“You’re fired” used to be Donald Trump’s favorite phrase to say before he went from celebrity multi-millionaire to President of the United States of America. Now, almost three years into his presidency, Trump is facing impeachment which could result in his “firing” from the White House.
Impeachment is not an easy process and there’s many reasons why. But what is impeachment? How does impeachment work? What are the chances President Trump will be impeached? The political scientists, Dr. Todd Collins and Dr. Chris Cooper, are not convinced that the president will be “fired.”
Dr. Todd Collins, distinguished professor in political science and director of the WCU Public Policy Institute, explains that the impeachment process is based on the similar British system of impeachment cases of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. The constitution addresses them in several articles and so does Alexander Hamilton in Federalist paper 66.”
“It was pretty clear that what they mean by high crimes and misdemeanors, the reason for impeachment, is really about an abuse of trust. If we look at the public figures and the abuse of the public trust, it is in those instances that the impeachment will occur,” Collins explained
He said that because of limited experience in US history with such a process, that it can become difficult to prove any wrong doing. Hamilton defined impeachment as a political process that will lead to a political divide. It is not a perfect system of removing a sitting president from office, but it is “the only choice.”
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, officially launched an impeachment inquiry into President Trump over allegations of using his executive power for personal interest. This makes Trump the fourth president in American history to face impeachment. According to an article from the New York Times, Richard Nixon resigned before impeachment could begin and both Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson were acquitted and able to finish out their terms.
Calculation of support for impeachment by party. Calculation done by FiveThirtyEight.com accounting for each poll’s quality, recency, sample size and partisan lean, since Aug. 1, 2018
President Trump is facing serious allegations that he pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate former vice-president Joe Biden, the potential Democratic nominee. It was reported by the New York Times that President Trump withheld military aid, around $250 million, from Ukraine unless their president did an investigation into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. An intelligence agent turned whistleblower alerted higher level security officials about the phone calls between the two leaders. Eventually making it to Congress where Pelosi declared this was enough and the inquiry began. Public opinion polls show increasing support for impeachment of the president since the Ukraine incident started.
In order to impeach a sitting president, the House of Representatives and the Senate must have 2/3 of their members voting in favor for it. As Dr. Chris Cooper, American politics expert and distinguished professor, points out, the Democratic controlled House will most likely impeach the president, but he will be acquitted by the Republican controlled Senate.
Whether or not this impeachment inquiry will influence the 2020 presidential election is still uncertain.
“I don’t think we’re seeing a lot of opinion change. I don’t think it is likely to see a lot of opinion change. It will be a rallying cry on both sides and we already are seeing that on social media right [now]. Folks on the left are saying look ‘we knew it all along, we knew this guy was dirty.’ And folks on the right are saying ‘look another witch hunt investigation.’ It will get up more donations, more activism and maybe more voter turnout. The question is will it generate more persuasion? And right now I don’t see much evidence of that,” Cooper explained.
See the full interview with Collins and Cooper.
