Sand for your Oyster--Impeachment for Dangerous Rhetoric
For those who think Congress shouldn't be trying to impeach the President just for calling a mob to Washington and then encouraging them to march on Congress which was fulfilling its constitutional duties, here is Article 10 of the impeachment articles Congress passed in 1868 against the first President who was impeached--Andrew Johnson.
The bottom line is that Congress has the authority (and I think the duty) to impeach any president they find to be dangerous to the constitutional order. Trump's undermining of the public's belief in legitimate electoral processes, his attempt to get his Vice President to act against the Constitution, his attempt to threaten the officer of a state to change the election outcome, his intemperate rhetoric and calling a mob to come to Congress to build pressure against them fulfilling their constitutional duties all easily make the bar our Founders would have set for an impeachment.
ARTICLE 10.
That said Andrew Johnson, President of the United States,
unmindful of the high duties of his high office and the
dignity and proprieties thereof, and of the harmony and
courtesies which ought to exist and be maintained between
the executive and legislative branches of the Government of
the United States, designing and intending to set aside the
rightful authorities and powers of Congress, did attempt to
bring into disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and
reproach, the Congress of the United States, and the several
branches thereof, to impair and destroy the regard and
respect of all the good people of the United States for the
Congress and the legislative power thereof, which all
officers of the government ought inviolably to preserve and
maintain, and to excite the odium and resentment of all good
people of the United States against Congress and the laws by
it duly and constitutionally enacted; and in pursuance of
his said design and intent, openly and publicly and before
divers assemblages of citizens of the United States,
convened in divers parts thereof, to meet and receive said
Andrew Johnson as the Chief Magistrate of the United States,
did, on the eighteenth day of August, in the year of our
Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six, and on divers
other days and times, as well before as afterwards, make and
declare, with a loud voice, certain intemperate,
inflammatory and scandalous harangues, and therein utter
loud threats and bitter menaces, as well against Congress as
the laws of the United States duly enacted thereby, amid the
cries, jeers and laughter of the multitudes then assembled
in hearing, which are set forth in the several
specifications hereinafter written, in substance and effect,
that it to say:
Thank you for this lesson!
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