I just watched Nikki Haley on CNN casually refer to impeachment as “the death penalty”. Last night, Chris Cuomo also talked about how he was going to ask Democrats if Donald Trump really deserved the death penalty for his actions. This is Republican framing at its most insidious.
If Donald Trump is impeached and then convicted in the senate, he won’t go to jail. He won’t even have to pay a fine. He will simply lose his job.
After being removed, if there is sufficient evidence to charge him with a crime, and he is prosecuted, and a jury of his peers believes he committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, only then will he actually be punished like literally everybody else.
In a country where people can be fired for giving the finger to a motorcade on their own personal time, or for any reason at all in some places, how can anyone reasonably argue that Donald Trump should not be fired. How can anyone reasonably argue that we should not even investigate the possibility that he should be fired?
This is the framing we need to use here.
He misused $391 million of public money for personal gain. He severely endangered national security. He destabilized an allied country. He destroyed US foreign policy credibility. He sold out US interests, and his actions may have even cost Ukrainian soldier their lives. And that was just this summer.
Republicans ask: “Does he really deserve impeachment?”. We need to immediately rephrase: “Does he really deserve to lose his job for that?”
“There is less than a year before the next election. Why go through this now?”. Would you keep an employee on for another 16 months who did something like this?
“The Ukraine got their aid in the end”. Can you imagine a boss saying: “By all means, keep your job after your epic and sinister actions because when we finally caught you, we managed to undo some of the damage you did”
I would love to see him jailed just like everyone else here. Right now, he just needs to be fired. Make Republicans explain why he should keep his job when nobody else in the country would.