Trump Is Acquitted. Right, in Fact, Doesn't Matter in America

Well, the thing we all knew was going to happen has happened. Having said that, it isn’t any less disappointing.

CNN reports that by a vote of 52-48 the senate has voted to acquit President Donald Trump of abuse of power. Mitt Romney was the lone Republican to vote for Trump to be convicted on the first charge. On his second charge of obstruction of Congress, Trump was acquitted on a vote from 53-47, Romney voted to acquit him of this charge. With these two votes, the impeachment trial has come to a close. While he won’t be removed from office, the president will still remain impeached. Also, given the new amount of evidence that seems to be coming out every day, the President could still be under more investigations.

The point remains though, that the Republican party has now set a frightening new standard for the powers of the presidency. The party that likes to talk about the constitution and what the founders wanted has thrown all that out the window for this guy.

All the evidence basically proved that yes, he did offer a quid-pro-quo with Ukraine to get dirt on a political rival. Using foreign agents to impede on our electoral system is one of those high crimes and misdemeanors the founders were talking about. Yet it ultimately didn’t matter because the criminal in question just so happened to have an “R” after his title. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) thinks “he learned his lesson.” Given that this man has repeatedly bankrupted his businesses, not too sure about that one.

I’m pretty sure the toddler in chief is going off on Twitter right now but I simply can’t be bothered, y’all. By all accounts, Congress has failed to do the job they were hired for. This is the kind of situation that tests our system, put in place to show that the people elected to take on these duties can fulfill them. It’s remarkably clear they cannot.

This is just disheartening. I’ve never really had much faith in the government because, you know, they kill anyone actually trying to make things better. I did think they had the capacity to do the bare minimum. Instead, they come up with excuses predicated on the most broken of logic to not do their job. Thinking only of what this means in the short term with little regard for the precedent being set going forward. If a Democratic president behaves in a way similar to this President, what can they do? They’ve already shown they don’t care.

I wish I could end this on some rah-rah “just go vote!” spiel but the system is broken. I don’t know if any amount of voting will change that. It’s a whole new world and it’s not looking like a pretty one.