Quick! Play President!

Trump backed into a corner with 25th Amendment and possibilities of Second Impeachment

The+Impeachment+trial+of+Donald+Trump+began+on+Jan.+16%2C+2020%2C+and+concluded+with+his+acquittal+on+Feb.+5%2C+2020.

Sruthi Ramesh

The Impeachment trial of Donald Trump began on Jan. 16, 2020, and concluded with his acquittal on Feb. 5, 2020.

Mollie Banstetter, Layout Editor of The Ledger Magazine

On Jan. 13, the House of Representatives plans to hold a vote on whether or not to demand Vice President Pence to seize President Trump’s power in wake of the siege of the Capitol on Jan. 6. Many are wondering whether or not Pence will take the bait of being the commander-in-chief for the remainder of Mr. Trump’s presidency. However, I don’t think the outcome is what truly matters; I believe that the events that led to this situation are where the significance lies. 

The events that led the President to his inevitable downfall.

Whether or not Mr. Pence decides to invoke the 25th Amendment, the House is still drawing up impeachment papers for “incitement of insurrection.” For anyone who might not remember, Mr. Trump has already been impeached once. It was around this time last year when the president was on trial for “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress.” Which is a nice and professional way of saying “not acting how a U.S. president should act.” Instead, he was acting more like a wannabe dictator, like the ones he keeps as company.

Not much has changed since his last impeachment, and seemingly, no lessons have been learned. The acquittal of his crimes from the Senate left him enabled to continue sadistic power play.

In this past year, Mr. Trump has had more than enough chances to step up and “play president.” He was even close to handling situations in a presidential manner a few times, but still fumbled the ball each time. 

When it came to the pandemic, he grossly played down the gravity of the situation, which was accompanied by his late response. He cared more about taking care of his precious economy instead of the people who were dying of this new and fatal virus. I know that this was an unprecedented pandemic and we haven’t seen anything quite like this in a while, but President Obama and Vice President Biden created a pandemic playbook. This playbook was from their time in office when they dealt with Ebola. They even left it in the White House for presidents down the road. Can you guess what Trump and his administration did with it? They threw it away. 

According to John Hopkins Coronavirus Recourse Center, as of Jan. 12 at 8:30 a.m. our country has 22,620,330 cases, with 376,295 deaths. Congratulations President Trump, you finally made our country great! The numbers are huge! We have the greatest amount of COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths. I hope you’re proud. 

All while Mr. Trump was tweeting from the Oval Office (which he thankfully cannot do anymore), people were in the streets begging for their government and officers to see their side of the story. In the wake of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s murders, Black Lives Matter protesters took to the streets to stand up for themselves. They marched in hopes that police officers would realize that they should no longer get away with treating black people as if their lives are disposable. However, this seemingly simple request was met with rubber bullets, tear gas, and nightsticks, along with discourteous and petty attacks by the president over Twitter. 

We all know how our President handled the results of the election- he lied, yelled, tried to cheat and then lied some more.

Mr. Trump, you had the opportunity to control the situation and meet the requests of the protesters, and sentence the officer with charges of murder. That’s what the officer did, he committed murder when he knelt on a man’s neck, which strangulated him to his last breath. Derek Michael Chauvin was George Floyd’s cause of death. The video shows it all. You had the chance to be a man with morals, but I guess those are just too far out of reach for you, because instead of doing the right thing and indicting a murderer, you took to Twitter to call the protesters “thugs.” 

Mr. President, you even had the chance to condemn white supremacists on live national television, but instead said “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.” For anyone who might not be aware, the Proud Boys are a far-right, neo-fascist, male-only organization. The group has been likened to the KKK, except they want you to know who they are. Trump certainly knows who they are, and he seems to be a big fan. 

We all know how our President handled the results of the election- he lied, yelled, tried to cheat and then lied some more. And with the recommendation of the president’s words, his loyal supporters stormed the Capitol the night the senate was going to confirm President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris’ win. After a few hours of radio silence from the president during this attack, he finally released a minute-long video message saying “It was a landslide election, everyone knows it … we love you, but you have to go home now.” We don’t need any more evidence to show that this man is a pathological liar and a domestic terrorist sympathizer.

That night our president kept tweeting about how the election was stolen and that there was mass voter fraud, Twitter added a disclaimer notifying users that the “claims have been widely disputed.” Later that night and into the next day, almost all social media banned him indefinitely- even Google Docs. 

When the House revealed that they were drafting impeachment articles and talking to Mr. Pence about invoking the 25th amendment, the President got scared, so Trump immediately conceded the election because for once he might actually have to face his consequences. This was the first time he has admitted his loss, along with promising a smooth transition.

Mr. President: all I have to say is that you are an evil, shameful, witless man, but most of all you are vain and spiteful, all of which are characteristics of a fool, not the President of the United States. I truly wish you cared about American lives as much as you care about that spray tan and comb-over toupe. But as the horrible four year experiment comes to an end, I think we can take a breath of relief and finally stop checking Twitter to see if our leader just started a second civil war via social media. You have been truly disgraceful and I hope your resume gets marred with another title of impeachment, marking you as the first-ever president to be impeached twice in the history of the United States of America.