Support Trump’s Impeachment Conviction

Although Donald Trump has already stepped down and is no longer president, the Senate still has to discuss, debate and vote on whether to convict or acquit Trump on a count of impeachment on Feb. 9. On the surface it seems comical; why try a man on impeachment charges when he is no longer in office? What’s the point?

According to Senate procedure, there will be two consequences if the Senate votes to convict Trump. First, if two-thirds of the senators (the Senate has 100 members, 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, and Republicans have held a majority until recently) vote to convict, Trump will lose his presidential retirement privileges and may be barred from running for president again in 2024.

Secondly, if the Senate votes to convict with a simple majority, he will be barred from ever holding public office again. Thus, it is generally expected that only a few Senate Republicans will switch and convict Trump on the count of impeachment brought by the Democrats. In other words, conviction on impeachment may be had with a simple majority vote.

Trying To Win Reelection

Against this background, one can cite certain Republicans in Congress to see that there are Republican legislators who will not betray Trump. For example, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio admitted that Trump was responsible for the Jan. 6 riot, but said he opposed a trial in the Senate. This is not a criminal trial, but a political one, which will only drive paralysis and division in the country. Is it necessary to look back and drag out old quarrels with Trump to see what kind of person he really is?

After Trump won the 2016 presidential election, he planned for reelection in 2020 and so, in 2019, he resorted to asking the president of Ukraine to find ‘dirt’ on Joe Biden and his son to defeat Biden before he could even run. Such use of foreign political force to interfere in the U.S. election is illegal. So the Democrats were prompted to use their majority in the House of Representatives to impeach Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The House voted 230 to 197 to impeach Trump for abuse of power and 229 to 198 for obstruction of Congress. At trial, the Senate voted 52 to 48 to acquit Trump on the charge of abusing power, and 53 to 47 to acquit on the second article charging him with obstruction of Congress.

Trump’s acquittal made him more confident about reelection, but he still made the same dirty mistakes as President Richard Nixon. Nixon’s quest for reelection led to the 1972 Watergate scandal, in which security expert James McCord and 10 others were sent to burglarize the Democratic National Committee headquarters, plant wiretaps and steal confidential documents; they were arrested on the spot. In 1974, Nixon resigned voluntarily rather than face prosecution or imprisonment.

Similarly, Trump is pursuing the same erroneous path that Nixon did. First, during his 2016 campaign for president, Trump worked with foreign political groups to investigate Hillary Clinton’s emails. There were more than 60,000 emails, 30,000 of which were related to her official duties as secretary of state, so there was a question about why they were treated as personal email. It was later revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin provided secret information to Trump, which brought down Clinton at the last crucial moment, thanks to the work of Putin behind the scenes.*

‘Sniping’ at China

The mutual understanding between Trump and Putin was the precise reason that Trump, who had little to do with China before, now turned to China and lobbed repeated attacks on the country, unsettling the entire world. As we saw the tension emerge between the U.S. and China in 2018, we realized that these two powers would inevitably clash. Although there have been no major battles, provocation and confrontation have become routine.

Besides blocking China on trade and keeping it isolated and locked up within Asia, Trump also tried to build further walls in Europe. But the entire world faced an unexpected catastrophe with the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019.

Regrettably, while China was declaring victory over the epidemic,** other parts of the world, particularly the United States and Europe, fell into one crisis after another. To date, hundreds of millions of COVID-19 cases have been confirmed and the death toll has surpassed 2 million. These dreadful, horrific figures did not faze Trump, who stuck to his guns and insisted that China was the real culprit. The China threat narrative became Trump’s mantra.

Some people have advanced while mauling China as the source of the virus, as Trump attracted right-leaning thinkers who formed a large anti-Communist, anti-China camp. Foreigners who have learned Chinese scold the Chinese people from afar. Chinese people who have learned English denigrate China behind the scenes as a country in chaos. If Trump’s White House speech on Jan. 6 was able to incite violence to the extent that requires impeachment and a Senate trial, what is there to say about Trump and Pompeo’s crude intervention in China’s internal affairs?

Accordingly, Trump has a price to pay for the many wrongs he committed during his time in office; for disrupting and dividing the American people, for turning international relations into an ideological matter. An anti-Chinese and anti-communist clique is brewing. If it is not stopped in time, it won’t be long before it destroys the world. The U.S. and Congress should therefore have the courage to impeach and convict Trump. The world cannot afford to have another mad man in control.

*Editor’s note: This information has never been verified and may be false.

**Editor’s note: The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020.