What’s Next for the President

I would like to explain this again but, if the president is Impeached this week, and he likely will be, he will not be removed from office.

The best way of thinking of Impeachment is as formal charges being filed. Just like in any other case, criminal or otherwise a person is given their day in court. The president will be given a trial in the Senate. The Senate is currently has a Republican majority, so the Republican members of the Senate have control of how the trial will look. There are questions about the length of the trial if there will be witnesses if any new documents will be released, things of that nature. The Chief Justice will preside as the judge for the trial and the Senators will act as jury.

The media is stating that the president would like a long drawn out Senate trial. This could help his re-election because the majority of his political opponents are in the Senate, and it would look poorly on them in their district if they didn’t do the job they were elected to do. The likelihood of the president being removed from office is small. There need to be 67 votes to remove him from office, and there are 47 Democratic/Independent Senators. Twenty Republican Senators would need to defect from their party.

If Mitch McConnell has his way this trial will be short and sweet, and over with before MLK Day. He wants the Impeachment proceedings to be over so that Republicans can use them against Democrats during the 2020 campaign cycle. The longer the trial goes on, the more information is released to the public and the less pointless the trial seems to be. It seems to me as well that nobody wants Trump to say anything stupid during the trial on the stand or on Twitter.

Most believe the impeachment vote will take place Wednesday. Nothing will happen until the president is officially impeached. But to be clear nothing will probably happen until November.