Illegal war, illegal deportations, illegal taxes: Impeach Donald Trump on economic grounds?
An inflection point could be coming, Noah Berlatsky tells me.
The debate over the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump is getting hot right now but wait until November's congressional elections. It's going to get thermonuclear.
Before we get there, however, I think we all should remember that nothing in our system of government – not the Constitution, not the law, not the institutions of justice – was originally designed to handle the God-tier level of cheating and impunity we are seeing.
It's not that impeachment and removal are inadequate. They are woefully inadequate.
It's that they are the only thing we have.
So either we try to impeach and remove a criminal president or the rule of law isn't really that important in this country. Given that the American people have already shown willingness to trade the rule of law for the promise of "economic stability" – the equivalent of an IOU – I would say the rule of law is already struggling for air. It could be that Trump gets away with it all: the thieving, the lying, the corruption. It could be that America shrugs.
Maybe the focus shouldn't be the rule of law. Maybe it should be the economy, specifically, Trump's failure to deliver on that IOU. That might be an easier lift politically than trying to convict him on this or that crime. Anyway, the Supreme Court has said the president is immune to criminal prosecution. "High crimes and misdemeanors" is kind of meaningless.
Illegal war, illegal deportations, illegal taxes – the consequences of each are profound and overlapping, hurting everyone everywhere, except the very obscenely rich. Diesel has broken records three days in a row. Food prices are going to go up as a result. Home heating oil is expected to shoot up by 30 percent. One more energy shock could trigger a recession.
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And ending the war won't stop the pain.
Risk analyst Brett Erickson wrote Tuesday that "the problem that should concern every person right now is that Iran has no intention of letting Trump off the hook before the US midterms, and will seek to escalate aggressively in the days and weeks leading up to November in order to ensure maximum political fallout takes place for President Trump."
Erickson added: "It is also increasingly clear that President Trump will himself throw a Hail Mary escalation after the midterms, which will subsequently force Iran to escalate once again in order to move to checkmate Trump and potentially bring this war to an end."
So the war continues, impoverishing us.
Or the war ends, impoverishing us still.
There should be spectacular consequences for spectacular failure on a scale like this. Impeachment and removal are the only ones we have. Either we try or we go on shrugging.
Writer, author and poet Noah Berlatsky is hopeful. In a new piece for his newsletter, Everything Is Horrible, he argues that impeachment and removal are likelier than you might think. In this interview with me, Noah explains that the keys are how big the blue wave is, how badly Trump reacts to Democratic victories, and how painful things get for everyone else. These factors, Noah said, could coalesce, driving his support through the floor.
"Twenty five percent approval would mean the GOP would be about evenly split on him," Noah told me Tuesday. "That could be an inflection point."
Aside from the expected blue wave, one of your conditions for the possibility of removal is that Trump will continue to do damage for two more years, which is to say, continue to do damage to the GOP brand. How bad does the damage have to be to get Republicans on board?
Hard to know! Obviously with Trump's approval at around 35 percent. We're not there yet.
There have been a couple of times when significant numbers of Republicans seemed ready to abandon Trump. One was after the "Access Hollywood" tape came out; the other was after the insurrection. He rode those out, in the first case because he was already the nominee and there seemed no other options; the second because he was out the door and they all just hoped he'd go away.
I think that a similar crisis after a disastrous midterm, when he's a lame duck president, and seems likely to destroy their 2028 chances, might go differently. A disastrous midterm (Democrats end with 56 or 57 senators) followed by another (unsuccessful) violent coup attempt, with Trump approval going down to 25 or so. Maybe then?
Twenty five percent approval would mean the GOP would be about evenly split on him. That could be an inflection point.
What do you make of Hakeem Jeffries playing down impeachment and prioritizing "affordability"? Is he being coy or is his signaling something about accountability? As you know, the people to our left do not have faith in him as a leader. What do you say to them?
I mean, I generally think of myself as a leftist, and I am not super confident in Jeffries, though I think he's maybe more flexible than some on the left give him credit for.
House leader is a position where you're accountable to the caucus, mostly, and where you're usually focused on protecting vulnerable districts. Jeffries' statements are best understood in that context. They're strategic rather than an expression of his deeply held opinions. And they are generally what purple and red district Democrats want to hear as the message of the party. I think Democrats in close seats think impeachment is unlikely and isn't likely to play well with persuadable Trump voters. Affordability (they think) is a better bet.
Which I'm not sure I agree, but the point is that it doesn't really tell you much about what might happen going forward if there's a massive blue wave and Trump's popularity falls. Democratic leadership wasn't enthusiastic about impeachment in Trump's first term either, but his Ukraine election interference and then the coup forced their hands. That could easily happen again.
As an example, Jeffries has started pushing for Supreme Court expansion. He's also called for aggressive blue-state gerrymandering. I doubt those would have been positions he'd support pre-2024, but Trump's actions have pushed him (and more importantly the caucus has pushed him). So I think individual personalities are often less important than events.
You suggest that "if there’s a real possibility that [the Republicans] will remove him ... let them pick the grounds of removal." Putting that much trust in the hands of people who previously backed Trump all the way might be a bridge too far for some law-and-order Democrats, no?
I mean, there will be pushback and negotiations! But I think the calculus is pretty straightforward. If there is a grounds for removal that Republicans will vote for, and there's a real chance to get the needed votes, you use those grounds!
You saw this with the coup impeachment, I think. There were tons of grounds to impeach Trump in theory. In practice, the post-coup impeachment focused on the coup, because that was the thing that Republicans might vote for. (And seven of them did in the Senate.)
There is an argument that says "let Trump cook." Don't do anything to remove him, short of an attempted coup, and just let him destroy the Republicans over the next two years, as he did during the previous two. What are your thoughts?
I think that this is probably behind some Democratic reluctance to move forward with impeachment. But I think Trump is really extremely dangerous, and I think that leaving him in power is an ongoing threat to the Constitution and democracy, and to the lives of many globally.
Obviously, JD Vance would be terrible, but I don't think he's as utterly divorced from reality as Trump. Trump just has no recognition of a world outside his skull, which means he does really reckless things that are unlikely to work but can cause terrible harm (like the coup).
Also I think removing him would chasten his successor (Vance in this case) in ways that would be very helpful. Basically, accountability is good in and of itself, and Trump is a unique danger. If they can remove him, they should.
OK, Trump is impeached and removed. Then what? It's not like this man has ever obeyed the law? America has never been in this situation. I'm asking you to speculate. Will he go quietly or hold the country for ransom?
My understanding is that as soon as he's removed, he has no power. He's no longer president. JD Vance is then president.
Trump would have no power to order anything. He wouldn't be in charge of the military. He wouldn't have a right to be in the White House. He wouldn't have the power to order anyone to do anything.
The question is whether his followers would try to stage a coup to overthrow Vance, I guess. Or whether Vance would still treat Trump as president or something. But if there's a removal, Trump would already be massively unpopular, and it's hard to imagine Vance foregoing the presidency to help out anyone else.
