A little over a week ago the occupant of the White House incited a mob to insurrection and then went back into the White House and laughed and cheered as he watched the mayhem he had induced unfold.
Just yesterday the House of representatives did the Constitutionally obvious.
They floored an article of impeachment.
It reads as follows:
ARTICLE I: INCITEMENT OF INSURRECTION
The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment” and that the President “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. Further, section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits any person who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the United States from “hold(ing) any office … under the United States”. In his conduct while President of the United States—and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed—Donald John Trump engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States, in that:
On January 6, 2021, pursuant to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the House of Representatives, and the Senate met at the United States Capitol for a Joint Session of Congress to count the votes of the Electoral College. In the months preceding the Joint Session, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials. Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump, addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington, DC. There, he reiterated false claims that “we won this election, and we won it by a landslide”. He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in — lawless action at the Capitol, such as: “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive, and seditious acts.
President Trump’s conduct on January 6, 2021, followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election. Those prior efforts included a phone call on January 2, 2021, during which President Trump urged the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.
In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore, Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. Donald John Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.
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Pretty accurate description of what donnie did on the 6th.
In the hearing convoked prior to the vote on the Article the Democrats and the republicans argued for an against voting to impeach.
The Democrats uniformly just alluded to the nature of donnie's call to insurrection and the nearly catastrophic results of his call to insurrection.
The republicans, however, had a number points of dissent.
The most common were these.
They said that now is the time for the nation to unite and come together: these are the same crowd who days before voted against certifying the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris; I guess they want to unite us all now that they might be found complicit with the insurrection for resisting a Constitutional transition of power, since their support of all the bogus election conspiracy theories gave initial fuel to the fire of insurrection.
They said that the Democrats have always been out to get donnie; that is the typical paranoid/victim frame that donnie and the republicans always throw around every viewpoint alternate to theirs.
They said that donnie's insurrection was a pale shadow - and therefore totally acceptable - of the violence they imagined into existence from the previous summer's demonstrations against violent racism - (gasp; imagine that - being against violent racism).
They said that donnie only had seven days left in office.
Of course none of these points, and all the others that I am not itemizing, has any ameliorative effect on the damning truth of the Article.
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Humor was nonetheless in evidence.
Or so it seemed.
For example, I thought I heard someone mutter "god created the world in 6 days; it seems likely that a sociopathic cretin armed with the nuclear codes could destroy it in 7".
But what the hell.
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