Donald Trump likely will be the first president successfully impeached according to Professor Ronald L. Feinman.
Professor Ronald L. Feinman, Ph.D., of Florida Atlantic University predicts that “Trump is on his way to second or third shortest presidency in American history” in an article published on the History News Network earlier this week.
The author of “Assassinations, Threats, and the American Presidency: From Andrew Jackson to Barack Obama,” Feinman has researched the Presidencies of Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and believes that “the Pence Presidency seems inevitable.”
According to Feinman’s analysis, “
[I]t seems likely that Donald Trump will be leaving the Presidency at some point, likely between the 31 days of William Henry Harrison in 1841 (dying of pneumonia) and the 199 days of James A. Garfield in 1881 (dying of an assassin’s bullet after 79 days of terrible suffering and medical malpractice). At the most, it certainly seems likely, even if dragged out, that Trump will not last 16 months and 5 days, as occurred with Zachary Taylor in 1850 (dying of a digestive ailment). The Pence Presidency seems inevitable.
Feinman points to several issues that could lead to Trump’s ouster from the White House, such as the controversy surrounding alleged ties between himself and his staff and Russia.
Of equal concern are “Trump’s inappropriate behavior and language every time he speaks in public, or issues a Twitter comment, and his instability and recklessness.”
Other issues include:
- “His having a security meeting over the North Korean missile test in public space at dinner in full vision of other guests is a sign of his failure to act responsibly.
- “His abrupt ending of a phone call to the Australian Prime Minister, our loyal ally in four wars in the past hundred years, is alarming.
- “His inconsistent message in his dealings with China, first indicating he accepted the idea of two Chinas, and then backing off under pressure, is disturbing.
- “His inconsistency on the two-state solution in the Middle East is a major problem, as is his seeming lack of respect for Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, and lack of strong support for NATO.”
Continuing, Feinman turns his attention to Pence writing that: “The fact that Vice President Mike Pence played a major role in pushing Flynn out is a sign that Pence is already asserting himself with Trump, and it seems clear that Pence will not stand by and allow our foreign policy to be damaged, or our national security to be endangered.”
Here’s how it might play out:
Referring to an earlier article he wrote for the History News Network, Feinman concludes that:
Pence could, even if Trump vehemently opposed it, invoke the 25th Amendment, Section 4 with the approval of a majority of the cabinet, which would make Pence “Acting President.” Some might call it a “palace coup” but Pence could make a convincing case that it is too risky to leave Trump in power. Pence faces a great burden, and whether one agrees with his own agenda on domestic and foreign policy, it seems clear that the Vice President would do what he feels compelled to do if the situation further deteriorates.
One would imagine that if such a scenario occurred, that Donald Trump would resign, as Richard Nixon did in 1974 after the House Judiciary Committee approved his impeachment. But with an unhinged person such as Trump, who can say what would happen in such a circumstance?
Outside the scope of Feinman’s article are some other key points to bear in mind regarding the likelihood of a swift impeachment of Trump.
For instance, there are the frightening revelations by Newsweek‘s Kurt Eichenwald that some of our NATO allies in Western Europe and the Balkans have been conducting ongoing intelligence investigations of Trump and his staff.
Beginning by writing that “at least one Western European ally intercepted a series of communications before the inauguration between advisers associated with President Donald Trump and Russian government officials,” Eichenwald goes on to state that his sources “said the interceptions include at least one contact between former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and a Russian official based in the United States…. The sources said the intercepted communications are not just limited to telephone calls: The foreign agency is also gathering electronic and human source information on Trump’s overseas business partners, at least some of whom the intelligence services now consider to be agents of their respective governments.”
Even more disturbing is Eichenwald’s revelation that:
The Western European intelligence operations began in August, after the British government obtained information that people acting on behalf of Russia were in contact with members of the Trump campaign. Those details from the British were widely shared among the NATO allies in Europe. The Baltic nation has been gathering intelligence for at least that long, and has conducted surveillance of executives from the Trump Organization who were traveling in Europe.
These operations reflect a serious breakdown in the long-standing faith in the direction of American policy by some of the country’s most important allies. Worse, the United States is now in a situation that may be unprecedented—where European governments know more about what is going on in the executive branch than any elected American official.
Additionally, there is the fact that, increasingly, Trump’s mental health is being called into question by mental health professionals.
November 2015 Vanity Fair published an article questioning Trump’s mental health entitled: “Is Donald Trump Actually a Narcissist? Therapists Weigh In!“ and earlier this week group of 37 psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals published a letter to the editors of The New York Times warning that “Trump’s speech and actions make him incapable of serving safely as president.”
On January 23rd of this year Trump proclaimed “January 20, 2017, as National Day of Patriotic Devotion” as per a presidential document published by the Federal Register, the daily journal of the U.S. government. One has to wonder what Americans will be calling the day of his impeachment – should he end up being successfully expelled from office.
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