- Click to share on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
- Click to share on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
- Click here to share on LinkedIn (Opens in a new window)
- Click to email a friend (Opens in a new window)
Editor's Note: Dean Obeidallah is an exaggerated and host of the daily SiriusXM radio show "The Dean Obeidallah Show" and columnist for The Daily Beast. Follow him on Twitter @DeanObeidallah. The opinions expressed in this comment are yours. Read more opinion articles on CNN in Spanish here.
(CNN) - Hillary Clinton's almost 66 million votes in the 2016 election were not enough to defeat Donald Trump. But just over 0.0001% of that figure could end Trump's presidency. That is the reality of what Trump faces if the House of Representatives formally prosecutes him later this week, as expected, which will provoke a political trial in the Senate.
In that trial, the Constitution simply requires that two thirds of the Senate, in this case 67 senators, vote to condemn and remove the president, then it would be a goodbye for Trump.
- The next five days will make history. This is what can be expected in the process of political trial against Trump
Trump's fate is in the hands of 20 Republican senators — the number needed to join the 45 Democratic senators and two independent senators, who usually stand on the side of the Democrats — to vote to condemn him and end his presidency, assuming that Everyone vote to get Trump out.
Yes, it is a very remote possibility that 20 Republican senators vote to send Trump to pack suitcases, especially given the statement of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, last week when he said "there is no chance" that Trump is removed from office. But as an outgoing litigator, I can say that jurors do not always do what is expected. And there is always the possibility that more incriminating evidence about Trump will be revealed from now until the start of the trial.
Even the safest of the presidents of the United States would be nervous at the prospect that their political disappearance is only 67 votes away. And although Trump has been called many things, "sure" is not one of them. This is the same Trump who a few days ago turned to Twitter to scorn scornfully for Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old climate change activist, probably because he beat him for the title of "Person of the Year" in Time magazine.
Adding to Trump's level of stress, there are comments like the one made by former Republican Jeff Flake, who recently declared that there would be "at least 35" Republican senators who would vote to get Trump if the votes were kept secret. That number may be a bit high, but Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said a few weeks ago that he believes there are at least five Republican senators likely to vote with Democrats.
Do you have any doubt that Trump is doing these calculations in his head over and over again, trying to find out if he mocked or angered enough Republican senators who could determine his political destiny? Of course, what gives Trump protection is that his Republican base strongly backs him, and any Republican senator who votes to get Trump out could receive the anger of his voters.
- The Supreme Court will decide if Trump can keep his financial records secret
And while Trump's campaign publicly states that the impeachment will help Trump win in 2020 by firing his base, Trump's own Twitter account is a glimpse of a president in total panic mode. On Thursday, Trump unleashed a barrage of 123 tweets during the debate of the House Judicial Commission on the articles of political trial, many commenting on the hearings, including an instance in which he accused two Democratic members of the House of lying.
That set a record for most of Trump's tweets in a single day, eclipsing his record of 105 tweets set only a few days earlier, on Sunday, where he also attacked the numbers of the political trial process.
For example, one of Trump's tweets on Sunday expressed his approval of a conservative activist who had written: "Constitutional lawmakers would be horrified by the way the accusation is exercised as a political weapon against President Trump."
For the following Friday, after the House Judicial Commission voted to approve the charges of political trial, Trump returned to Twitter to express how annoying he was: “It's not fair to be accused when I have done absolutely nothing bad!".
Even former President Bill Clinton was apparently concerned about the possibility of being removed from office, as evidenced by his apology to the country shortly after being politically prosecuted by the House in 1998, stating: “What I want the American people to know, what What I want Congress to know is that I deeply feel everything I have done wrong in words and deeds. ”
Clinton offered those words despite having an approval rating of more than 60% at that time, which reached a maximum of 73% just a few days after the House voted to dismiss him.
What a contrast to Trump, who according to FiveThirtyEight.com, currently has the lowest approval rating of any president at this stage of his first term with 42%. Trump is now even below presidents Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush at the same point in their respective first terms, and both lost re-election.
Trump should be worried. Anything can happen in a trial. It will suffice that only 20 Republican senators join the Democrats to say they have had enough of their pranks, and Trump will have earned a place in history, and in each school textbook, as the first president in the history of the republic in being dismissed by the Senate. And that possibility is clearly causing Trump to panic.
Political judgment
