Opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie, writing for theNew York Times, persuasively argues that Donald Trump’s violent, unhinged rhetoric, more than amply demonstrated on Twitter and in his campaign rallies, may well be sufficient grounds for impeachment in and of itself.
The 1868 impeachment of Andrew Johnson, another virulent, racist president who Americans were forced to endure directly after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, provides the historical precedent. And the rhetoric Americans have been subjected to under Trump makes Johnson look like a model schoolboy in comparison.
Bouie begins his analysis with a recap of what Trump has spewed via Twitter over the past weekend alone.
Over the weekend, in a rage over impeachment, President Trump accused Representative Adam Schiff of “treason,”promised“Big Consequences” for the whistle-blower who sounded the alarm about his phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and shared a warning — from a Baptist pastor in Dallas — that impeachment “will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.”
By any objective standard, these are threats. In particular, the threat of violent retaliation against the still-unknown whistleblower—who exposed Trump’s plan to extort phony “dirt” from Ukraine so he could tilt the election in his own favor—distinctly qualifies as witness intimidation. False accusations, against members of Congress for doing their sworn duty to protect the country from domestic enemies such as Trump, are also slanders with a view towards the incitement of violence from his followers. The thinly-veiled call to his followers to wage civil war is another incitement of violence, much akin to terrorism.