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Four Ways They
Can Get Rid Of Donald Trump
By Rosa
Brooks
February 02,
2017 "Information
Clearing House"
- "SMH"
-
Are we really stuck with this guy? It's the question
being asked around the globe, because Donald Trump's
first week as president has made it all too clear: Yes,
he is as crazy as everyone feared.
Remember those
optimistic pre-inauguration fantasies? I cherished them,
too. You know: "Once he's president, I'm sure he'll
realise it doesn't really make sense to withdraw from
all those treaties." "Once he's president, surely he'll
understand that he needs to stop tweeting out those
random insults." "Once he's president, he'll have to put
aside that ridiculous campaign braggadocio about
building a wall along the Mexican border." And so on.
Nope. In his
first week in office, Trump has made it eminently clear
that he meant every loopy, appalling word - and then
some.
The result so
far: The president of China is warning against trade
wars and declaring that Beijing will take up the task of
defending globalisation and free trade against American
protectionism. The president of Mexico has cancelled a
state visit to Washington, and prominent Mexican leaders
say that Trump's border wall plans "could take us to a
war - not a trade war." Senior leaders in Trump's own
party are denouncing the new president's claims of
widespread voter fraud and his reported plans to reopen
CIA "black sites." Oh, and the entire senior management
team at the US Department of State has resigned.
Meanwhile,
Trump's approval ratings are lower than those of any new
US president in the history of polling: Just 36 per cent
of Americans are pleased with his performance so far.
Some 80 per cent of British citizens think Trump will
make a "bad president," along with 77 per cent of those
polled in France and 78 per cent in Germany.
And that's just
week one.
Thus the
question: Are we truly stuck with Donald Trump?
It depends.
There are essentially four ways to get rid of a crummy
president. First, of course, the world can just wait
patiently for November 2020 to roll around, at which
point, American voters will presumably have come to
their senses and be prepared to throw the bum out.
But after such
a catastrophic first week, four years seems like a long
time to wait. This brings us to option two: impeachment.
Under the US Constitution, a simple majority in the
House of Representatives could vote to impeach Trump for
"treason, bribery, or other high crimes or
misdemeanors." If convicted by the Senate on a
two-thirds vote, Trump could be removed from office -
and a new poll suggests that after week one, more than a
third of Americans are already eager to see Trump
impeached.
If impeachment
seems like a fine solution to you, the good news is that
Congress doesn't need evidence of actual treason or
murder to move forward with an impeachment: Practically
anything can be considered a "high crime or
misdemeanor." (Remember, former President Bill Clinton
was impeached for lying about his affair with Monica
Lewinsky.) The bad news is that Republicans control both
the House and the Senate, making impeachment politically
unlikely, unless and until Democrats retake Congress.
And that can't happen until the elections of 2018.
Anyway,
impeachments take time: months, if not longer - even
with an enthusiastic Congress. And when you have a
lunatic controlling the nuclear codes, even a few months
seems like a perilously long time to wait. How long will
it take before Trump decides that "you're fired" is a
phrase that should also apply to nuclear missiles?
(Aimed, perhaps, at Mexico?)
In these dark
days, some around the globe are finding solace in the
25th Amendment to the Constitution. This previously
obscure amendment states that "the Vice President and a
majority of the principal officers of the executive
departments" can declare the president "unable to
discharge the powers and duties of his office," in which
case "the Vice President shall immediately assume the
powers and duties of the office as Acting President."
This is option
three for getting rid of Trump: an appeal to Vice
President Mike Pence's ambitions. Surely Pence wants to
be president himself one day, right? Pence isn't exactly
a political moderate - he's been unremittingly hostile
to gay rights, he's a climate change sceptic, etc. -
but, unappealing as his politics may be to many
Americans, he does not appear to actually be insane.
(This is the new threshold for plausibility in American
politics: "not actually insane.")
Presumably,
Pence is sane enough to oppose rash acts involving, say,
the evisceration of all US military alliances, or
America's first use of nuclear weapons - and presumably,
if things got bad enough, other Trump cabinet members
might also be inclined to oust their boss and replace
him with his vice president. Congress would have to
acquiesce in a permanent 25th Amendment removal, but if
Pence and half the cabinet declared Trump unfit, even a
Republican-controlled Congress would likely fall in
line.
The fourth
possibility is one that until recently I would have said
was unthinkable in the United States of America: a
military coup, or at least a refusal by military leaders
to obey certain orders.
The principle
of civilian control of the military has been deeply
internalised by the US military, which prides itself on
its nonpartisan professionalism. What's more, we know
that a high-ranking lawbreaker with even a little
subtlety can run rings around the uniformed military.
During the first years of the George W. Bush
administration, for instance, formal protests from the
nation's senior-most military lawyers didn't stop the
use of torture. When military leaders objected to
tactics such as waterboarding, the Bush administration
simply bypassed the military, getting the CIA and
private contractors to do their dirty work.
But Trump isn't
subtle or sophisticated: He sets policy through rants
and late-night tweets, not through quiet hints to aides
and lawyers. He's thin-skinned, erratic, and
unconstrained - and his unexpected, self-indulgent
pronouncements are reportedly sending shivers through
even his closest aides.
What would top
US military leaders do if given an order that struck
them as not merely ill-advised, but dangerously
unhinged? An order that wasn't along the lines of
"Prepare a plan to invade Iraq if Congress authorises it
based on questionable intelligence," but "Prepare to
invade Mexico tomorrow!" or "Start rounding up Muslim
Americans and sending them to Guantanamo!" or "I'm going
to teach China a lesson - with nukes!"
It's impossible
to say, of course. The prospect of American military
leaders responding to a presidential order with open
defiance is frightening - but so, too, is the prospect
of military obedience to an insane order. After all,
military officers swear to protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States, not the president.
For the first time in my life, I can imagine plausible
scenarios in which senior military officials might
simply tell the president: "No, sir. We're not doing
that," to thunderous applause from the New York Times
editorial board.
Brace
yourselves. One way or another, it's going to be a wild
few years.
The views
expressed in this article are solely those of the author
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of
Information Clearing House. |
