I
was struck by the juxtaposition of two news stories today. The first
was the story of the indictment against Paul Manafort for what was
termed a “conspiracy against the United States.” The second was a story
that Donald Trump’s approval rating as President had dropped yet again,
this time to 38%, a Nixonian level and an apt one: it was the nation’s
37th President who was the last one to conspire so brazenly for his own
benefit against the greater good of the country. The difference between
Trump and Nixon, though, is simple: while Nixon conspired against some
of his fellow Americans, Trump conspired against all of us, if
the allegations against Manafort and others yet to come are proved. It’s
as simple and blunt as this: he committed treason, using a foreign
power to steal the Presidency of the United States.
Richard Nixon was forced to resign his office in order to avoid impeachment for his crimes. As the nation’s reaction to his pardon by Gerald Ford showed, though, this did not seem quite enough to Americans at the time: we wanted him to pay even more dearly for despoiling the greatest office on earth. Ford’s pardon robbed us of our chance to see him on trial, to hear more of the truth, and Ford paid dearly for that, being denied an elected Presidency of his own.
What, then, would be the current outcome of this horrific mess, should it all play out as it well may, with indictments following indictments, with verdicts that prove that collusion with our enemy did in fact occur and that Trump’s campaign knew about it, with the possibility of an indictment against the President himself? We know our timid, self-aggrandizing Republican Congress, too happy with their current majority status, will do nothing about him, so that role goes to the courts, but what then? It would be an unprecedented situation in the history of this country: an election that was stolen by foreign conspiracy, by treason. There is, quite simply, no Constitutional remedy for it.
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Source: The Huffington Post
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