The beginning of the potential impeachment process of Donald Trump over Ukraine-Gate was an inevitable step for Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives. In fact, the offense is so evident that even Trump himself recognized it, perhaps thinking that, like always, he will come out on top; just like he himself said in 2016, he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose votes.
The Democrats have no other option. A U.S. President solicited help from a foreign nation to look for compromising information on a political rival, Joe Biden, who is considered one of the favorites to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. What’s more, Trump had couched it in such a way, asking the President of Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden as a “favor.” And worse yet, the White House tried to cover up the incident revealed by a whistleblower from the intelligence community, based on what was known by other officials with first-hand knowledge of the controversial call between Trump and his Ukraine counterpart.
In other words Trump, abusing his power, solicited the interference of a foreign nation to influence, in his favor, the presidential elections of 2020. Ironically, it was the interference of another foreign nation, Russia, in Trump’s benefit in the 2016 elections which the president continues to deny, despite the fact that the report from the special prosecutor Robert Mueller confirms it, as do all the other intelligence agencies of this country. The height of hubris is that the call between Trump and the Ukranian president took place one day after Mueller’s testimony before Congress, where the ex-Director of the FBI confirmed that Russia intervened in the 2016 elections to the benefit of Trump.
At the end of the day Russiagate, despite the clear obstruction of justice on Trump’s part, did not result in the presentation of charges against him nor in an impeachment trial. In such a way, the President seems to have thought that if he got away with it with the Russians, involving Ukraine in the 2020 election would be nothing at all.
I must confess that I do not hold out much hope these days. Although the House of Representatives gave the green light to the impeachment inquiry, I do not know if the Republican-majority Senate, where the trial would be conducted, will rise to the occasion. I also do not know if some Republicans will find the guts to close ranks with the Democrats and for the first time put the country first, before the needs of a president who has corrupted the democratic institutions of this nation and poses a very real threat to national security. Until now congressional Republicans have behaved like Trump’s puppets, regardless of the improper or illegal conduct of this president. It’s disgusting to see how they defend him in the face of hard evidence, as in the case of the Republican Senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, who acts like Trump knows something so grave about him that he has him dancing like a monkey.
For Graham and his Republican peers neither the allegations of sexual assault made against Trump, nor the matter of Russiagate, nor the immoral immigration policies of this administration, nor his all-out assault on the asylum laws, nor his racism and defense of white supremacists, nor his affinity with brutal dictators to the determinent of traditional allies, have mattered. Nothing matters, including if Trump has tried to obtain foreign political help in order to influence the 2020 elections.
If Trump’s corruption is a bottomless barrel, Republican cowardice to confront it also has no limit.
I also do not know how the voters will react to the process; if, as one group says, they will support it; or if, as the other side says, it will turn off certain moderate voters. At the end of the weekend some surveys indicated that support for the potential impeachment investigation is growing among Americans.
Really I have no idea what more proof people need about the corruption of this president.
But independent of the investigation and its consequences, it will be the 2020 election that determines if, in reality, Trump’s time is up. Or, upon him being re-elected, it will confirm that in the United States nothing matters anymore, including the re-election of a fraud like Trump.
