Why the move to impeach Donald Trump is a huge gamble
Analysis: From a distance, the impeachment of Donald Trump might look like bad news for the US President. But not only is this a fight he is ready to take on, it’s one he has encouraged.
World
Don't miss out on the headlines from World. Followed categories will be added to My News.
ANALYSIS: The boundary-charging reality TV host Donald Trump was President four months before outlying Democrats drafted the first articles of impeachment against him.
There’s barely been a day since that the i-word hasn’t sat at the top of his enemies’ publicly stated wishlists, for “crimes” ranging from alleged collusion with Russians to hush payments from his personal attorney to a porn star.
But while support for impeachment has been steadily building on the left, until Wednesday the Democrat who mattered most wasn’t ready to bite.
With House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that she will formally launch an impeachment inquiry, the march toward what had come to seem inevitable has begun.
From a distance, this might look like bad news for the President. Despite the fact impeachment has never actually removed a president from office, it has become a byword for the liberal dream of a Trump-free America.
But not only is this a fight Trump insists he is ready to take on, it’s also one he has all but goaded into action.
America is already suffering impeachment fatigue, and nobody knows this better than the Trump 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale.
“Democrats can’t beat President Trump on his policies or his stellar record of accomplishment, so they’re trying to turn a Joe Biden scandal into a Trump problem,” Mr Parscale said.
“The misguided Democrat impeachment strategy is meant to appease their rabid, extreme, leftist base, but will only serve to embolden and energise President Trump’s supporters and create a landslide victory for the President.”
It’s also a huge gamble for Democrats, who will get but once chance to walk him towards the impeachment plank.
Ms Pelosi had resisted for 28 months the increasing calls from the left of her party to act, saying she preferred the option of trying to beat at the polls him next year. But with Trump stating he had not only talked to Ukraine’s leadership about a corruption probe into Joe Biden and his son, but had also shortly before halted the payment of hundreds of millions of dollars of US aid to the nation, the momentum for her to act appears to have become too much to ignore. Trump has said the reason for the suspension of aid was to pressure Europe to contribute more and that the release today (Wednesday’s local time) of a transcript of his call with the Ukraine president will exonerate him.
Depending on who you listen to, what lies ahead is more of the same: multiple inquiries and hearings into Trump’s transgressions — or something entirely new. But there is no doubt that this will be the issue that dwarfs any other in the already febrile election cycle, and there is a lot more to come.
In the reality show that US politics has become, the Democrats may well have granted the President the invitation he needed to star in a new production, very much of his own design.
Originally published as Why the move to impeach Donald Trump is a huge gamble