Our Icarus has flown to close to the sun
The president, who after telling George Stephanopoulos during a televised interview in June that he would shockingly be willing to accept dirt about a political opponent from a foreign adversary, attempted to do even worse by extorting political muck from Ukrainian President Zelensky. This much is irrefutable and the five-page call transcript summary released by the White House can be read on line by anyone interested. It also substantiates the State Department whistleblower complaint. By this act, the President has violated a number of federal statutes and the Constitution, giving rise to the House of Representatives initiating an impeachment investigation into this outrageous threat to our democracy.
He has called the impeachment investigation a “coup” and suggests such actions will lead to civil war. The president is flailing wildly, as Icarus falling to earth. Desperately trying to stay aloft, he is lashing in every direction — the victim of his own hubris. The dictionary definition of a “coup” is “a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government.” An impeachable offense is an egregious misuse of distinctly presidential authority. What the president is actually experiencing is the constitutional remedy to remove him from office for his brazen attempt to steal the 2020 election by using his presidential authority to coerce a foreign government to dig up dirt on a political rival, full stop.
During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the founders of this country fully contemplated impeachment and found consensus on its appropriateness as a tool for removal of a president who violates public trust by using the powers of that office for personal gain. The presidents thinly veiled assertion that the impeachment inquiry is a coup or attempt to overturn the 2016 election is a desperate effort to divert our attention from his rogue actions.
Post-revolutionary America was wary of an overreaching executive having just unburdened themselves of the British monarchy. George Mason underscored the matter when he stated at the Constitutional Convention, “No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued. Shall any man be above justice? Above all shall that man be above it, who can commit the most extensive injustice? Shall the man who has practised corruption and by that means procured his appointment in the first instance, be suffered to escape punishment, by repeating his guilt?”
Do we the people care enough about this republic to take up the protections afforded us by the founders and reject the president’s craven attack on the very foundation of our democracy. It is no less than our inviolable rights at stake.
President Trump has flown to close to the sun and there must be consequences less we permit a mockery to be made of the Constitution and fail at upholding the republican ideals this nation was founded.
Leroy Renninger is a resident of Chalk Hill.