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US President Donald Trump was acquitted at a Senate impeachment trial last January. [로이터=연합뉴스]
U.S. President Donald Trump, who broke all customs for four years in office, added another record. The impeachment bill was passed in the House of Representatives on the 13th (local time), one week before the end of his term, and he became the first president to be prosecuted twice during his tenure.
Interview with Professor Jonathan Whaler, University of North Carolina
“The Republican Democratic Party and Biden-elect are all impeached
I want to finish it quickly… It seems difficult to persuade 17 Republicans.”
“Biden, you have to get things done as soon as possible…if the corona is not caught,
‘Harmony and Healing’ It is difficult to accept the message from the public.”
The ball went to the Senate, which was in charge of impeachment. As Democrats, Republicans, and President-elect Joe Biden are each busy with political calculations, there are many prospects that US politics will not escape the whirlwind of the impeachment regime for a while. Trump leaves the White House, but the ripples caused by Trumpism remain in the Washington list.
In a telephone interview with US political expert Jonathan Weyler, a professor at the University of North Carolina (political science), he asked if the impeachment would actually happen and how it would affect the next administration. Through his co-author “Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics” in 2009, he drew attention from early digging into the polarization of American politics.
In an interview, Professor Weyler said in the Senate, Republicans, Democrats, and even the Biden administration would actually want to get out of the impeachment regime quickly. It means that there will not be enough political momentum to make Trump’s impeachment a reality. In such a preposterous conclusion, he predicted that the political divide that caused the Trump phenomenon is likely to continue. In the end, it is a political environment in which the Biden administration has no choice but to bet on the’recovery of daily life’ rather than the past judgment.
The following are questions and answers.
Jonathan Weyler, Professor, University of North Carolina (Political Science)
- Will the Senate convict in the impeachment trial?
- “I don’t think it’s possible. To be guilty, 17 out of 50 Republican senators must turn in favor of impeachment. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Mitt Romney (Utah), Susan Collins (Maine), Ben Sas (Nebraska), etc. It is possible to vote for this, but it seems difficult to find 10 more people in the current situation.”
- In the House of Representatives, 10 rebellion votes came out. Will the air flow change?
- “10 is 5% of the total Republican House of Representatives (211). Although it was highlighted during the impeachment process, it is absolutely small. Trump still has a strong support base. If lawmakers join the impeachment, they will be in the primary election at the next election. I’m worried that I could face serious challenges. Preservation is more important than reasons for impeachment.”
- If Trump becomes a former president, his power will be drowned out.
- “The influence can be diminished. The Republicans want to get out of the impeachment issue quickly. A guilty verdict keeps the matter alive and makes the matter controversial. It just wants everyone to vote as expected, get a verdict of innocence, cover up and move forward. In fact, there are some lawmakers who have been threatened with murder after a vote in the House of Representatives for fear of retaliation, some have bought body armor, and there are reports that an additional 50-60 members would have been in favor of the impeachment if it was a secret ballot. Came out.”
- Democrats know that the possibility of passing the Senate is less, but what is No Lim-soo?
- “There is nothing against the Democratic Party by political calculations. The whole party wants impeachment, and there is a justification that the president who incited the civil war should be impeached. On the other hand, it is very uncomfortable and difficult vote for the Republican Party. It is a very uncomfortable and difficult vote for the Republican Party because it reveals how the inside of the party is divided. It’s easy for Democrats, and difficult for Republicans, of course, Democrats do.”
- Biden-elect did not appear to be active in the impeachment of Trump.
- “Because I don’t want to be disturbed by the state affairs agenda at the beginning of the government’s inauguration. Biden doesn’t have time. Biden has to show the people who are tired of his four years in Trump’s tenure that Biden is different. Concrete results must come before the midterm elections next year. “We want to deal with the approval of the minister as soon as possible. With the seats of 50-50, the Republican Party needs cooperation, so we want to minimize the conflict over impeachment.”
- If the House of Representatives impeached him twice, but the Senate judged him not guilty twice, the Democratic Party would have failed.
- “This is the fourth impeachment of the president in the history of the United States. All three previous times, the Senate has judged innocent. It is because of the high barrier of two-thirds of the congressmen. This is the intention of the constitutional authors. Impeachment is an extraordinary situation. It’s an extraordinary remedy. It’s not easy for the majority to pull down because the president doesn’t like it. It’s a matter of expectation. The people expected to pass the Senate, but if they don’t, they think it’s the Democratic Party’s failure.
- What about Trump’s decisive defeat?
- “I raised all the issues I could legally do, and insisted that the election was stolen to the end, even though I was embarrassingly defeated. That resulted in the loss of two seats to the Democratic Party in the Senate runoff vote in Georgia, and the Senate Majority status. The second is that on the 6th, the mob urged them to attack Congress, so even a very conservative group like the National Manufacturers Association condemned Trump, which was an unfair election, but if you admit that you lost, at least your political legacy will be defiled. It would have been a greater chance to rerun for public office.”
- If President Trump retires, will Trumpism end?
- “A country that is deeply divided emotionally will not disappear. Will the Trump loyalists move to other politicians, will they become more extreme, will they draw attention to politics at all, will anyone other than Trump continue the ignition of Trumpism? I don’t know the exact answer. It’s not normal to say that the Trumpist knows the answer to the question of whether he can become president again. However, it is clear that the far right in the party will not disappear.”
- Can’t the Orthodox Republicans be revived, not Trump’s Republicans?
- “The careful, fair, cautious, conservative Republican Party will not return. Such a Republican Party has been lost for years before Trump appeared. Trump is only a symptom and a peak. It takes root much deeper and firmly. In addition, there’s a right-wing media that didn’t exist in the 1980s. In the past, if information was all sourced from reality-based news such as CBS and ABC, millions of Americans now use extreme media.”
- Then, is it difficult for Biden to achieve the pledge of’public harmony and healing’?
- “It depends on how quickly Americans can get back to their daily lives. If Trump is a’cause of chaos’, Biden is the opposite. People chose that. Six months later, most of the people were vaccinated, Corona 19 subsided, and life stopped. Biden’s message of unity and healing will be much easier to accept if it goes back to normal, otherwise it becomes difficult.”
- So, is Biden more interested in carrying out state affairs than impeachment?
- “He sincerely wants people to stop dying from Corona 19. He will want to quickly create a government that functions properly based on science. His political interest is only’success’, because it will be evaluated as it is. .”
- The world is concerned about the undermining of American democracy. Will I recover?
- “Constitutional elections, peaceful regime change, or the conquest of the loser are no longer taken for granted. I don’t think democracy will disappear after 3-4 years, but we should not rule out the possibility of something similar to what it is now.”
- Are you saying that dissatisfaction with the presidential election does not stop at Trump alone?
- “It could be a one-off event for a man named Trump. What’s worrisome is that the divisions that made him do not go away. According to political calculations, there could be any number of politicians who could do this for their own benefit. That way, making politics feel skeptical is part of their strategy: instilling distrust, skepticism, angering people by convincing them that the government can do nothing, and manipulating people with misinformation. “
Washington = Correspondent Park Hyun-young [email protected]