Section: The Atlantic (USA)
Trump’s Scarlet Letter
When the time came for the House of Representatives to give Donald Trump his ignominious place in presidential history, lawmakers flooded into the well of the chamber. They had endured six hours of fiery debate. Votes in the House have long occurred electronically, but on this historic day, members of both parties wanted a keepsake: the written...
Donald Trump Made His Own Impeachment Inevitable
As rare as impeachments may be, today’s impeachment of Donald Trump, president of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors was pretty much inevitable.It was inevitable because of Trump himself, his very character, whose essential nature many who now support him have long understood. As Senator Ted Cruz put it in May 2016, Trump...
The Stain of Impeachment Will Last Forever
Later today, Donald J. Trump will become just the third president in American history to be impeached.Because this outcome has been inevitable since at least late October, and because there is no practical prospect of the Senate voting to remove Trump from office, the impeachment has come to be seen as dull, lacking in drama, or yesterday’s...
The Resistance’s Late Arrival to Impeachment
GAITHERSBURG, MD—By the time I arrived at the protest, the giant inflatable Trump Rat was already up and heaving in the wind.A mob of people huddled together under its shadow, outside city hall here, for nearly two hours last night in a show of support for today’s historic impeachment vote—just one of more than 500 rallies held...
An Angry Letter Reveals the Fiction of the Two Trumps
For most of the impeachment inquiry, President Donald Trump has passed on opportunities to mount a formal defense of his conduct. Initially, the White House complained that House Democrats were not affording him chances to defend himself. Once they did, he eschewed them, declining to participate in House Judiciary hearings, and refusing to allow...
Trump Won’t Just Violate the Rules Again—He’s Already Doing It
Faced with impeachment, previous presidents have sought to lower tensions. Finding himself in the same situation the past few weeks, Donald Trump has instead opted for confrontation and defiance.Tomorrow, Trump will be impeached by the House for abusing his power in the pursuit of information in Ukraine damaging to a political rival, in a scheme...
Inside the Republican Case Against Impeachment
President Donald Trump “betrayed the nation by abusing his high office,” the House Judiciary Committee declared in a 658-page impeachment report released yesterday.As Democrats tell it, “President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 presidential election.” He did so by asking Ukraine to announce...
Under Trump, the U.S. Has Become a Leading Source of Global Instability
The end of the year brings myriad rankings: the best books, movies, and so on. In Washington, D.C., the lists tend to be of a more … sobering variety.For years, the Council on Foreign Relations has asked hundreds of U.S. government officials and foreign-policy experts to rate the potential security crises that could most threaten the United...
Impeachment Is Incredibly Popular
The cynical read on the impeachment of President Trump is that it hasn’t changed anything: Here we are, weeks into the process and on the eve of a House floor vote, and there’s scant movement in public and elite opinion to show for it. Notwithstanding the mountain of new evidence uncovered by the House Intelligence Committee, the...
The Remedy for Mitch McConnell
Senator Lindsey Graham put it crisply. “This thing will come to the Senate, and it will die quickly, and I will do everything I can to make it die quickly,” he said. “I am trying to give a pretty clear signal I have made up my mind. I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here.”Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, speaking to Fox...
