He would be the third of the last five presidents to be impeached.
WASHINGTON – The era of perpetual presidential impeachment is probably upon us. Six months after the conclusion of the last impeachment, Republicans have begun calling for President Biden to be removed from office over his handling of the evacuation of Americans and allies from Kabul. “If we leave one American behind, if we don’t get all those Afghans who stepped up to the plate to help us out, then Joe Biden, in my view, has committed a high crime and misdemeanor under the Constitution and should be impeached,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Friday on Fox News. On Monday, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the No.3 Republican in House leadership, called for Biden’s ousting amid the evacuation chaos at Kabul’s airport. “Joe Biden is unfit to serve as President of the United States of America,” Stefanik wrote on Twitter, a phrase she has reiterated several times since. Add those comments to the sentiment from GOP provocateurs who draw outsize attention on conservative news, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who announced Thursday night that she would introduce articles of impeachment related to Afghanistan. It’s now increasingly clear: If Republicans win the House majority, Biden is very likely to be impeached. He would be the third of the last five presidents to be impeached, after just one of the first 41 commanders in chief, Andrew Johnson, faced an impeachment trial in the Senate in 1868. Mature analysts in both parties will call that outlandish to predict at this point, barely seven months into a presidency that, as of a few weeks ago, remained fairly popular. As chaotic as things seem in Afghanistan, the U.S. coalition there has not lost an ambassador, as happened in Libya during a 2012 siege that also cost three other American lives. Nor has there been a months-long hostage siege at the U.S. Embassy, as occurred in Tehran in 1979. Neither of those crises prompted the impeachment of Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter, respectively. And even if they face a drubbing during the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats will maintain a healthy enough minority to easily to assure Biden’s acquittal in the Senate, making a House-led impeachment mostly symbolic. But today’s Congress operates on warp speed compared with even a decade ago, with congressional leaders often unable to resist demands from their ideological bases. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., spent the first eight months of 2019 defiantly opposed to impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump, lecturing fellow Democrats that they needed strong public support that could compel the Senate to convict before she would support the move.
