Doing The Same Thing Over And Over Again…

That was one of the most batshit press conferences of Trump's public life. He brandished a photo of Putin and promised to deploy the US military to occupy Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. A sane country would be moving toward impeachment and removal right now.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 22, 2025

It’s like no one lived through the first Trump Administration. The man was impeached twice, and not removed from office either time, despite the evidence that he was both corrupt and incompetent, evidence which was never seriously challenged.

My mind goes back to the Ken Paxton impeachment in Texas, because that was conducted by Republicans (they are the majority in both Houses of the Lege). It actually looked like he’d be removed from office (again, the evidence was clear), but at some point the Texas Senate just decided “Nah,” and it was all over.

U.S. Senate rules require a 2/3rds majority for removal of the impeached officer. Absent crossovers from the President’s party, that’s never going to happen. We saw it with Clinton. We saw it twice with Trump.

I suppose you could say the country has lost its moral compass since Nixon was forced to resign (he was never even impeached, but the Senate told him the fix was in. Good news if you opposed Nixon; bad news if you supported fairness. Impeachment is a political process, not a judicial one. It has never removed a POTUS from office. It’s unlikely it ever will.) 

Nixon is the exception that proves the rule. Impeachment has removed a few federal judges from the bench. But Clarence Thomas is invisible and bulletproof, and judicial ethics don’t meaningfully apply to the Supremes at all. Dese are de conditions dat prevail.

This is the problem with the mechanism of impeachment. It’s a Rube Goldberg device that doesn’t serve any function except for public spectacle. And the spectacle part of it is to make people think we have, or ever could have had, a “sane country.”

We’re stuck with Trump. Get used to it.