The 25th amendment guarantees Congress’s right to impeach the president if deemed necessary.
While this process has only been used two other times in our nation’s history, it was recently invoked by the House to impeach President Donald Trump on the grounds of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress.”
To break down the jargon behind those lofty statements, the official nail in the coffin leading to Trump’s impeachment trial was a phone call he had this past July with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
During the call, Trump asked the Ukrainian leader to look into Joe Biden and his son. Biden’s son had worked for a Ukrainian oil company, where the owner of said company was under Ukrainian investigation.
Trump’s standing theory is that Biden had the Ukrainian attorney general fired in order to protect his son.
During the July phone call, Trump insinuated that Ukraine needed to “reciprocate” the military aid the U.S. has given them to defend themselves against Russia. Trump’s goal was to create probable doubt about Biden, a large competitor for the 2020 election.
Trump’s staffers then hid the calls transcript, labeling it classified rather than making it public, which is highly unusual.
While the mention of Donald Trump’s name stirred controversy long before the impeachment trials, this act of bluntly asking a foreign leader to influence a future U.S. election was the drive needed to impeach Donald Trump.
We have all witnessed Trump’s vulgar language, laughable tweets and disturbing quotes. Whether or not you choose to believe in him and his ability as president, one thing is clear: We have passed probable doubt.
I try to never isolate myself from people with opposing views; however, at this point in Donald Trump’s presidency, I have legitimate concern for national safety.
Even if we isolated just this one phone call, we can determine so much about the administration backing Trump from it. They hid his call.
An American president has the duty to represent the people and to be as transparent as possible.
The audacity to attack an opponent without solid proof only speaks for the growing gap between parties and the misplaced focus on winning rather than representing.
The office of the president was created to give average citizens a chance at freedom, a chance to have a leader who heard and valued their needs.
With Democrats trashing Republicans and Republicans throwing fuel on already-existing fires, we no longer see a president who truly wants what the people want, as seen by Trump’s willingness to determine the country’s fate at any cost, with no checks or balances.
In recent years, we have tried to impeach George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, not to mention the successful impeachment of Bill Clinton.
That is four consecutive presidents.
The longer we polarize one another, the more drastic offenses against a once sacred office will become.
If we truly want our country to be a home for all, a place where everyone has a choice, then our votes need to count.
We need to vote in large masses for candidates who value bipartisanship and peoples’ basic rights and human needs.
We need to vote candidates who understand that the president’s office isn’t a reality TV soapbox – it’s the hope of millions of Americans.
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