Insulting Attempts To Remove President Trump Are Making Things Worse, Not Better

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2021/01/07/insulting-attempts-to-remove-president-trump-are-making-things-worse-not-better/

The wild calls for President Donald Trump’s removal from office less than two weeks before he will leave office anyway are a new example of the poisonous atmosphere Democrats in Washington have created during the past four years.

The fake Russia accusations and the fake impeachment accusations frustrated a duly elected president’s rightful attempts to propose public policies and administer his office. The election shenanigans of 2020 have left a large portion of the country thinking not that their side lost, but that the results were manipulated.

Donald Trump is the rightful president of the United States. He is scheduled to remain so until noon Wednesday, January 20. He should finish his term.

The idea that Cabinet members or the vice president should now stage what would effectively be a coup in the end-stages of President Trump’s administration is disgraceful. So is the impeachment talk among Democratic legislators.

President Trump did not incite the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. No one has even bothered to quote something Trump said as somehow calling for violence.

Indeed, one of the reasons the attack on the Capitol is so shocking is that no one envisioned it. Clearly that’s the case for U.S. Capitol Police, who did not do much to defend the grounds and left a hard job for themselves defending the building.

The main reason the attack is surprising is that it’s not how Trump supporters behave. Attacks on public buildings, public statues, public institutions, and police are a left-wing phenomenon in America, not a right-wing phenomenon.

An interesting question for law enforcement authorities is whether they let their guard down because they expected Trump rally-goers to obey the law.

To be sure, Trump did not cover himself in glory on Wednesday. While he didn’t incite the violence, he didn’t do enough to oppose it after it began. His good video asking supporters to go home in peace was marred by one of his statements on Twitter.

Here it is:

“These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

An election victory is not “sacred.” Trump may have legitimately won, but he didn’t win by a landslide. Even allowing for Trump’s typical overstatement, these claims are not sustainable.

Worse than that, though, is that the statement seems to celebrate what some of his supporters did. (“Remember this day forever!” sounds like a rallying cry.) Storming the U.S. Capitol cannot be celebrated; it must be lamented and condemned.

The statement was a mistake. (Trump seems to have tacitly acknowledged that by later deleting it.) But it’s hardly the stuff of impeachment or resignation or removal from office.

The reason some Democrats are calling for removing Trump — including some from Massachusetts — is that they so badly want to discredit what Trump stands for. That they have not been able to do.

They were counting on the November 2020 election results to do it for them. Instead, opponents of Trump got at most a mixed verdict – surprising Republican gains in the U.S. House, large gains for Republicans in state legislatures, modest Democratic gains in the U.S. Senate, and a tainted presidential victory for Democrats that large portions of the country do not accept as legitimate.

In other words:  The American people have not rejected Trumpism. Many embrace it and even demand it.

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not provide a mechanism to remove a president from office because you don’t like something he did or said. Section 4 of the amendment states that the vice president and a majority of Cabinet members may seek to move the president aside temporarily in cases where the president “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” The clear implication is a case where the president is physically or mentally unable to make rational decisions and respond to events. A mistake by a president – even a serious one – does not merit removing him from office by the vote of a majority of unelected presidential appointees.

Nor is an unfortunate public statement one of the “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” described by the U.S. Constitution as grounds for impeachment and removal from office in Article II, Section 4.

If Democrats and other Trump opponents want to attempt to restore peace to the country, they will let Trump leave office in 13 days and then try to govern in such a way that the vast majority of Americans can accept it. They will respect the civil liberties of all Americans, including freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the right to defend yourself and your family. And they will try to persuade all Americans that their public policy proposals are right and just.

Here’s a question for Trump opponents:  Do you want peace?