What has to be factored in (which goes even further beyond your question): Removal from office, according to our Constitution, Article 2, Section 4, bothimpeachment and removal from office are only required for “Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The last (compound) option is so loosely defined that it might be the way to go. However, if Probability #2 with the smoking gun probability occurs, we could even have the first option (treason) or the second (bribery). Who knows. I think this should be factored into Probabilities #1, #2, and #3. So, no additional reduction in the cascade of probabilities.
Total Probability at this time = ~35% * ~15% * ~50%. That is, it has approximately a 2–3% chance of happening.
Until this week, I gave Trump’s impeachment less than a 20% chance. “Firing” (a la The Apprentice) FBI Director Comey after Trump heard the damning comments that Comey made about having told Trump about General Flynn as a liability shortly after Trump took office has brought about wider appreciation that this president is not comfortable with the U.S. Constitution’s strong stance on checks and balances. While it is not illegal for Trump to fire the Director of the FBI, the motivations here are certainly clear. President Trump openly declared that his reason for firing Comey was the investigation into connections between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives regarding the November election. This is, in effect, tampering with an investigation.
When a president fires people who are supposed to be acting entirely independently and it is the middle of an investigation that could affect that president’s standing, that is a very big step away from a democracy. One or two more such incidents and even Paul Ryan (who considered Trump to be despicable until Trump won the presidency) would likely move away from Trump and toward Pence.
6. I am an independent who voted for Donald Trump.
In all honesty, I doubt we will ever see another impeachment.
When Bill Clinton was impeached, the members of his political party in the Senate voted unanimously to reject his removal from office. They did so within seconds of hte vote being opened, demonstrating they had already made up their minds and decided ahead of time. While the opposing party that brought the charges against him had political reasons to want him out of office, they took their time, engaged in debates with other members of the Senate, and then voted. While many of them voted to convict on most issues, some of them voted against impeachment on every issue and some of the allegations received almost no support at all.
Since then, the issue of impeachment has been suggested several times by opposition party members to both Presidents George W. Bush and Barrack Obama. Every single time it was suggested, however, the House of Representative failed to take up the issue, with the members of whichever party was in charge of the House at the time noting that even if the House impeached, there was no doubt that the divided Senate would refuse to convict and remove. Those party leaders felt that even investigating the issue was a complete waste of time as a result.
I do not see this divide and mindset changing. As long as our government remains divided by political parties, no President will ever be at risk of actual removal from office. The members of the Senate who are from the same political party as the President will refuse to remove that President from office, regardless of what the evidence happens to show.
The only way a President might be impeached is if he takes actions which the members of both political parties and all of their constituents overwhelmingly agree should result in this. In other words, nothing short of outright treason, er, or rape is going to gt a president impeached.
Now that this topic has been merged, let me address the issue the merger has added.
First, Treason is defined under 18 U.S. Code § 2381 as “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason.” For a person to bu guilty of this, they must either have levied war against the United States or must have provided aid and comfort to some enemy whom has levied war against the U.S.
Given this, all of the allegations of treason being offered by the liberals, democrats, and other haters that Donald Trump has comitted treason is beyond ludicrous. The United States is not at war with the Russian government and in no way has the Russian government levied war against us.
This is true even if the allegations the Russians meddled in our elections by hacking the DNC servers & emails and trying to obtain lists of voters is true. It remains true even if the innuendos Donald Trump was personally involved in getting the Russians to take those alleged actions. The bottom line is since neither has Russia declared war on the USA or the USA declared war on Russia, we are not at war and they are not our enemy.
This mental-holdover of the “Red Scare” and McCarthyism is misplaced and inappropriate. The fact so many of our politicians have their heads buried in the past and the “Cold War” is absolutely misplaced in the modern era. It is disgraceful and every single politician and supporter of this fear mongering should hang their head in shame.
That said, given the Russia is not our enemy, even if it is true they have taken actions to influence our elections in ways some people despise, it is not possible for anyone who aided them, talked with them, asked for their help, or id absolutely none of the above to be guilty of treason.
It is time to remove that word from your mouths and your arguments, as all your use of it does is paint you as a relic and an idiot.
7. Anonymous
No I don’t, unless some really really obvious and damning evidence comes out to which it becomes politically impossible for the Republicans to turn a blind eye.
To impeach a President you need two-thirds of the Senate to vote to convict. Even if the Democrats do brilliantly in the mid-term Senate races, they aren’t going to flip all the seats they’d need to do this.
Republicans would have to vote to remove the President and judging by the way the GOP is behaving over the House and Senate investigations into the Trump campaign - essentially, a huge passive-aggressive go-slow effort - that isn’t likely any time soon. You would need video of the President literally stuffing his pockets with roubles while gloating loudly about all the treason he is doing (and it’s unlikely such a video exists.)
8. Anonymous
I think he will be threatened with impeachment, and will resign, sooner rather than later. The prerequisites, of course, are that the Republican-controlled House believes a) removing Mr. Trump is in their interest, b) the Senate is likely to convict and c) that he is actually damaging the country in a material way.
It’s interesting that there is already a serious popular petition, sponsored by a bunch of serious law school academics. Their case is based solely on the Emoluments Clause, which lest we forget because it dropped out of the news after a couple weeks, is an actual law, in the actual Constitution of the United States.
Here’s the link if you’re curious: Impeach Trump Now
9. Professor at Colorado School of Mines (2016-present)
The grounds for impeachment of Trump will come into existence the second that Trump takes the oath. It’s the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the constitution states that no American officeholder shall, “without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”
Trump will be violating this clause on a daily basis.
Now, that does not mean Trump will be impeached. Impeachment is much more of a political act than a legal act. BUT it will give the Republican Congress a big stick to threaten Trump with. And at some point, Trump will push Congress too far, and find that stick being used against him.
10. former Managing Director and CEO (1993-2009)
Originally Answered: When, if, or do you think, Trump will be impeached?
Although I am a staunch Trump opponent, I think Congress should go slow on impeachment, for five reasons:
First, we need to give Mueller a chance to complete every facet of his meticulous investigation. It will certainly give rise to both articles of impeachment and criminal indictments.
Second, I want Trump voters, Trump supporters in Congress, and people who didn’t vote at all to experience in full the destruction they have wrought. You lost your health care? Too bad; that’s what you voted for. Your taxes went down $1.75 a week? Sucks to be you; Trump’s taxes went down a lot more than that – thanks to you. You lost your seat in Congress? Pity, that; it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t lost your mind first.
Third, I want to see Congress take back many of the powers it has ceded to the President and I want to watch Trump squirm as he finds himself increasingly hemmed in and squeezed by a more assertive Congress.
Fourth, I don’t want to risk giving Trump the chance to make himself a victim or a sympathetic figure. He is a criminal, not a victim. And if he is impeached in the House but not convicted and removed by the Senate, he will cast himself as a winner and the failure to convict as total exoneration.
Fifth, I want to see ex-President Trump leave the inauguration stage on January 20, 2021 and be greeted by US Marshals who put the cuffs on him, read him his rights, and whisk him away to begin his new life in a less opulent kind of Federal housing.
11. No, because:
Pablo Djankowicz Ruizinowitz, Have an innate interest in U.S. politics
Kevin Carothers, former Atm Designer at Citibank US (1986-1999)
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