An author of the article of impeachment makes his case.
By Ezekiel Kweku Politics Editor, Opinion |
What happened last Wednesday was one of the lowest points in our country’s 245-year experiment in democracy, Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island writes in his Op-Ed explaining the rationale behind introducing an article of impeachment. |
The road that led to the storming of the Capitol by a mob seeking to overturn the election results is a long one, and it leads back to Donald Trump. It was the president and his allies who waged a monthslong campaign against America’s democracy, a farrago of misinformation and outright lies with which they poisoned the minds of their supporters, and tried to intimidate politicians and bamboozle the courts. |
“From Andrew Jackson to Richard Nixon, we have seen presidents abuse their power, but we had never witnessed an American president incite a violent mob on the citadel of our democracy in a desperate attempt to cling to power,” Cicilline writes. “We cannot let this go unanswered.” |
This is not the easy road. Even the shocking scenes we saw may not leech the blind partisanship and hatred from this country. An impeachment trial could become a fresh source of grievance for many Trump supporters, especially as it will almost certainly extend into the Biden administration. There could be more unrest and even violence. It would be easier to attempt to consign the storming of the Capitol to the past, and turn to dealing with the substantial challenges this country faces. But as Cicilline writes, we don’t have a choice. |
Impeachment, he explains, isn’t about humiliating Trump supporters or damaging the Republican Party. It isn’t even about those who stormed the Capitol — or even, in the end, about Trump himself. It is about our children, and our children’s children and the republic we hope they will inherit. Those who come after us must know that they cannot use the threat of violence to subvert the democratic will, and that if they try, then their life in politics will be over. Any other outcome leaves open a path to the end of the American experiment. |
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