Harris and Sanders counsel Democrats against impeachment
An attempt to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth failed the day before Guardian columnist Arwa Mahdawi wrote that President Donald Trump may be worried he is next. Writing after the Republicans’ midterm losses, Mahdawi argues that it has become “impeachment season” in the U.S. after what she calls “a long stretch of impunity,” and that Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders are already counseling Democrats against a third impeachment attempt against Trump.
Trump is the only president in American history to have been impeached twice — in 2019 and 2021 — and the Senate acquitted him both times. Now that Democrats have control of government following the midterm losses, Mahdawi’s column asks whether Trump could become the first president to be removed from office through impeachment.
Trump’s warnings on the subject were explicit. In January, he told Republicans they had better win the November elections or he would be in big trouble, according to the column. “If we don’t win the midterms … they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” Trump said.
He repeated the plea at an October rally in Oklahoma: “Pretend I’m running, please. Just pretend. ‘Cause I am on the ballot. And if we don’t win, they’ll end up impeaching me.”
Republicans didn’t simply lose the midterms, Mahdawi writes — they “were given a thrashing so thorough” that Trump seemed to avoid the subject for a while. In his first public appearance after the election, Trump largely avoided the issue for a full 20 minutes, discussing his White House ballroom project instead and praising its “magnificent” columns. This week, she writes, Trump has moved on to claims that the election was rigged — claims she describes as baseless.
Impeachment is a multistep process used to charge a public official with serious misconduct and remove them from office. Articles of impeachment are brought first, and the House votes on whether to adopt them; a majority vote means the official is impeached. Removal is far harder: the Senate must hold a trial, and two-thirds of members — 67 senators — must find the official guilty. Only eight officials have ever been removed this way, and all of them were judges, according to the column.
Mahdawi writes that, of the various ways Trump could be held accountable for any alleged crimes, potential impeachment appears to be what worries him most. Her short answer on whether removal is realistic: it is not impossible, but unlikely. Democrats hold a majority but only 54 seats, she notes, and an attempt to remove Trump would be a gruelling process that many don’t have the appetite for.
Kamala Harris said recently: “Going in the direction of impeachment is not a good idea … we have limited resources and I think the energy and the resources need to be put into accountability, need to be put into investigations.”
In an interview with NBC News on Sunday, Senator Bernie Sanders went even further, according to the column. “We cannot spend all of our time investigating Trump,” Sanders said. “We have to stand up for working-class families, make a real difference in their lives.”
Mahdawi argues the party could do both — investigate and govern. In a joking aside, she imagines exiling Trump to an island where he is forced to listen to his own speeches on a loop and the waters are filled with sharks, noting that, according to Stormy Daniels, he once said: “I hope all the sharks die.” Her column closes by suggesting that if the legal system fails, the focus should turn to replacing Trump at the next election.