I know. It’s a rhetorical question. The reflexive answer is “never.”
But are we really at the point where, like Trump’s most staunch supporters, Congressional Republicans will stick with their man even if he shoots someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue?
Firing FBI Director James Comey in an obvious attempt at obstruction of justice wasn’t enough.
Thanking Vladimir Putin for expelling over 700 U.S. diplomats from Russia wasn’t enough.
Challenging North Korea’s Kim Jong-un with talk of war, and causing the people of Guam and Hawaii to prepare for a possible attack by the unstable dictator, wasn’t enough.
And now, Trump’s mealy-mouthed tweet denouncing “all sides” in the Charlottesville terrorist attack by white nationalists on lawfully demonstrating counter-protesters, isn’t doing the trick either.
For chrissake, three people died and nineteen injured in one of the largest hate-filled white power rallies in decades!
Of course there are isolated pockets of “responsible” Republicans like Lindsey Graham saying Trump should “dissuade” those hate groups from thinking they have a friend in Donald Trump. Or Orrin Hatch tweeting “We should call evil by its name. My brother didn’t give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home.”
What is needed is for top Republican leaders to grow a pair and have a serious talk with Trump. For starters, all white nationalists in his administration need to go. The firing of Steve Bannon would be a good start.
Prior to joining Trump’s team, Bannon was chairman of Breitbart News, a website that openly bragged about being the “platform for the alt-right”!
How about this … Republicans lead an effort towards a bipartisan vote condemning the president’s failure to distance himself from white supremacism? A strong congressional resolution that condemns white nationalists and censures the president? That might go a long way in helping to mend our divided country.
Polls show that a majority of Americans do not support the man-child currently occupying the Oval Office. In fact, a recent Monmouth University poll found public support for impeaching Trump is higher today than it was for impeaching former President Richard Nixon in the summer of 1973, just as the Watergate scandal was beginning to unfold.
Only Republicans have the power to remove the most unfit and dangerous president ever to occupy the White House.
What will it take for them to do their duty and what’s right for their country? When will enough be enough?
Photo | Edu Bayer/New York Times