This is the dumbest thing I’ve heard yet
I’ve been covering Donald Trump’s antics, scandals, and crimes for years, so I’ve heard plenty of dumb things. I have to coexist alongside mainstream media pundits, so I hear dumb things all day long. I’ve said dumb things myself. Something about politics seems to bring out the dumb in people. But what I’ve just heard is, I believe, the dumbest thing I’ve heard yet.
With no other possible defense strategies on the horizon, Donald Trump’s allies and apologists are now insisting that the voters should decide in 2020 whether Trump is guilty in the Ukraine scandal. This is the kind of notion that makes sense only if you put literally zero thought into it.
Even though Donald Trump is a terrible president, he’s not being impeached for being a terrible president. He’s being impeached because he committed a serious crime against the United States when he tried to forcefully conspire with a foreign government to rig his own reelection. You don’t sit back and let voters decide that, because that’s not what elections are for.
If an American Idol contestant is accused of murder, you don’t let the show’s voters decide whether the person is guilty. The voting is to decide whether you’re a good or bad singer, not whether you committed a crime. Similarly, presidential elections are to decide who’s a good or bad president, not to decide whether the sitting president committed a crime. Judges and juries decide the fate of criminals.
Moreover, because the Constitution specifically demands that Congress commence with impeachment when the President commits high crimes and misdemeanors, the House must proceed with impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump over his Ukraine scandal. If the House failed to do it, the voting public would mistakenly take this as a sign that Trump is innocent of his crimes, and they might mistakenly reelect a criminal.
Of course Donald Trump has to be impeached for his crimes, regardless of what the electoral calendar says. Voters have a right to know about Trump’s crimes, and they will. If the Republican Party wants to keep Trump in place as its 2020 nominee even after his crimes have been exposed through the impeachment process, then that’s up to the party. If people still want to vote for Trump after his crimes have been exposed, then that’s up to them. But the notion that we should let the election decide whether Trump committed these crimes? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
