“If I’m guilty of anything, it’s that I’ve been a great president and the Democrats don’t like it.”
— President Trump, discussing the Mueller report on April 26
WASHINGTON — Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, against Donald John Trump, president of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for being a “great president”:
Article I: Donald John Trump has been a great president for anti-Semites.
Jew haters have enjoyed record greatness during the Trump presidency. Saturday’s deadly attack at a California synagogue came exactly six months after a massacre at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Trump has joked about Jews being money-grubbing, tweeted an anti-Semitic image, declined to call off supporters threatening anti-Semitic violence, and echoed anti-Semitic tropes about “globalists” while stoking conspiracy theories about prominent Jewish Americans.
Article II: Donald John Trump has been a great president for white supremacists.
Trump famously said there were some “very fine people” among the white supremacists who came to Charlottesville in 2017 for a white-nationalist rally at which armed neo-Nazis carried torches, chanted “Jews will not replace us” and killed a counterprotester.
Article III: Donald John Trump has been a great president for North Korea.
Trump’s embrace of Kim Jong Un as a great, “honorable” man gave legitimacy to the repressive dictator and nuclear menace. Now, The Washington Post reports Trump’s team promised to pay Kim a great sum — $2 million — for the release of hostage Otto Warmbier.
Article IV: Donald John Trump has been a great president for Russia.
Trump’s greatly amusing lawyer Rudy Giuliani recently said “there’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians” for electoral help. And Trump has thwarted attempts to protect the country from more great Russian attacks in 2020.
Article V: Donald John Trump has been a great president for the rich.
A new Post-ABC poll finds that 60 percent of voters say the country’s great economic system mainly benefits those in power. Trump has cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations and hired hundreds of former corporate lobbyists.
Article VI: Donald John Trump has been a great president for fact-checkers.
The Post’s Fact Checker reported Monday that Trump has made 10,000 false or misleading claims as president. Just this weekend, he alleged that under Democrats’ beliefs, a newborn baby is swaddled “beautifully and then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.” He also announced that if Democrats try to impeach him, “I would first head to the U.S. Supreme Court,” which does not decide impeachment.
Article VII: Donald John Trump has been a great president for lawyers.
As Trump pushes the bounds of legality to ever greater elasticity, and his lawyers to ever-greater creativity, Fox News’s Andrew Napolitano, previously a stalwart Trump defender, now says the Mueller report exposed “unlawful, defenseless and condemnable” actions by Trump. Trump now labels Napolitano’s previously great legal thinking “very dumb.”
Article VIII: Donald John Trump has been a great president for disease.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday that measles cases hit an outstanding 25-year high. Trump, who had previously spread fears that vaccines cause autism, has presided over the loss of health insurance by 7 million people — one of the greatest drop-offs in U.S. history.
Article IX: Donald John Trump has been a great president for trade rivals.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, says Trump’s great steel tariffs are a “tax on Americans,” and he has threatened to kill Trump’s renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement. This follows the recent report that the U.S. trade deficit in goods was the greatest — highest — in history last year.
Article X: Donald John Trump has been a great president for illegal immigration.
Customs and Border Protection reported that last month’s apprehensions along the southern border hit a great, 12-year high.
Article XI: Donald John Trump has been a great president for “bullshit.”
Trump publicly uttered “bullshit” three times in the last two months. While leading this great assault on presidential norms, he has also presided over the greatest increases in federal debt during a peacetime expansion, the greatest turnover of presidential staff and the greatest rises in sea levels.
Wherefore, Donald John Trump, by being such a great president, warrants impeachment and trial, and removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.
Dana Milbank is a columnist for The Washington Post whose work appears regularly in the Tribune-Herald. Email him at danamilbank@washpost.com.
