Impeaching Trump — What are We Waiting For?

Trump should be impeached. He should have been impeached a month ago, six months ago, a year ago, and still today.

What particular point are we waiting for to say, “ok, now this is too much — ok, this isn’t ok?” We’re so far past that and we’ve been past that point for a while.

Say you have a democratically elected president, there must be something at some point, where you say, ‘no you can’t do that, that’s not something a president can do,’ and then there would be mechanisms in place to hold them accountable. If you can’t do that — if they could do whatever they want and there is no method of accountability, that’s not a president of a democracy. This isn’t a minor thing.

Here are things that have happened that are extreme problems and on their own should cause him to be impeached and removed from office.

The president is a liar — Again, this is not a small thing but is quite well established. Many important decisions are being made on the basis of these lies, and official government accounts continue to repeat lies, peddle misinformation in a way which there is no other way to describe but state-sponsored propaganda. If this was something that was happening in another country, we would easily call this out for what it is: A leader creating propaganda. It’s so well established that he is an extreme liar that people don’t get moved by this fact anymore. It’s not ok, and it’s not comparable to a small partisan thing. On this grounds along — the extreme lying, he shouldn’t be president.

The president is corrupt — it’s again a well established fact that he has had many businesses that themselves were fraudulent. He’s had large fraud settlements. He’s violated tax laws, his foundation has violated campaign finance laws, he unabashedly has horrible conflicts of interest across his businesses and has used this as part of national policy. He’s funneling money to Trump businesses and hotels in a way that is just illegal.

The president has hired family for key admin positions — this shouldn’t happen in a functioning democracy. This type of blatant nepotism is illegal, and again — something you’d expect in a non-functioning government. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner should not be part of the government.

The president colluded with Russia, who interfered in the election, in violation of many campaign laws, working with a staff of people who have already been criminally indicted, leading to a reversal of Russian policy which all intelligence agencies have clearly shown tried to undermine and hack the elections. The people who worked for the Trump campaign is a list of criminals. Many have already been indicted. The evidence is already public and damning. There is a current federal investigation, many of the people in the inner circle have already left, or been indicted for known criminal activity. If everyone in the circle is a criminal, then Trump is too. There’s been a clear sell off of US-Russia policy to the point where Trump endorses Putin (a known murderer, poisons opposition, authoritarian), and seems to advocate Russian interests on a global scale more than US interests. Seriously what sort of bizarro world is this? This is like a Nixon-Watergate scandal times 100 but the Republican party is so blind and impotent it can’t see it.

The president has supported and enabled Nazis — White supremacists and neo-Nazis march in Charlottesville in 2017 and the president implicitly endorses them, has white supremacists working in the White House, and continually endorses and encourages this extreme ideology. To be clear, the Nazi and Neo-Nazi ideology is that there is a superior Aryan race, supported the extermination of six million Jews, and supports attacking minorities and creating a fascist state. HELLO- the fact that the US president supports encourages and calls out to incite violence to these people is INSANE.

The president is an extreme racist. He’s openly attacked and implemented policies against Muslims, hispanics and blacks. The type of rhetoric around immigrants and minorities as ‘others’ and is extremely dangerous and sets the table for worse issues. This has led to increased violence against minorities.

The presidents immigration policies have taken kids from parents and put small children and babies in concentration camps. Again-HELLO-there may be reasonable and humane ways to limit immigration. What’s actually happening is they are separating children from parents, separating in many cases babies who can’t take care of themselves in a manner that really is kidnapping and an extreme human rights violation. And then he has lied about it.

The president has worked to ban Muslims from the country. He’s said this explicitly. One of the key things in the country is religious freedom. He’s advocated and supported several versions of a travel ban and one is currently in effect.

The president attacks the free press. He does this in a way which just resembles what authoritarians try to do to create confusion, create propaganda, and create an alternate truth. Trump has called the press “the enemy of the people,” and now today a shooting has happened from a rabid Trump supporter killing journalists.

The president is a known sexual assaulter. At least 19 people have accused him of sexual assault, so many there is a wikipedia page just about it. This again is so problematic as to mean he should be removed from office.

The president has paid off people for silence — this is the tactic of a mobster who knows he has done illegal things. The fact that Trump paid off a porn star and clearly other people for silence means there is no bar too low, and there is no moral character or leadership whatsoever.

The president has condemned entire countries. The president is supposed to be a leader, and he’s not someone you would hire for a day as an intern, or literally any position in your organization. Other organizations have these accountability measures in place, and for a job this important the accountability needs to be much stronger.

The president has used Twitter to attack individuals, businesses large and small and incite violence, and threaten nuclear war. He should be removed from Twitter as a clear violation of their own terms. He’s used this again, to distribute propaganda.

The president has allied with authoritarian dictatorships and undermines democratic alliances. He has undermined decades of democratic alliances and norms, insulting allies in Canada, Europe and more, working to complement known dictators and authoritarians in Russia, North Korea — people who support state sponsored violence.

Trump has said he should be president for life and thinks he can pardon himself — again HELLO- how many alarm bells does it take to realize these things are not things to brush off?

If you google ‘attributes of dictators’ that is how Trump is acting — propaganda, cult of personality, lack of civil liberties, silencing and repressing, demanding loyalty.

What things need to get added to this list for the alarm bells to go off and go “this is not ok, we need to take aggressive action.” Each one on it’s own seems like you can write it off — each of them individually is hugely problematic and all of them together are a crisis.

It seems to me people aren’t focusing on impeachment — but I think that an aggressive strategy like that is what is needed.

Here’s a site — https://theweeklylist.org/ — that details what’s happened in the Trump admin week by week and things that are Not Normal. I’ve read some but I think people can get too adjusted to the drip-drip of bad news, but taken together again shows the extent. Get him out of office.