{"id":5158,"date":"2019-12-20T10:21:01","date_gmt":"2019-12-20T10:21:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/?p=5158"},"modified":"2021-06-15T16:39:44","modified_gmt":"2021-06-15T15:39:44","slug":"trump-impeachment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/trump-impeachment\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump impeachment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr Laura Cashman discusses the recent news of US President Donald Trump becoming the third US president in history to be impeached by the House of Representatives<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Voting along party lines, a majority found that Donald\nTrump had abused his powers by putting pressure on the Ukraine to help\ndiscredit Joe Biden (his likely rival in the next presidential election) and\ntried to obstruct the subsequent investigation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next step is for a trial to take place in the\nSenate, but as the Republican Party hold the majority of these seats, he is\nunlikely to be found guilty. This will be similar to the outcome of the trials of Bill Clinton\nin 1999 and Andrew Johnson in 1868. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since his election in November 2016, Donald Trump\nhas proven to be a deeply divisive president. His cronyism, misogyny, twitter tantrums, and\ndisregard for political convention have contributed to his consistently\nlow approval ratings<\/a> ranging from 35-46%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this \u2018bad behaviour\u2019 plays well to his key\nconstituency. Trump enjoys the approval of 89% of Republicans and\nonly 8% of Democrats. Indeed, there are concerns that should Congress\nremove Trump from office, this would further strengthen his core base and give\nhim a boost ahead of the next election.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly, it is easy to frame this impeachment\ncase as a partisan attack. It focuses on his efforts to undermine a key\nDemocrat rival rather than any of the litany of problems of\nthe Trump presidency \u2013 the denigration of the media,<\/a> the diplomatic failures<\/a> especially the most recent abandonment of\nKurdish allies in Syria, the Mueller Investigation, the multiple convictions<\/a> of close advisors and the many accusations\nof sexual harassment<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this tells us more about the structures\nof US politics and the criteria for an impeachment case than anything else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The greatest crime of the Trump administration to\ndate is not any of the issues listed above and it is not something that will ever\nfeature in an impeachment process. The anti-immigration rhetoric of his\npresidential campaign now shapes cruel new \u2018zero\ntolerance\u2019 policies which separate families (often\npermanently) and detain hundreds of thousands of adults and thousands of children in appalling\nconditions. Conditions are squalid and so overcrowded that people\nare held in cages. Children sleep on concrete floors. Infants are fed from\ndirty bottles. Their soiled nappies are changed by other children. These claims\nhave been substantiated by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform<\/a> and so cannot be dismissed as \u2018fake\nnews\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At least six children have died<\/a> in detention thus far and\nthe government has even tried to argue in court that children were not entitled to soap or toothbrushes<\/a> while being held. Trump\u2019s response<\/a>? First denial and then dismissal.\n\u201cJust tell them not to come. All problems solved.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Donald Trump may liken his\ntrial to a witch hunt and the rest of the world may be distracted by the ensuing circus. However, we should\nnot forget, especially in this Christmas season, that the leader of the most\npowerful country in the world is presiding over a system of\nunimaginable cruelty and, sadly, there is no meaningful institutional\npressure to change or stop this.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr Laura Cashman is Senior Lecturer in <\/em><\/strong>Politics and International Relations<\/em><\/strong><\/a> in the School of Psychology, Politics and Sociology. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Laura Cashman discusses the recent news of US President Donald Trump becoming the third US president in history to be impeached by the House of Representatives<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151654,"featured_media":5169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3902,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","category-uncategorised"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Emma Grafton-Williams","featuredImage":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/437\/2019\/12\/Trump-impeached.jpg","postExcerpt":"Dr Laura Cashman discusses the recent news of US President Donald Trump becoming the third US president in history to be impeached by the House of Representatives","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5158"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7589,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5158\/revisions\/7589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.canterbury.ac.uk\/expertcomment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}