Impeachment is trending on X, but I'm not sure why.

It could be this:

Jesse Watters: “If Democrats do win the midterms is Trump getting impeached again?”

Vice President JD Vance: “I’m sure he’ll get impeached. Look, they have nothing to actually run on or govern on. Their entire obsessive focus is that they hate Donald Trump.”

“If they ever get… pic.twitter.com/xtiL4xlthA

— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) January 8, 2026

But it could be this:

Impeach Judge Boasberg and Judge Boardman now. pic.twitter.com/LLNF6rmNnk

— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) January 8, 2026

Impeachment cuts both ways. Both sides can try to do it (and indulge in rhetoric about how the other side is trying to do it).

"Nancy Pelosi, the old and broken political hack who Impeached me twice and lost, is finally calling it 'quits.'"

"She illegally made a fortune in the Stock Market, ripped off the American Public, and was a disaster for America. I’m glad to see the stench of Nancy Pelosi go!!!"

Wrote Trump, about Pelosi, an hour ago, at Truth Social.

I like how he didn't put anything sexist in there.

"'A completely unserious and selfish move,' one House Democrat told Axios on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about a colleague."

I'm reading "Democrats fume at 'unserious' Trump impeachment vote" (Axios).

128 Democrats sided with House Republicans to block Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) from bringing a Trump impeachment vote, including most of Democratic leader...

Green's five-page measure argued that Trump "disregarded the doctrine of separation of powers by usurping Congress's power to declare war."...

Make a list of all the Presidents who should have been impeached if things like what Trump did to Iran is a basis for impeachment.  

Green told Axios in an interview he doesn't have "one scintilla of regret" about forcing the vote, adding that it "does not in any way cause me any degree of consternation to be criticized."

When last I noticed Al Green, he was interrupting Trump's address to Congress and waving a cane at him. 

Rep. Al Green (D-TX) getting rightly removed from President Trump’s speech really illustrates the demise of the Democrat Party.

They are out of ideas. They can’t offer anything positive for America so they try to ruin it.

Al Green needs to be censured and hopefully expelled. pic.twitter.com/CV15kVsz9x

— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) March 5, 2025

Did that register any degrees on the consternation meter?

He's a man without consternation. He's a man who doesn't know how to sell an accusation.

AND: In Greener pastures:

OMG!!! 😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/a1PbaFTjpP

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) June 24, 2025

"House Democrats erupted into fury and profane invective Tuesday as Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) forced a vote on his rogue efforts to impeach President Trump...."

"The vote could be tough for many Democrats, who feel impeachment is politically foolish but are facing demands from their grassroots to mirror Trump's shock-and-awe tactics.... Thanedar took to the House floor Tuesday afternoon to notice his seven articles of impeachment as privileged, which forces the House to vote on them within two legislative days.... The measure accuses Trump of a litany of offenses, including abuse of power, corruption and 'tyranny,' mostly related to his consolidation of power and his personal finances.... 'This is the dumbest f***ing thing. Utterly selfish behavior,' said a... House Democrat.... Asked about suggestions that the effort is related to his primary, [Thanedar] said: 'It's too early — 15 months. I'm not worried about that. It's not about elections ... it's about doing the right thing.'"

From "Dems privately rage over 'utterly selfish' Trump impeachment vote" (Axios).

"That's the old saying — right? — if you're going to shoot at the king you better not miss."

Said the NYT White House correspondent Peter Baker on yesterday's episode of "The Daily." Context:

[Biden is] saying, in essence, you can't have this debate anymore because this debate, it undermines my chances exactly, and therefore I want you to shut up. This question is over. Knock it off move on. And I think he's daring them. He's daring his doubters and naysayers to come after him or to shut up. You want to take me on? Take me on. Right? That's the old saying — right? — if you're going to shoot at the king you better not miss. So all eyes right now are on Congressional Democrats to see where they fall this week. Do the floodgates open and they end up abandoning him in large numbers or do they decide to give up on that notion?

First, the "old saying" is in fact a famous quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "When you strike at a king, you must kill him." I wrote about it back in 2019:

"I do not believe Donald Trump should be prevented from being president of the United States by any court. I think it’s bad for the country."

Said Chris Christie, whose campaign for the nomination is based on despising Trump.

Quoted in "Disqualifying Trump may be legally sound but fraught for democracy, scholars say/Experts say there’s a strong basis for the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to bar Trump from the ballot, but the larger political context makes the question one of the thorniest in recent memory" (WaPo).

I'm not going to touch the bait "Experts say." You don't need to point it out. I see it.

I've already said what I want to say, but because I hear my own opinion in Christie's, I'm going to reprint what I wrote on January 26, 2021, when Democrats were impeaching the former President and defending it on the ground that a conviction would provide a basis for disqualifying him from running again. Of course, the Senate did not convict Trump, and today's disqualification effort would make a lot more sense if it had. 

At the time, I wrote:

[I]t's extremely important to remember that there is a "fundamental principle of our representative democracy . . . 'that the people should choose whom they please to govern them.'" 

I'm quoting the Supreme Court case rejecting term limits for members of Congress, which was quoting a case about Congress's power to exclude someone the people have elected. 

The internal quote — "the people should choose whom they please to govern them" — comes from Alexander Hamilton, arguing in favor of ratifying the Constitution: 

After all, sir, we must submit to this idea, that the true principle of a republic is, that the people should choose whom they please to govern them. Representation is imperfect in proportion as the current of popular favor is checked. This great source of free government, popular election, should be perfectly pure, and the most unbounded liberty allowed.

I think the presumption should always be against a constitutional interpretation that would restrict the power of the people to choose whom they please. 

The Senate would need to strain the other way to disqualify Private Citizen Trump from running for office again, and that betrays a lack of respect for the people, for the "fundamental principle of our representative democracy." 

Enough fretting that the people can't be trusted evaluating Trump as one of our options. Let the members of Congress get on with proving that they deserved the trust we the people put in them.

And, now, let the various candidates for President prove we ought to trust them and not Trump.

The people should choose whom they please to govern them.

I'm reading a Vox article from 4 years ago — December 12, 2019.

The headline is "Gaetz’s effort to make the impeachment hearing about Hunter Biden’s problems backfired spectacularly":

During Thursday’s impeachment hearing, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee repeatedly tried to shift the focus from President Donald Trump’s apparent abuse of power to the Bidens — their goal being to establish that Trump had legitimate reasons to try and cajole the Ukrainian government into investigating one of his domestic political foes.

"Mitt Romney Admits He Didn’t Know Anything About Burisma During Trump’s Ukraine Impeachment."

Writes Mollie Hemingway (at The Federalist)(relying on the new book "Romney: A Reckoning")

[At the time of Trump's first impeachment,] “Sean Hannity accused Romney of ‘morphing’ into a ‘weak, sanctimonious Washington, swamp politician,’ and suggested the senator was simply ‘jealous’ of Trump’s myriad successes.”...

"That’s up to them if they want to do impeachment or impeachment inquiry. I have no idea whether they will or not, we do have a lot of other things. But it’s quite important, and they did it to me."

Said Trump, quoted in "Trump keeps distance from impeachment inquiry while assailing Biden/The former president has shown more interest in lobbying to expunge his own impeachments" (WaPo).

I like the elegance of his distancing: "But it’s quite important, and they did it to me."

They did it to me.... 

Without choosing one or the other, Trump invokes 2 of the greatest concepts in the history of human ethics: The Golden Rule and Tit For Tat.

"What was already shaping up as a volatile final stretch to the Trump presidency took on an air of national emergency as the White House emptied out and some Republicans joined Speaker Nancy Pelosi..."

"... and a cascade of Democrats calling for Mr. Trump to be removed from office without waiting the 13 days until the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. The prospect of actually short-circuiting Mr. Trump’s tenure in its last days appeared remote. Vice President Mike Pence privately ruled out invoking the disability clause of the 25th Amendment to sideline the president, as many had urged that he and the cabinet do, according to officials. Democrats suggested they could move quickly to impeachment, a step that would have its own logistical and political challenges. Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the assistant speaker of the House, said Friday on CNN that the Democrats could get an impeachment vote to the House floor as early as the middle of next week...."

The NYT reports. 

I'd like the Democrats — who have won — to show calm steadiness and grace, not crank things up to higher and higher hysteria! What was the point of dragging old man Biden to the fore and using him — rather than Sanders or Warren — to defeat Trump if not to rope in those of us who just want things to be sensible, moderate, and practical?!

I enjoyed the phrase "a cascade of Democrats" — it could be the collective noun, you know, like "murder of crows" and "exaltation of larks."