United States President Donald Trump made some unwelcome history on Wednesday when he became the only US President to be impeached twice.
Trump was impeached by the US House of Representatives which voted to approve one article of impeachment on a vote of 232-197, charging the president with “incitement of insurrection.” The President was charged for riling his supporters to storm the Capitol last week as legislators met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Unlike the previous impeachment vote in 2019 where none of the Republicans voted to impeach Trump, this time 10 House Republicans joined the Democrats in voting for impeachment. Notable among these people is the No. 3 ranking House Republican Rep. Liz Cheney from Wyoming (the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney). Cheney released a statement highly critical of Trump on Tuesday night making it clear that she would vote to impeach him.
In her statement, Cheney said,
“There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.
“The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing.”
Giving a speech on the House floor, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said,
“We know that the president of the United States incited this insurrection, this armed rebellion against our common country.
“He must go, he is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love.”
Trump will now face a trial by the Senate which needs a two-thirds vote to convict. This means that at least 17 Republican Senators will need to go against the party line and vote for conviction together with the 50 Democrat Senators. In the first impeachment trial, only one Republican Senator, Mitt Romney of Utah voted for Trump to be convicted.
If the Senate convicts Trump in the impeachment trial, he may be barred from running for public office in the future including the office of President of the United States.
