Donald Trump Will Be Impeached If GOP Faces 2020 Loss, Says Brian Klaas
The Ukraine scandal has sparked impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump as well as many theories as to where the party will go next. Although some believe the proceedings are all for show, others believe that Trump is expendable and suggest impeachment is a very real possibility.
Brian Klaas, an assistant professor at University College London in England, appears to fall into the latter group, Newsweek reports. He claims that Trump’s public call to China and Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential enemy Joe Biden is a move that should lead to his impeachment.
“If this isn’t impeachable, nothing is,” he said. “This is literally what the mechanism of removing a president was designed to prevent.”
Trump initially faced backlash for pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into digging up dirt on Biden, with some suggesting he was using military aid to the country as leverage. The call lead to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announcing formal impeachment proceedings into the president, which made Trump’s subsequent public calls for foreign investigations into Biden even more shocking and brazen.
Klaas claims that the GOP is bound to break with Trump if they believe he will lose them the presidency and their current positions of power.
“Republicans will likely break with Trump if they suspect they will lose the presidency, the House, and the Senate in 2020. Now would be a very good time to sign-up to volunteer for a campaign; to donate; to register voters; and to protest so that surge of activism is visible.”
Key exchange between Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, US ambassador to the EU. Taylor says it’s “crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” Sondland says, “you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. “ pic.twitter.com/Yx14P1rb2M
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) October 4, 2019
Others, such as Andrew C. McCarthy, believe that there is no active impeachment inquiry. He claims that House has formally authorized an impeachment inquiry, and says the theatrics surrounding Pelosi’s announcement are designed to raise the profile of impeachment without actually facing legal scrutiny.
“To be sure, no one has the power to prevent willful House leadership from misbehaving this way,” he wrote, per The Hill. “But we’re not required to pretend the charade is real.”
But McCarthy’s op-ed was written before Trump publicly called on Ukraine and China to investigate Biden. His new calls have again drawn criticism from many, including former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The 72-year-old calls Trump’s comments “brazen and unprecedented” and said that — despite Trump’s claims of wanting to root out corruption — the president’s motivations for the calls were political.
Romney was notably one of the first Republicans to voice his concern over the whistleblower complaint stemming from Trump’s conversation with Zelensky.
