5 reasons to impeach 'degenerate criminal' Trump: analysis

10 January

U.S. President Donald Trump attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 26, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Any effort to impeach President Donald Trump while Republicans control Congress is unlikely to succeed. But one columnist is arguing that Democrats should "do it anyway."

In a Saturday article for The New Republic, the outlet's Jason Linkins laid out why Democrats stand to benefit significantly by aggressively pursuing a third impeachment of Trump, who endured two impeachment trials during his first term. First, Linkins asserted that Trump had committed numerous "impeachable offenses" that would have subjected any other president to the process.

"Trumpism isn’t working, ordinary people are being crushed under the wheels of elite impunity, the cost of everything is going up, the administration either has no answers for it or doesn’t care and the president is deteriorating before our eyes, dogged by obvious health concerns and the slow-rolling Jeffrey Epstein affair," he wrote. "And as the year drew to a close, it looked for all the world that the president—an inveterate telegrapher of his own punches — was about to launch a regime-change war in Venezuela."

Second, Linkins pointed out that the recent fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota was part and parcel of the president's pattern of "tearing a hole in the heart of the American civic fabric while funneling wealth to his plutocratic masters." He referred to Trump's style of leadership as a "vertically integrated autocracy."

"The context of this crime cannot be shorn from all the other aforementioned ones," he wrote. "Everything is connected: Trump’s war machine is seizing territory for his mass deportation scheme (that was another goal in Venezuela); his goons plunder the country’s mineral resources with one hand while abducting our friends and neighbors off the streets with the other (some of them to be sent to Venezuela, presumably)."

Linkins then posited that pursuing a third impeachment of Trump was necessary to uphold the rule of law in the United States. He argued that "doing the right thing isn’t to merely experience the catharsis of success" but to "acknowledge the existence of moral authority and answer its call for redress courageously."

"This being an election year, Democrats are in need of some simple ideas on which to anchor a national campaign," the New Republic editor wrote. “'The president is a degenerate criminal, and if you send enough of us to Washington we will bring the madness to an end' is a message Democrats should be sending."

Fourth, Linkins noted that Democrats are in a "content-creation war with the Trump regime" and that impeachment proceedings would satiate the media's "thirst for conflict and controversy." He predicted a "feeding frenzy" from reporters that would provide a huge electoral boon for the anti-Trump opposition in this fall's midterm elections.

"Frankly, the fact that this is never getting to the Senate for a trial should free Democrats from having to strictly tether a case to statutory realities or tailor it to the austere sensibilities of doddering senators," he wrote. "There’s no reason an impeachment effort can’t be a kaleidoscopic panoply of Trumpian misdeeds presented with an eye toward capturing tabloid headlines."

Finally, Linkins concluded that impeaching Trump could serve as "a thorough indictment of the president, the dismantling of his credibility and the exposure of his every misdeed" that could pay actual dividends should Democrats retake at least one chamber of Congress in the midterms. He opined: "Criminality is the Rosetta Stone that translates the Trump presidency."

"So let the prosecution of the president begin today," he wrote. "And if the Democrats, bolstered by that message, win back the House in the November midterms, then they can impeach him in earnest next year. Even Trump himself wouldn’t expect anything less."

Click here to read Linkins' full article in the New Republic (subscription required).

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