This is the first op-ed published by The Talon Times. In short, an op-ed is a piece of writing that expresses an individual’s opinion. If you are interested in contributing an op-ed, please email [email protected].

Ever since President Donald Trump announced that he would run for President in June of 2015, members of the Democratic party have done everything in their power to drag him down. Many Democratic members of Congress have seemingly spent more time trying to find ways to get the President out of office than they have spent doing the jobs they were elected to do.

Why would they do this you might ask? The answer is simple: They do not agree with the President’s political views.

The two charges Democrats in Congress chose to attempt to convict the President of were Obstruction of Congress and Abuse of Power.

Firstly, the abuse of power accusation was brought about due to a phone call the President made to Ukraine in which an anonymous whistle-blower claimed that the President was pressuring Ukraine to conduct an investigation that could potentially damage current Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s reputation. This attempt was a major failure considering the basis of the argument was that the President was impeachable because of his “intent” during a phone call. Through multiple hearings from witnesses, it became clear that there was no concrete evidence that his intent was to benefit his chance for reelection in this phone call. President Trump held aid from Ukraine for a brief period, which is his right as he and many other Presidents have done so before with multiple countries. A person cannot be convicted of bribery unless there is clear evidence what their intent in an action was. There was insufficient evidence from the beginning to convict President Trump of this crime, and no matter how deep the Democrats of Congress and mainstream media dug, they could not find evidence to support their claims because it is possible that the evidence was not there in the first place. 

The second crime the Democrats accused President Trump of was Obstruction of Congress. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and house Democrats claimed that the President rejecting attempted subpoenas was an impeachable offense. They wanted President Trump and members of the executive branch to appear before the House and the President claimed that it was his constitutional right to not speak. It is possible that the Democrats could have won this battle had they taken it to court, but they did not do this because it would have taken months and the House Democrats wanted to get the articles to the Senate well before the 2020 election. This lack of true effort to actually convict the President may reveal what the Democrats’ actual intention was with the Impeachment Inquiry.

After explaining the two attempted charges I will now unveil what I believe to be their true motive behind the impeachment fiasco: the Democrats knew going into this that they could not convict the President. They knew that there was no legitimate case for it and that they did not have the votes in the Senate. Having the majority in the House they knew that they could impeach President Trump so that he would then be tried in the Senate.

You may be thinking, “Why would they waste their time trying to impeach him if they knew it would end in him being acquitted?”. The answer is that the Democrats wanted to use this as ammunition for the 2020 presidential election. What better way to damage a President’s reputation than to be able to label him as an “impeached president”? The Democrats’ strategy may have backfired though as (according to news.gallup.com) President Trump now has his highest approval rating since he set foot in office in January of 2017.

President Trump called the impeachment attempt a “hoax” from the beginning, and the result may be evidence of such. Members of the House of Representatives, led by Speaker of the House, Pelosi, took part in arguably the most partisan impeachment inquiry to date. The trial in the Senate resulted in the President being acquitted of all charges presented. Many are anticipating that this will have a large impact on both the Presidential and Congressional elections in 2020 and this may be one of the biggest mistakes by the Democratic party in recent history.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia.