The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting longer and some Republicans are getting nervous. After a long stretch of impunity, it’s impeachment season in the US. While the attempt to impeach the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, failed yesterday, Donald Trump may be worried he’s next.
In January, the president warned Republicans that they had better win the November elections or he would be in big trouble. “If we don’t win the midterms … they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” Trump said. He repeated this plea to voters during an October rally in Oklahoma: “Pretend I’m running, please. Just pretend. ’Cause I am on the ballot. And if we don’t win, they’ll end up impeaching me.”
I don’t need to tell you what happened with the midterms, do I? The Republicans didn’t just lose – they were given a thrashing so thorough that, for a while, Trump seemed to avoid talking about it. Indeed, in his first public appearance after the election, Trump largely avoided the issue for a full 20 minutes while talking about his beloved White House ballroom project, rhapsodising about its “magnificent” columns. This week, Trump seems to have moved on to another obsession: he is now making baseless claims that the election was rigged. Still, while Trump may be in la-la land half the time, in his moments of lucidity you have to imagine he’s worried a comeuppance is coming.
There are various ways Trump could be held accountable for any alleged crimes, but what he seems most worried about right now is potential impeachment. It’s a multistep process used to charge a public official with serious misconduct and remove them from office. First, articles of impeachment are brought, then the House votes on whether to adopt these articles via a majority vote. If that happens, the person is impeached. But this is where things get tricky. For the official to get removed, the Senate has to hold an impeachment trial and two-thirds of members (67 senators) have to find them guilty; a tough hurdle to clear. There have only been eight cases where this has happened and all the officials removed have been judges.
Trump has already made history by being the only president to have been impeached twice: in 2019 and 2021. In both cases the Senate acquitted him. But now that Democrats have control of government, could Trump become the first president to be removed from office through impeachment?
The short answer is that, while it’s not impossible, it’s unlikely. The Democrats have a majority, but they still only have 54 seats. Attempting to remove Trump would be a gruelling process that many don’t have the appetite for. Kamala Harris said recently: “Going in the direction of impeachment is not a good idea … we have limited resources and I think the energy and the resources need to be put into accountability, need to be put into investigations.”
In an interview with NBC News on Sunday, Senator Bernie Sanders went even further. “We cannot spend all of our time investigating Trump,” Sanders said. “We have to stand up for working-class families, make a real difference in their lives.”
Hear me out: how about we do both? And look, if impeachment is unrealistic, we can get a little creative and come up with other ways to give Trump and his lackeys a small taste of the misery they have inflicted on the rest of us. I would suggest exiling the president to an island and forcing him to listen to his incoherent speeches on a nonstop loop, but I suspect he’d quite enjoy that. Although we could fill the place with wind turbines, which enrage him, and make sure the water is filled with sharks. Trump is weirdly obsessed with the fish; according to Stormy Daniels he once said: “I hope all the sharks die.”
Oh dear, I think I’d better stop there before I have the FBI knocking on my door. Forget the sharks, OK? If the legal system fails us, let’s just focus on replacing him at the next election.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
