Get used to it: The 'I-word' -- impeachment -- is about to dominate Trump coverage

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/get-used-to-it-the-i-word--impeachment--is-about-to-dominate-trump-coverage/2019/01/18/0d488fc6-1b44-11e9-8813-cb9dec761e73_story.html?utm_term=.7d40a95d50db



Get used to it: The ‘I-word’ — impeachment — is about to dominate Trump coverage

The word “impeachment” is likely to follow Trump around in 2019. (Martin H Simon/Pool/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)


By Margaret Sullivan
Media columnist
January 19

Not too long ago, Jeffrey Goldberg, the top editor of the Atlantic, thought that beginning an impeachment investigation of President Trump would be “a formula for chaos — the sort of chaos no fractured nation needs.”

But last Wednesday night, the magazine published an issue whose cover was dominated by a single word in huge red letters (roughly 370-point type): “IMPEACH.”

A smaller sub-headline previewed the historically rooted 8,000-word argument within, written by Yoni Appelbaum: “It’s time for Congress to judge the president’s fitness to serve.”

With that notable media moment, the I-word seemed to leap across an invisible divide.

The Atlantic article was not the first to make the argument, but its depth and dramatic presentation set it apart.

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No matter what happens next, the Atlantic cover story is likely to get an entry on any timeline of the Trump presidency. Its impact was that memorable...........................................





Impeach Donald Trump

Starting the process will rein in a president who is undermining American ideals—and bring the debate about his fitness for office into Congress, where it belongs.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/impeachment-trump/580468/


Benjamin Lowy / Getty / The Atlantic


On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump stood on the steps of the Capitol, raised his right hand, and solemnly swore to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He has not kept that promise.

Instead, he has mounted a concerted challenge to the separation of powers, to the rule of law, and to the civil liberties enshrined in our founding documents. He has purposefully inflamed America’s divisions. He has set himself against the American idea, the principle that all of us—of every race, gender, and creed—are created equal.

This is not a partisan judgment. Many of the president’s fiercest critics have emerged from within his own party. Even officials and observers who support his policies are appalled by his pronouncements, and those who have the most firsthand experience of governance are also the most alarmed by how Trump is governing.


“The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naïveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate,” the late senator and former Republican presidential nominee John McCain lamented last summer. “The president has not risen to the mantle of the office,” the GOP’s other recent nominee, the former governor and now senator Mitt Romney, wrote in January............................