A People’s History of the Impeachment of Donald J. Trump - Guest MINDSETTER™ McCarthy
Tuesday, July 07, 2020
In 1980, the late historian Howard Zinn of BU wrote a much-lauded critical history of the US from what he believed was the perspective of the persecuted, powerless, and marginalized. This essay is written in that same spirit. Starting with the proposition that opposition to Donald Trump’s campaign, election and presidency evinces the same perceived bias which Zinn highlighted, only now from a new elite. Namely, the media, academics, and celebrities, who have not and likely never will accept the legitimacy of the 45th president.
President Trump is sui generis to be sure. In my memory, which begins with Eisenhower, there has never been a politician like him. He is a master of public relations. To the great consternation of the traditional media, he has effectively disintermediated them. He is dismissive of the expected norms of presidential behavior. He conducts his presidency, governs, and communicates with his base with a defiant sense of self, which most either love or hate.
Trump’s mortal sin has been to champion “Birtherism”, the wild notion that President Obama had not been born in America and thus was constitutionally ineligible to be president. In 1991, when Harvard law student Obama wrote his first book “Journeys in Black & White”, his publisher, Acton & Dystel, prepared a short biographical sketch written by publicist Miriam Goderich. She erroneously stated that author Obama had been born in Kenya. She claims that this error was entirely hers and was a mere fact-checking mistake. It may well have been, or it may have been an attempt to “gin up” interest for the book in the intensely competitive marketplace for new authors. In any case, it provided the slenderest of threads upon which to base a “Birther” argument. At least some Hillary Clinton supporters had spread the rumor in 2008, long before Trump ever did, that Obama wasn’t American born. Top Clinton aide Mark Penn had written a campaign memo urging an attack on the “otherness” of Senator Obama, his lack of connection to a traditional American upbringing. In 2015, candidate Trump, needing to separate himself from 16 other republican hopefuls, had used the issue as a hobby horse until finally admitting in September 2016 that Obama was, in fact, American born. Too little and too late for many who have never forgiven him.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTCalls for the impeachment of Donald Trump preceded his election. Hillary Clinton was touted as the most qualified person ever to run for president. But by 2016, she was a legacy candidate who had missed her moment in 2008, when her plans were usurped by the historic candidacy of the far more charismatic Barack Obama. Race trumped gender in the eyes of the Identity focused Democratic primary voters. By 2016, there was a palpable sense among her supporters that she was owed, and that the election gods had served up an easily beatable opponent in the politically inexperienced real estate developer/reality TV star Donald Trump.
The pundits failed to realize that Trump’s core issues, an opposition to immigration without assimilation, to international trade without fairness and reciprocity, and to an America Last apologism, played very well in parts of the country not under the dominance of the coastal elites. Trump won an electoral college victory, 306 to 232. He won Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio and Iowa, all of which Obama had carried in both 2008 and 2012. Faced with such a rout, and unable to admit that Trump had a genuine appeal to so many, his opponents began an unprecedented series of attacks, not on his policies or positions, but on the very legitimacy of his presidency.
These include:
- the now discredited Steele dossier (oppo research paid for by the Clinton campaign)
- charges of Russian collusion in the election (Russian internet trolls bought a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads, consistent with their on-going ploys to sow discord and confusion in Western democracies)
- questions about Trump’s past relationship with Stormy Daniels (whatever did or didn’t happen, it long predated his presidency and was a family matter)
- the Access Hollywood tape (ancient locker room banter which NBC sat on till the eve of the election)
- a quixotic claim of a violation of the Emoluments Clause (an attempt to transform the fair market value rental of hotel rooms into a constitutional violation).
All these ploys, and many more had failed to discredit the Trump presidency.
Vice President Biden had been given two important foreign policy portfolios by President Obama, China, and Ukraine. Hunter Biden had accompanied his father to China on Air Force Two in 2013. Shortly thereafter the small investment firm he was affiliated with received an infusion of 1.5 billion dollars from Chinese institutions, some of whom were state-owned. A 1% annual management fee, which would be typical in such a private equity deal, would generate $15 million a year in fees. Although the complicated nature of this deal, including possible cross-border issues, multiple currencies, and several layers of ownership and partnership, could allow for a higher fee structure. As a general rule, the more opaquely you can structure a deal, the more you can rake-off in management fees.
In Ukraine, Hunter had secured a plum position on the Board of Directors of Burisma Holdings, a controversial energy firm, at a rate commonly reported at $50,000 a month. He had no expertise in energy or Ukraine and his only known qualification appeared to be familial.
These were both blatant and questionable conflicts of interest, but the Bidens were unconcerned. It was time for them to “git while the gittin was good”. They were in the lame-duck term of a popular president, seemingly to be succeeded by an equally friendly Hillary Clinton. As democratic grandees, they would have been free from the type of scrutiny these activities would normally merit. No one was envisioning a Trump presidency.
Finally, a routine congratulatory phone call on July 25, 2019, from President Trump to newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky presented a new opportunity. Zelensky, an actor and comedian, is something of a Trumpian figure himself. Life has imitated art in that his political career was launched by a successful comedy show in which he played an anti-corruption advocate who gets elected president.
During the call, Trump and Zelensky discussed the sale to Ukraine of Javelin anti-tank missiles, a lethal defensive weapon which the Obama administration had been unwilling to provide. Trump had provided them and Zelensky was lobbying for more. Trump asked Zelensky to make sure American investigators got cooperation from Ukrainian officials in ongoing investigations of corruption. These might touch on Hunter Biden and his Ukrainian dealings. Hunter’s activities had raised red flags, even under the Obama administration when his father was Vice President. Then the vice president’s office had rebuffed Obama administration concerns and inquiries about Hunter, saying that Joe Biden was too busy dealing with the terminal illness of his other son, Beau.
Additionally, when Obama nominated Marie Yovanovitch to be his Ukrainian ambassador, she was specifically briefed about the issue, demonstrating a well-founded concern, even in the Democratic foreign policy circles, about Hunter’s activities. Rep. Elise Stefanik got Yovanovitch to admit this under oath in committee hearings. In a just world, this admission would have stopped impeachment in its tracks, as it undercut the claim that Trump’s concern about Hunter and Ukraine was motivated solely by re-election concerns. Trump did order a short delay in the provision of the aid package, from July 25 to September 11. The Ukrainians were not even aware of this, and Zelensky has said he felt under no undue pressure from Trump.
As far as the partisan House democrats were concerned - who had repeatedly failed to get any traction from their constant and all-encompassing criticism and harassment - Trump might as well have been caught peddling national security secrets out of the trunk of the presidential limousine.
The following quote is typical of the hyperbole employed by impeachment partisans. It appeared April 19, 2020, in the NY Times, and is by Barry Berke, who was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee.
“Mr. Trump was impeached because when confronted with an urgent crisis that threatened the security of our country — Russia’s hostile invasion of Ukraine — he put his personal and political interests over the interests of the country. He refused to protect the American people by releasing previously approved and desperately needed military aid for our vital ally unless that country agreed to help his re-election by announcing an investigation of his political rival Joe Biden. “
Mr. Berke seems unaware that the urgent crisis at hand, the annexation of Crimea by Russia, took place in February 2014, a little over a year into the Obama/Biden second term. International opposition, including America’s, had been tepid at best. Lots of hand wringing and vocal denunciations, consistent with the oh-so-woke foreign policy attitudes prevailing in DC and Brussels.
It was Trump (supposedly Putin’s buddy) who had answered Ukraine’s call by providing them Javelin anti-tank missiles. Nick Schifrin, the defense correspondent on PBS’s nightly “NewsHour” attempted to discredit the significance of the Javelin sale by noting that they were not actually deployed in the field, but stored elsewhere in Ukraine. True enough, according to the specific security requirement governing their transfer, the activation codes had not been provided to the Ukrainian military. But the point is, the Pentagon could do so on a moment’s notice. The significance of this, allowing Putin political cover against Russian hardliners who might pressure him to escalate the conflict, was seemingly lost on correspondent Schifrin, so intent was he on adhering to the media imperative to discredit Trump by any interpretation necessary!
Finally, on December 18, 2019, a week before Christmas, the House passed, almost completely along party lines, two articles of impeachment. A charge of abuse of power by a vote of 230 to 197, and a second charge, obstruction of Congress, by 229 to 198.
Unusually, Speaker Pelosi had given the impeachment inquiry to the House Intelligence committee instead of the Judiciary. This had the effect of polarizing one of the few congressional committees which (due to the sensitive nature of the matters it deals with) is expected to function in a collegial, bipartisan manner. By the time the House voted, the public was tired of Intelligence Chairman Schiff, who had alternately been lionized and vilified. A largely perfunctory Senate trial was held, which voted on February 5, 2020, against impeachment. The Senate voted 52 to 48 nay on the abuse count and 53 to 47 on obstruction. A two-thirds majority would have been necessary to convict.
Most of America looked forward to some relief from the stress caused by impeachment over the next 9 months, when only the 10 or so battleground states would bear the brunt of the coming election campaign. Fate had other ideas, as Covid-19 and the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis awaited the weary country.
Kevin McCarthy of Lincoln is a former Independent candidate for the RI House of Representatives. He works for the USPS in Little Compton, RI.
