Donald Trump Essay

Donald Trump Essay Introduction

On December 18, 2019, the impeachment of the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, occurred due to allegations of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power, the moment “the House of Representatives approved the articles of impeachment” (“Impeachment of Donald Trump,” 2020, para. 2). Accordingly, the President was “acquitted by the Senate on these two counts of impeachment on February 5, 2020” (“Impeachment of Donald Trump,” 2020, Inquiry). The articles that allege the President were already presented to the Senate at the beginning of 2019. The charges indicate that Donald Trump had abused his power as the President of the U.S. and attempted to block the Senate, especially during the investigation of Ukraine. In this direction, this assignment concentrates on the impeachment of Donald J. Trump and its relations with the political science concepts. Also, I aim to highlight the similarities and differences from the explanations in the course readings.

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Background

After Andrew Johnson in 1868, and Bill Clinton in 1999 (“Impeachment of Donal Trump,” 2019, para. 15), Donald J. Trump is the third U.S. President to be impeached by the House of Representatives. Trump—Ukraine scandal (Lafraniere, Kramer et al. 2019, para. 1), and other inquiries are among the reasons for impeachment. According to NYTimes.com, “President Trump fixated on Ukraine as a solution to his political problems. In five months, his obsession upended American foreign policy and threatened his presidency” (Lafraniere, Kramer et al. 2019, para. 3). The phone conversation between Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald J. Trump picked up in White House, led to a series of events in which the President was finally accused of using his power for political needs and threatening the U.S. foreign policy frontiers. On September 24, 2019, “Pelosi announced that six committees of the House of Representatives would begin a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump” (“Impeachment of Donald Trump,” 2019, Inquiry). According to the allegations, the President was accused of betraying his oath, the integrity of elections, and the national security of the homeland. Oversight and Reform, Foreign Affairs, Financial Services, Intelligence, the Judiciary, and Ways and Means were among the charge tasks.

Introduction to Allegations

When considered the fact that the 45th President of the U.S. has been stood trial due to allegations by Senate, one can readily infer that the supremacy of law is the utmost power in developed and democratic countries. In this sense, one can conclude that these allegations should be based on actual facts, not even interpretations, to find someone guilty of abusing power or obstructing the government organs such as the Senate. More specifically, Donald J. Trump was accused of breaching two articles: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Below, you can see detailed descriptions and background of the articles during the allegation process.

Article 1: Abuse of Power

According to the Constitution, “House of Representatives shall have the sole power of impeachment” and that the President shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” (Walters 2020, para. 3). In this sense, one can conclude that regardless of Trump’s position as the President of the country, the democratic organs and the Constitution enable serious actions against any way of improper abuse of power and crimes, as mentioned above. The main claim of the first article was that President Trump abused his power of the presidency by “soliciting the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 United States presidential election” (Walters 2020, para. 4). That is, he applied a course indicating and resulting in a benefit of his re-election as President in 2020. In other words, this claim (if true) may drastically harm election prospects of probable opponents. His course of actions and discourse, especially during a phone conversation with Ukraine President, may eventually gain personal benefit and influence the election process. Therefore, President Donald Trump was accused of designing a course and scheme of conduct for a political benefit that has nothing to do with the national interests. These actions can/could be interpreted in a way that President Trump used his powers in high office in a corrupt manner by undermining the integrity of the nation, as well as compromising the national security of the United States (Walters 2020). As one can analyze, the claims seem to be serious that affects the election process, national security, and intelligence of the nation.

Article 2: Obstruction of Congress

According to the allegation, “Donald J. Trump has directed the unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance of subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives pursuant to its sole power of impeachment” (Walters 2020, para. 7). That is, by procedure, subpoenas require to need testimonies and documents from different offices and agencies of the government regarding former and current officials. Nevertheless, President Trump was accused of blocking the process without a proper and lawful excuse. Here, one can arguably interpret that the President used his utmost power to block the bureaucracy of the impeachment inquiry during the process, for his personal benefits and gains.

The Discussion in the Political Science Context

Upon investigating the impeachment of the 45th president of the U.S., one can suggest that the process readily refers to the political terms and concepts such as allegiance, campaign, political, corrupt practices, impeachment, voting, government ownership, passive resistance (to bureaucracy by Trump), representation (misrepresentation, allegedly by Trump), sphere of influence (blocking bureaucracy by Trump), rules of order, lobbying (allegedly by Trump on former and current officials). Accordingly, one can infer that the impeachment process has a strong relation with political science concepts and terms. That is, accordingly, “individuals develop allegiances to social groups, or develop a political allegiance per political scientists” (“Allegiance,” 2020, para. 1). Also, passive resistance “is a method of nonviolent protest against law or policies in order to force a change or [secure concessions]” (“Passive Resistance,” 2020, para. 2), and one can observe that President Trump applied passive resistance by blocking the bureaucracy line within the government with his influence of high office. Moreover, corrupt practices refer to with elections, in politics” (“Corrupt Practices,” 2020, para. 3). In this direction, one can suggest that the impeachment process and alleged action include corrupt practices, along with many others such as voting, campaigning, etc., concept by political science.

Eventually, one can interpret that political science concepts, and terms seem to be interrelated [e.g., corrupt practices against rule of order with passive resistance]. Therefore, upon a more detailed thorough analysis, one can observe many more political science concepts and terms such as representation (mis-), party, political, [even populism], pragmatic sanction [against bureaucracy], proportional representation, propaganda, veto, and executive privilege. After all, there exist differences between book readings and the actual processes in terms of the pace and bureaucracy, and sphere of influence with exceptional occurrences such as blocking by Trump.

Political Science Research Paper: Conclusion

After all, this assignment has concentrated on the impeachment process of Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States. Accordingly, the resolution by the House of Representatives is based on two articles: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Upon analysis, one can infer that the impeachment process and the political science terms and concepts seem to be correlated as to the concepts mentioned in the assignment earlier. Eventually, although the concepts and terms in the readings have the same course and direction, the actual implementation of the political science concept has been observed to be much slower due to external efforts such as influence, lobbying, and blocking of bureaucracy.

References

Allegiance. (2020). Retrieved May 2, 2020 from Infoplease.com

Corrupt Practices. (2019). Retrieved May 2, 2020 from Infoplease.com

Impeachment of Donald Trump. (2020, April 29). Wikipedia

Lafraniere, S., Kramer, A. E., & Hakim, D. (2019, November 11). Trump, Ukraine, and Impeachment: The Inside Story of How We Got Here.

Walters, J. (2020, January 20). What are the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump? Retrieved May 2, 2020 from Guardian