Nicholas Kristof: How Can We Get Rid of Trump?

[babylonsister]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/opinion/sunday/how-can-we-get-rid-of-trump.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

How Can We Get Rid of Trump?

Nicholas Kristof
FEB. 18, 2017


We’re just a month into the Trump presidency, and already so many are wondering: How can we end it?

One poll from Public Policy Polling found that as many Americans — 46 percent — favor impeachment of President Trump as oppose it. Ladbrokes, the betting website, offers even odds that Trump will resign or leave office through impeachment before his term ends.

Sky Bet, another site, is taking wagers on whether Trump will be out of office by July.

There have been more than 1,000 references to “Watergate” in the news media in the last week, according to the Nexis archival site, with even some conservatives calling for Trump’s resignation or warning that he could be pushed out. Dan Rather, the former CBS News anchor who covered Watergate, says that Trump’s Russia scandal isn’t now at the level of Watergate but could become at least as big.

Maybe things will settle down. But what is striking about Trump is not just the dysfunction of his administration but also the — vigorously denied — allegations that Trump’s team may have cooperated with Vladimir Putin to steal the election. What’s also different is the broad concern that Trump is both: A) unfit for office, and B) dangerously unstable. One pro-American leader in a foreign country called me up the other day and skipped the preliminaries, starting with: “What the {expletive} is wrong with your country?”

snip//

Trump does have one weakness, and it’s parallel to Nixon’s. Republicans in Congress were willing to oust Nixon partly because they vastly preferred his vice president, Gerald Ford — just as congressional Republicans prefer Mike Pence today.

If I were betting, I’d say we’re stuck with Trump for four years. But as Sabato says: “Lots of things about Donald Trump’s election and early presidency have been shocking. Why should it stop now?”

And what does it say about a presidency that, just one month into it, we’re already discussing whether it can be ended early?

[ohheckyeah]

1. We wouldn't have to be dealing with this crazy person if the electoral college had

Done its job. What do we do now? Good question and nobody seems to have a good answer. I certainly don't.

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. We all want it ended before it began.

This is likely as bad as most of us here expected. How it could have been otherwise?

[sarcasmo]

3. Pence, McCain, and Lindsay can make it happen.