Donald Trump’s reckoning

IN 230 YEARS the House of Representatives voted for the president to be impeached just twice. In only 13 months it has doubled the total by indicting Donald Trump twice more. Now the Senate should issue another historical rebuke by making him the first American president in history to be convicted.

The article of impeachment that passed on January 13th accuses Mr Trump of inciting an insurrection (see article). Stand back, for a moment, and consider the enormity of his actions. As president, he tried to cling to power by overturning an election that he had unambiguously lost. First, he spread a big lie in a months-long campaign to convince his voters that the election was a fraud and that the media, the courts and the politicians who clung to the truth were in fact part of a wicked conspiracy to seize power. Then, having failed to force state officials to override the vote, he and his henchmen whipped up a violent mob and sent them to intimidate Congress into giving him what he wanted. And last, as that mob ransacked the Capitol and threatened to hang the vice-president, Mike Pence, for his treachery, Mr Trump looked on, for hours ignoring lawmakers’ desperate pleas for him to come to their aid.

In a democracy, no crime is higher and no misdemeanour more treasonous. Mr Trump needs to be punished for betraying his oath as head of state. He must be prevented from holding office again—or he may well stand in 2024. And, in case someone is minded to copy him, he must serve as an example of how vehemently America rejects a leader who tramples its constitution.

Until this week the only attempt to hold Mr Trump to account for the storming of the Capitol had come from social-media companies, which had banned him from their platforms to prevent further violence before the inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20th. Although the FBI indeed warns that violence is a real risk, the likes of Twitter and Facebook would have done better by focusing on the president’s individual tweets and posts (see article).

Outright bans will undermine politics. They appear arbitrary, because tech firms imposed them on the spur of the moment, having chosen not to block Mr Trump before. And they appear self-interested, because executives are open to the charge that they saw a chance to ingratiate themselves with the Biden administration or wished to quell anti-Trump mutinies among their progressive staff. Regardless of whether that criticism is fair, the fact that powerful, unelected businesspeople have been the first defence against Mr Trump sets a bad precedent. It also fires up his supporters’ grievances. If you try to exile the mob from politics rather than assimilate and tame it, you risk driving it into the arms of demagogues (see article).

The proper place to defend the constitution is the venue the constitution itself provides: Congress. That is why the House was right to vote to impeach Mr Trump and why the Senate should move fast to convict him. Due process and the chamber’s procedural rules mean that hearings are virtually certain to take place after Mr Trump leaves office. If so, two potential hurdles will stand in the way: the requirement to secure a two-thirds majority for conviction and the constitution itself.

The constitutional hurdle comes from conservative jurists who argue that a president cannot be tried once he has left office. Although hearings against Ulysses Grant’s secretary of war for corruption went ahead after he had resigned, no president has been subject to impeachment after his term ended. Yet the framers cannot have intended presidents to be unimpeachable during the lame-duck period. If so, the commander-in-chief would be beyond the law precisely when the impossibility of being re-elected meant that he or she might be most tempted to flout it.

The conservative-leaning Supreme Court may have to determine the answer. If it prevents a Senate trial, Congress must fall back on other, less satisfactory tools such as censure or banning Mr Trump from office under the 14th Amendment for having “engaged in insurrection or rebellion”. If it allows a trial to go ahead, then the Senate should proceed immediately rather than leave Mr Trump to fester. Those who worry about impeachment obstructing Mr Biden’s plans for the first 100 days during a national emergency are miscalculating. If Republicans do deals on covid-19 relief or an infrastructure bill, it will not be because Mr Biden’s party goes slow on impeachment. If necessary Congress could divide its day between the trial and the rest of its business.

The political hurdle is not Mr Biden’s agenda but the fact that removing a president requires his party to turn against him. In the next Senate, at least 17 Republicans will have to abandon Mr Trump. Although that goal will be hard to meet, impeachment is still right. The principled arguments for convicting Mr Trump are unassailable. Many Republican senators detest the president and his constitutional vandalism. And many are still being personally threatened with violence by Mr Trump’s supporters.

They have more calculating reasons to convict Mr Trump, too. Impeachment is inescapably political, and this is their best chance to loosen the president’s malign grip on their party. Only one in six of his voters now supports the storming of the Capitol, but many of them still think the election was stolen, partly because, shamefully, Republicans have not dared to tell them the extent of Mr Trump’s lies. Now is the time to start.

Mr Trump will never forgive those whom, like Mitch McConnell, the Senate leader, he judges to have failed him by acknowledging Mr Biden’s election victory. Having begun to move against him, they should finish the job. And there is history. They should think about how Mr Trump’s presidency will ultimately be judged, and their part in it. In the House ten Republicans voted for impeachment. Senators should follow their lead. The more the better, for the Republican Party and for America, too.

And that leads to the last argument for Republicans to remove Mr Trump. His supporters argue that impeachment is divisive just when America needs to become united. That is self-serving and wrong. Nobody has sown discord as recklessly as Mr Trump and his party. You do not overcome division by pretending that nothing is wrong, but by facing it. Were Mr Trump to be convicted, the healing might genuinely begin. ■