Why Trump Should only have been impeached once...in 2017

To all those Republicans who are saying, “the democrats have been trying to impeach Donald Trump from day 1! This isn't about the president's actions, but a ongoing personal vendetta.” Have you considered that the reason might be because he's been a risk to the nation from the very beginning?

How short memories are.

Let's look at 2017. Most analysts at the time were sure that one of the main reasons Donald Trump won the election was the bombshell drop of the information found by the DNC hack and the revelation of Hilary Clinton's secret email server. Very many people were suspicious that the Trump campaign may have been involved in both of these leaks, which is absolutely not a crazy conclusion and ANY other candidate would have been investigated for this. It wasn't helped by his speech encouraging Russian hackers to conduct further breaches, especially since at that time, we didn't even know it was Russia who'd done it. Whether in jest or not, given the situation, it was something worth investigating, especially amid the numerous business deals between the Trump Corporation and Russian oligarchs at the time. These concerns were further exasperated by Trump's constantly shifting description of his relationship with Vladimir Putin.

Even the most shallow investigation revealed numerous connections between the Trump campaign and Russian contacts, including people from within the Russian government. There was proof of multiple contacts between Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Michael Flynn and these Russian sources. There was evidence of a cover up as well. Intelligence sources from Holland and UK both sent reports to US intelligence agencies saying that they intercepted messages talking of meetings with the Trump campaign. May I also mention the bombshell email exchange that showed that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort willingly met with Russian contacts for the sole purpose of obtaining information to help their campaign.

The FBI opened an investigation into these shady dealings, which resulted in a conviction for Michael Flynn for lying about his dealing with Russian agents. Trump almost immediately fired the director of the FBI James Comey after he refused to drop charges against Michael Flynn (it was later revealed that Trump had planned on firing him before, but it is suspicious enough to warrant an investigation). Following along? Good. At this point, Trump has been president for only two months.

I won't do a play by play of every single thing that happened. But to put it very simply, the evidence at the time seemed to suggest at the very least that there should be an investigation into the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. It was not a witch hunt. It was an obvious example of something that needed to be looked into, especially when the other country involved is a dangerous dictatorship that is often considered an enemy of the United States. The Democrats had very convincing arguments that Trump was trying to obstruct this investigation and that made him appear even more guilty. If there was nothing to be found, why did he seem so hell bent on stopping the investigation? This was enough for them to beginning discussing the possibility of impeachment, because of the impending threat that the president of the United States itself may owe a favor the Russian government.

Then we had the Mueller report. After a long investigation, we got the reveal that yes, without a doubt, Russian had interfered with our election in a way that was beneficial to Donald Trump (something that the Republicans keep saying was never found despite piles of evidence). His report also revealed that there were very clear connections and contacts between the Russian government, wikileaks, and the Trump campaign. However, there was not enough evidence to convict Donald Trump by the legal definitions of conspiracy. His report also concluded without a doubt that the president had broken the law, committed obstruction of justice numerous times, and were he a private citizen, he would have been convicted. However, due to his position as the president of the United States, any formal declaration wrongdoing would need to be done by congress by way of impeachment, which he narrowly avoided (we can't ignore how close he was to being impeached thrice.). These acts of the president to derail the investigation further added to the alleged suspicions that he may have had connections to Russia.

Bill Barr announced to the nation and lied about the contents of the report by saying, falsely, that the president was completely exonerated. In front of the House of Representative, Robert Mueller doubled down on the findings of his report and said that Trump absolutely committed numerous crimes that could be considered impeachable.

Fast forward two years and one actual impeachment. In 2020, a REPUBLICAN LED SENATE COMMITTEE concluded that the Trump campaign had significant dealing with a Russian agent who was involved with Russia's interference in the election of 2016, vindicating the Democrat's initial reasons for impeachment in his first year as president.

So yes, the Democrats have been trying to impeach Donald Trump from the very start of his presidency, not just because they hate him, but because he's ALWAYS been a threat to the country and should never have been allowed to be president. We can only wonder how these last four years would have turned out if the Republicans had actually done their job as public servants and not operated as soulless power brokers, bent on protecting the president in exchange for votes by his rabid base of KKK members and neo-Nazis.

Key Differences between BLM and the Capitol Coup

There's been a lot people and conservative talking heads who are trying to claim that there is fundamentally no real difference between the BLM protests and what happened at the capitol. And frankly this is both naive and insulting. It's a ridiculous claim.

Did the protests this summer go too far? Absolutely yes. Do the people who vandalized buildings, burned down stores, incited violence need to be punished? Or course. Rioting is never a good a thing and I pushed back against anybody this summer who said it was (with the exception of pulling down racist statues, which I saw as an essential step in moving our society forward from its racist past). Both events resulted in property damage and violence, but there are some clear differences worth considering.

1) During the two main weeks of protests this summer 19 people died. This was a mixture of police, bystanders, and protesters. Some of these by the police, some of these were by protesters, some of these were by vigantes and extremists who either wanted to take law into their own hands or use the chaos to commit crimes. Some of these deaths were connected to far-right terrorist groups. This was over TWO WEEKS across the ENTIRE UNITED STATES.

During the attack on the capitol, five people died. One police officer who was beaten to death, one woman who was shot trying to break into the senate chamber after being told to stand down along with a number of people who were shown on video to have the intention of taking hostages or murdering senators, two died of medical problems, and one was trampled to death. This was over the period of a couple hours in one building.

2) Much of the protests this summer were a part of struggle for the civil rights of minorities in response to the unwarranted murder of a black man at the hands of a police officer that was painfully caught on tape. We cannot confirm the murder was racially motivated (it very likely wasn't, in fact), but it came on the heels of numerous shooting and strangling deaths by police officers committed upon innocent people of color. Again, we cannot verify that these deaths were the racially motivated, but that's the belief of numerous people. Compared to other developed western countries, the United States has a extremely disproportionate number of deaths by police. This led a to a widespread call for a reform of the police system.

The protest in DC was instigated by the lies of a political party. They were a large number of people there standing against what they saw as a widespread election fraud that has been backed by scant evidence. Even the accusers have not provided sufficient evidence of voter fraud to give them any legal standing to dispute the election. President Trump was given numerous opportunities to prove his allegations and has explored every legal recourse he has. They've filed nearly 60 lawsuits (only in states where they lost...clearly cheating only happens there) and has won one I think. The vast majority were either dropped or never got to court due to lack of evidence. A bipartisan investigation has declared this the most secure election in American history. Trump's allegations of voter has been denied by judges he's appointed, governors who have supported him in the past, and the supreme court itself. He lost the election.

Donald Trump called upon his base to swarm DC on the date of the vote certification, dropping numerous vague threats and claims that they could overturn the results. Many within his base congregated with the sole intention of committing acts of terrorism and overthrowing the government. These intentions have been clearly documented on social media. On the 6th of January, Donald Trump, Rudy Guilianni, and his son urged the crowd the march on the capitol to stop the verification of the vote, a democratic step that confirms the election of the president of the United States. The crowd did as he urged them to and stormed the capitol building. They broke through the barrier and started beating police officers. Many of them armed. They were chanting that they'd hunt down numerous members of our government and murder them. It is by the hard work of the police that they were unable to breech the house and senate chambers before our representative were evacuated. They defecated over the halls, stole sensitive documents, destroyed government property, planted bombs. Not all of them, but a good number of these people entered with the purpose of trying to overturn a democratic process as illustrated by our constitution. They broke in to start a revolution. How do we know? They filmed themselves doing it. They filmed themselves saying it. When this was finished. Donald Trump told them he loved them.

Here's the main difference here. The protests over this summer were there to bring attention to violations of civil rights. They never tried to overthrow the government. Last week was a coup attempt instigated by the president. He didn't want the votes verified and he organized a mob to stop it, or at the very least disrupt it. There is no evidence as of now that Mr. Trump had the intention of getting his base to breech the capitol itself, but it was a foregone conclusion given the circumstances and his rhetoric that very clearly told them that they should stop this democratic process.

Do I think that the Democrats who encouraged violence are wrong? Of course I do. I don't think they were wrong to encourage protests, though. Protests brought America Civil Rights. Protests brought us workers' rights. Protests made us a country. It's a huge part of our culture and I don't think it should stop. But calling what happened on January 6th a protest is horribly naive. We've never seen a protest, including that of this summer, attack the capitol with the purpose of killing important members of our government and stopping the verification of a legal election. That's what a coup is. THEY ARE NOT COMPARABLE. Quit doing it, because they are objectively very different things.