Right now, Congress is making a motion to invoke the 25th Amendment, and to have Vice-President Pence take over. Since Pence himself seems unlikely to take action (if the motion is defeated, in other words), then Congress will proceed with impeachment, for the second time. No president has ever been impeached more than once before. This time, even a growing number of Republicans are in favor, and even Mitch McConnell, a staunch Trump ally to this point, has signaled that he might favor impeachment.
This has been a dark and depressing time to be an American, frankly. The political rise of Trump in the summer of 2015 had seemed like a fluke at first, and many laughed it off as a ridiculous farce, a prank. Turns out, the joke was on us Americans, collectively, for taking ourselves so seriously, for having handed over the keys to the country over to slick politicians who were clearly not paying attention to the concerns and for assuming that our country, despite these staggeringly corrupt politicians, was still a good place and in good shape.
We found out some things that we frankly likely did not want to find out about far too many of our neighbors and family and friends. There is a tolerance for blatant intolerance, a cynical forgiveness for unforgivable attempts to undermine our American democracy, a shrug or dismissive wave at clear and obvious examples of transparent racism.
Perhaps the most sobering reality is that this did not spring overnight, and was not really all that surprising. This has been building for a long, long time, in fact.
However, there are some positives. The political rise of Trump also saw, on the other side, a rise in political activism of goodhearted people who had not been especially politically active before, but stepped up their political activism once they grasped some of the horrors of what was happening in the country, and the threat to democracy that this clearly presented.
And perhaps another positive sign is that, despite growing popularity despite all of the nonsense, Trump never did reach a majority approval rating. He came dangerously close, with 49 percent approval ratings during his first impeachment proceedings, and pretty much through the first weeks of the coronavirus crisis. That was ridiculous, true. It was also depressing. And let's face it: it was scary, especially in an election year.
Still, Trump lost the election. He lost the Electoral College vote by a decisive margin of 306 to 232. He lost the popular vote by over seven million. He can claim that this was all the result of massive voter fraud, but having failed to produce a shred of evidence of this, we can dismiss this for the ridiculous scam attempt at undermining democracy, and trying to suppress the clear political will of the American people, that it was.
True, Trump received an alarming number of votes, at well over 74 million. No, I cannot explain how, after four years of ridiculous, absurd news headlines that made most of us scratch our heads and wonder what in the hell was going on in this country, we still had so many damn people in this country who felt that he was some kind of a great leader, when he so clearly was not.
But he still lost.
Now, perhaps finally, more Americans are waking up to this reality. Trump will not stay in the White House. Frankly, he never belonged there to begin with, but at least he will not be staying. And with the storming of the Capitol building, which was a very dark chapter in American history, more and more Americans are waking up to the obvious fact that Trump is not a man to be admired.
Recent polls reveal that 57 percent of Americans favor removing Trump from the White House immediately. This is not all that shocking, as that more or less reflects the disapproval rating that he had during his four years, which was always higher than other American presidents. Still, 57 percent is nearing 60 percent, which is more than have ever favored such a move against Trump before.
Even more telling, even seventy percent of those who voted for Trump in November were opposed to the storming of the Capitol building last week, and an equal amount, also 70 percent, disapprove of Trump’s actions leading up to the chaos at the Capitol building on Wednesday.
Better late than never.
Majority of Americans want Trump removed immediately after U.S. Capitol violence - Reuters/Ipsos poll by Chris Kahn, January 8, 2021:
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