Americans snooze through their president’s impeachment
Hi everyone, I’m Jeff, JR is the producer, and this is episode 233 of Plain English on Thursday, February 13, 2020.
On today’s episode, the third-ever impeachment of an American president didn’t appear to change much in American politics. Most people either went about their business—or had their existing opinions about the president reinforced. The expression today is a phrasal verb, “take over,” and JR has a song of the week. The video lesson for Plus+ subscribers is all about how to use “or else” to describe an alternative or a consequence; how to describe an alternative or a consequence using “or else.” All that, and more, is available on the episode web page at PlainEnglish.com/233.
Trump’s impeachment trial ends where it begins: with polarization
It was only the third time in history that an American president has been impeached, so you might think that Americans would have been rapt with attention at the drama that played out in Washington. You might be wrong. Donald Trump’s impeachment trial has had one of two effects on most Americans: either it has bored them, or it has pushed them further into their corners.
Impeachment is a process written into the American constitution that allows our legislature to remove a president from office for—and these are the words—”Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. Our legislature has two chambers: the lower house, the House of Representatives, and the upper house, the Senate; each chamber has a unique role. The House of Representatives can impeach a president with a majority vote. This only means that charges are brought to the Senate for a trial. The Senate conducts a trial, allowing the House of Representatives to press its case as prosecutors, and the president to offer a private defense. After the trial, the Senators vote; if two-thirds vote against the sitting president, then he is removed from office and the vice-president takes over.
That last part has never happened. The first impeachment trial in our history was in 1868; then-President Andrew Johnson was saved by just a single vote in the Senate. The second was in 1998 and 1999, when a majority of Senators—but not the required supermajority voted to remove President Bill Clinton from office on two counts. President Clinton served the rest of his term. And this time, too, Donald Trump survived. The impeachment articles were, unsurprisingly, rejected and Trump will serve the rest of his term and will be on the ballot for re-election in November.
What were the charges brought against Donald Trump? There were two formal articles of impeachment, or two formal charges. The first said that the president abused his power in office by trying to get a foreign power—in this case Ukraine—to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
Specifically, the charge was that Trump asked the president of Ukraine to announce a corruption investigation into Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden, the former vice-president and a potential political opponent in 2020. While his father was vice president, Hunter Biden accepted a position on the Board of Directors for a Ukraine energy company—a position that came with a big check and not too much work. According to the charge, Trump told Ukraine that it must announce a corruption investigation into Hunter Biden or else he would withhold American military aid. In this way, he abused his power and used the foreign policy of the United States for his own political aims, according to the charge. The second charge stated that he withheld access to members of his staff from Congress when it was investigating the first charge.
Americans broadly had one of two reactions to the trial. The first was simple boredom. The president’s party controls the Senate and no senators from his party had ever stated they would even consider voting to remove him from office. Meanwhile, no Democrat had ever stated they would consider not voting to remove Trump from office. That made the whole thing anti-climactic and, some thought, pointless. Perhaps one or two Senators might surprise the world with their votes, but the outcome was never in doubt.
Although the proceedings were called a “trial,” they were more political than they were legal. We are already in a presidential election year and I don’t think many people were in the mood for even more political theater than what was already on the calendar. The managers from the House of Representatives presented a rambling case, which amounted to a laundry list of their complaints about Trump, both related and unrelated to the charges. The people will have their own say about Trump in ten months, anyway, so many people didn’t see much reason to get excited about the impeachment so close to the election.
Not everyone was bored, of course. Among the people who were interested, though, most had their existing opinions about Trump reinforced. Many people saw the Ukraine episode as yet another example of an out-of-control president who makes his own rules, squashes his opponents, and uses the power of the government to tip the scales in his favor.
Those who support the president saw this as a continued effort by the Democrats and sympathetic government employees to use investigations and anonymous leaks to prevent Trump from achieving anything in office.
Few minds were truly changed during the trial. Opinion polling on impeachment closely mirrored Trump’s overall approval rating, suggesting that, politically speaking, the trial ended almost exactly where it started.
If you’ve been listening for a while, then I’d like to get your opinion! JR and I posted a listener survey, which you can find at PlainEnglish.com/Survey. It just asks a few questions about your experience learning English and about what you think of Plain English. We’d love to hear from you! It’s a great way to help us out and practice your English writing at the same time—and remember, no need to be shy if you’re not used to writing in English. The most important thing is to make your voice her. So check that out at PlainEnglish.com/Survey.
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