Why Trump must be convicted

And why he probably won't be

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This is depressing to write, and here’s why:  it’s only partially about him.

Sure, he’s guilty of what he’s been impeached for, and so much more.  They should have convicted him the last time.  Every senator who voted to acquit him knew it.  Hell, most of them knew he should have been impeached and convicted at least a year earlier for obstructing justice during the Mueller probe into Russia’s conspiracy to help his election in 2016.  Trump’s lickspittle waterboy Attorney General William Barr gave them cover when he issued his so-called “memo” at the time Mueller’s report was released, exonerating Trump of both collaboration with the Russians and obstructing justice.  But Barr could read the words of Mueller’s report, and so could everyone else.  Barr listed something like eight separate acts by Trump that amounted to obstruction before he noted that famous (or infamous) Justice Department memo holding that sitting presidents can’t be indicted.  But they knew he did it.  The entire Republican Party cowered under Barr’s exoneration like mice hiding under a cabinet in your kitchen, afraid to come out while the lights are on.

And then there were Trump’s other crimes that he should have been impeached for but wasn’t: from his self-dealing violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, to his depraved indifference to human life during the COVID crisis, to conspiracy to kidnap minor children when he gave the order (through his attorney general) that children be removed from their families at the border, to the felony calls he made to legislators and governors to overturn the results of the election in their states.  I’m sure you can come up with your own list of Trump’s “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Lying to the American people is probably among them – they voted to impeach  Nixon for that one – and Trump’s record as a prevaricator makes Nixon look like a piker.  You get the idea.  The White House should have been cordoned with yellow tape as a crime scene within a week of Trump’s taking office.

Trump should be convicted for his latest impeachable offense if only to make up for all the times he got away with shit over the last four years.

But there’s another perhaps more important reason the senate should convict him and insure he can never again run for or hold public office again:  they need to make an example of him for all of the times he has encouraged racism and white supremacy.  His countenancing of neo-nazis and white supremacists after Charlottesville alone should amount to a high crime or misdemeanor.  That it probably isn’t amounts to a crime that we have never dealt with since our founding as a nation and must deal with before it’s too late.  I don’t say this lightly.  What you saw on Wednesday, January 6, when Trump’s violent mob attacked the Congress wasn’t an aberration, it was the quintessence of Trump’s promotion of racism and white supremacy and right-wing mania.  As president, Trump didn’t just give a wink and a nod to the violent crazies on the right. He inspired them to action. We heard it in his speech on the Ellipse, encouraging his rabid followers to “fight” and “be strong” and follow him to the Capitol.  Remember?  He said “I’ll be with you.”  That’s beyond incitement.  It’s inspiration. 

Trump gave his imprimatur to the armed “militia” that invaded the Michigan Capitol last summer and stood in the gallery holding loaded weapons above the heads of the legislators who  were in session.  He gave comfort to the conspirators who were arrested for planning to kidnap Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer by excusing their crime when he remarked that their plot was “maybe a problem, maybe it wasn’t.”  And he countenanced the murderous behavior of right wing racist extremism when he said of accused killer Kyle Rittenhouse, “he fell and then they very violently attacked him.  He was trying to get away from them.”  And of course there was his infamous encouragement of far right extremism when during a campaign debate last year, he told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” with a conspiratorial wink. 

They were obviously listening.  The Proud Boys, along with such other violent far right groups as the Boogaloo Boys, were right there forcing their way into the Capitol less than 60 minutes after Trump told them what to do that Wednesday.

Treating the violent, racist, white supremacist right with kid gloves pre-dates Trump, and that’s all the more reason he should be made an example of for whipping his violent followers into a frenzy on 1/6/2020.  The entire Republican Party needs to have its face shoved in its disgraceful history with the violent, heavily armed far right.  They rose up in abject horror that “conservatives” were under attack when the Department of Homeland Security issued its 2009 report about the upsurge in “right-wing extremist recruitment and radicalization activity” the department had detected.  Republicans in congress demanded that the report be taken down and the department’s unit on domestic terrorism be disbanded.  By 2010, the unit was gone.  

Trump needs to be found guilty by the senate if only to stick a pin in the insane balloon of conspiracy nuts and armed lunatics that has been inflated during the four years of his presidency.  The crazed Qanon devotees wouldn’t even be a footnote in today’s news coverage if Trump hadn’t taken office four years ago and started inflating their paranoid delusions.  Now we’re saddled with tens of thousands of these maniacs and we quite literally have no idea what they are capable of, or what they’re going to do with a Democrat in the White House.  They are adherents, recall, to an insane idea that Democrats are led by a secret web of pedophiles and lizard people bent on the destruction of this country…and other ancillary notions too numerous to mention here.

We face a profound problem as we look forward to the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris this week.  The assault on the Capital by armed insurrectionists loyal to Donald Trump wasn’t some kind of hiccup in the political life of the nation.  It may have not even been a warning.  I think this kind of right-wing political violence is our future, and we had better start getting ready for it.  Finding Donald Trump guilty in his upcoming impeachment trial is a start.  That it probably won’t happen is yet another symptom of the potentially fatal disease the Republican Party has infected us with. 

Wear your masks and watch your backs, folks.  It’s going to get even uglier out there.