1-10-21
We’ve seen over and over how unfit for the Office of President Donald Trump is with repeated examples of his inappropriate, outrageous, and disgraceful behavior. He’s ridiculed people with disabilities, lied more than any other modern president, regularly undermined his own government officials and policies, insulted valuable allies while going out of his way to avoid saying anything bad about Vladimir Putin and Russia. Also consider how horribly the Trump Administration has handled the COVID Pandemic so that in many ways, states have been left largely on their own to deal with the devastating crisis. This alone has undoubtedly cost many lives to be lost tragically, needlessly, and unnecessarily.
Then we come to the 2020 Presidential election. This was a free and fair election. Every state has certified the results. There were Democratic, Republican, and Independent observers in all the ballot counting rooms. International observers from multiple countries were even present monitoring the election. There was no widespread irregularities or fraud. But Donald Trump has been attacking the election making totally baseless and completely false claims of fraud that he has no evidence for. He has lost over 60 lawsuits because of his lack of evidence. And many of the judges who ruled against Trump were conservative. The fact is that there was no widespread fraud. It was a free and fair election, yet millions of people, who have been blindly following Trump, seem to believe his disgusting lies. He has been purposely spewing out these false claims of fraud, getting his followers angrier and angrier, as he has tried to stop Biden from becoming President. Trump has become dangerously unstable, unhinged, and obsessed with the election which has culminated in his inciting an angry mob to storm the US Capitol Building.
Think about that. The President of the United States incited a mob to assault the Capitol Building. The clear intent of the insurrection was to try to interfere with Congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
The horrendously undemocratic and frankly unAmerican effort failed, for Congress reconvened within hours and finished it’s Constitutionally mandated duty.
Joe Biden will be inaugurated on January 20th as President of the United States.
Now the question is what to do about Trump. In my opinion Trump’s behavior has been so clearly unstable and wrong on so many levels that he should be removed from office as soon as possible. Since voluntary resignation almost certainly will not happen, I feel that it’s time for Vice President Pence and the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office for being unfit to serve. Unfortunately, since the Cabinet is full of Trump loyalists who have been going along with and enabling Trump’s terrible behavior for a long time, it doesn’t appear likely that enough of them will the courage to do the right thing.
That leaves Impeachment. It looks like this will happen quickly in the House of Representatives. And Trump must be held accountable. The problem is that Mitch McConnell is most likely not going to call the Senate back to session early. As a result, the Senate wouldn’t be able to even start a trial until the day before the Presidential inauguration of Joe Biden. Once Biden is in office, he understandably wants to immediately start dealing with important legislation, such as getting economic relief to the country and organizing a national strategy to fight COVID-19. A Senate trial right after the inauguration would delay such action. Plus, there is the concern about whether enough Republican Senators have the guts to be willing to vote to convict. One option would be to delay a Senate trial for a few months. This would let Biden and Congress focus on immediate issues that need to be dealt with as soon as possible. It would also allow more thorough investigations to occur into what happened, including the events leading up to the attack. A big positive of Trump being successfully convicted would be preventing him from running for office ever again. But would enough Republican Senators be willing to convict Donald Trump.
We are going through unprecedented times. I truly hope Donald Trump is held responsible for his horrendous and disgusting actions in attacking our democracy. It is also time for people, who have been following Donald Trump, to open their eyes and recognize how bad, undemocratic, and unAmerican he is.
Views and Observations 