I understand what you're saying in the sense actually removing Trump isn't going to happen so in that way it is performative.

However, in the event our democracy survives, I think it it is important to get our federal representatives on the record as to whether they support this convicted felon, pedophile, rapist, racist or if they did whatever they could to get him out.

 And second of all,the reason why i say the attempts to impeach him are preformative,is because lets be honest.the democrats know DAMN WELL there impeachment bills arent going to pass.

This is such a silly reason to not do something. When you're in the minority, you should be advancing legislation that fails. You try to propose legislation, the minority votes for it, the majority votes against it, it fails, and the voting public gets to decide how they feel about the votes that their elected officials cast.

And you know what, at least some moderate voters who voted Republican probably would like to see Hegseth removed, and they might be paying attention to how their representative votes on this. And what an absolute gift to the GOP and a slap in the face to those voters to just not even try. The representative from this district gets to straddle both sides of the issue, paying lip service to said voters concerns, but never having to actually cast a vote at all.

As for trump just replacing incompetent appointees with more incompetent appointees (who need to be confirmed by a Republican Senate btw), he can do that, but it absolutely has consequences. Even if Trump's not running again, the clowns who rubber stamp his appointees might have elections coming up.

Let the process run, even if the outcome is very likely. But make the majority actually cast the votes and run their reelection campaigns with their record. Don't let them completely dodge accountability.

It may be performative but is not entirely a waste of time. That message it sends gives our country some dignity we could use in this nightmare.

overall if Democrats do want to impeach trump,they need to wait untill 2027/after the 2026 midterms to do so

They do want to impeach him again, but they also want Republicans to go on record defending him before the mid term vote.  They think he's wildly unpopular because of his policy and Republicans who stand up for him will be at a disadvantage in the election.

Firstly, politics is all about performance.

More importantly, having these votes matters regardless of whether or not they pass for a few reasons, the biggest of which being that it requires elected officials to put their name beside an actual, firm stance.

Let's do a hypothetical. Let's say the House tries to impeach RFK Jr. for harming the American public health system. This vote, of course, fails. Now let's say some time later a new disease pops up. Maybe it jumps from pigs to humans at a meat-packing plant in Texas or something. A lot of people get sick and die. Let's say it becomes clear that this disease would not have had a chance to cause these problems, or that we would have been able to get a handle on it with little trouble, had RFK Jr. not done the exact things that the articles of impeachment described. By having the vote, the people are able to see which politicians, specifically, knowingly, and concretely, voted in favor of letting him do it. It provides ample ammunition for opponents, and ties the elected officials to the cabinet officers' actions in perpetuity. They can't run from it or say, "Well I didn't know," because it would be very easy to show that, yes, they did know.

It might be preformative (sic) but that doesn't mean that it's a waste of time.

The MoC's who are preforming are trying to show their dislike and outrage and disgust with T, which they hope will help them win the next election. Many GOP members did something similar by voting to eliminate Obamacare, even though they had no chance of actually making that happen.

And unlike repealing Obamacare, impeaching T is actually possible.

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There are pretty much three ways out of this mess we’re in:

1. Impeachment

2. Voting him out

3. Coup

A coup is not a good thing, there’s pretty much no way that doesn’t end horribly. Military coups lead to military dictatorships, and a civil war would kill millions to tens of millions of people. So, unless things get really, really bad, a coup is probably not a net positive.

As far as voting him out goes, that’s not possible for another 4 years. That’s 4 years that he has to consolidate power and rig the elections as much in his favor as much as possible, or 4 years to try to setup a situation where elections or cancelled without us being able to do anything about it.

To be clear, we still need to vote against him, even if the election is rigged, because the more people that try to vote him out, the more he has to work to rig the election, which means the more likely he is to fail or the more likely it is to be obviously illegitimate, but we should also be doing whatever we can here and now.

That leaves the option of impeachment. I’m not saying it’s a perfect option or especially likely to happen, but trying to get the votes to remove him from office is probably the best thing we can try to do right now. Maybe this doesn’t mean directly impeaching him right now, but conversations behind closed doors should be had to see which Republicans would be willing to defect and remove Trump from office, because that’s our best hope right now.

In both previous impeachments of Trump, there were Republicans in the Senate that did break across party lines to vote to convict. There are most likely still a few Republicans willing to, in this case, do the right thing, if there’s significant enough of a scandal for them to vote for it, they’re just outnumbered by the ones who aren’t.

As far as impeaching cabinet members goes, new cabinet members have to be approved with the advice and consent of the Senate. If you have enough votes to remove a cabinet member like Hegseth or RFK Jr from office, you’d presumably have the votes to stop Trump from appointing someone with the same issues at least. So no, removing RFK Jr from office isn’t completely pointless because that’s still a check the Senate has on the presidency.

All of these calculuses also change pretty drastically if Democrats win back a majority, or even a supermajority, in one or both houses of congress. Right now, we’d need 5 House Republicans and 20 Senate Republicans in order to remove Trump from office. If Democrats were to win a 60% supermajority in both houses in the midterms (admittedly unlikely), this number would be brought down to just 7 Senate Republicans.

For context, 7 Senate Republicans voted to remove Trump from office the last time he was impeached.

The last thing I’ll note is that the more time Congress spends discussing Trump’s impeachment, the less time they discuss implementing all these horrible policies, and as others have mentioned, it’s good to have a record of who is for and who is against this kind of bullshit for upcoming elections.

Considering Democratic members of Congress don't have formal power to do much of anything (given the trifecta you mention) how can this or really anything be a waste of time? You say they are "wasting valuable time" but are they? They can't pass anything into law. What could they do with their time that isn't a waste of time?

The republicans hold a govmernet trifictea rn,.And impeachment to my knowledge requires 2/3rds of both chambers to vote in favor of it.

It only requires a majority vote in the House and 2/3 of the Senate.

And 2/3rds of a Republican controlled congress are NOT voting to remove him.So the attempts to do are extremly preformative and quite frankly,time wastley,as they are going to fail regardless.

There is value in getting Republicans on record as having opposed it. You have to think to the future. I believe there will come a time when Republicans will be running away from the Trump legacy as hard as they did from Bush's. They'll all be pretending they were Never-Trump Republicans, or would've been (for the younger generations).

I absolutely guarantee you that if Dems fail to impeach him we will hear some version of "I thought Trump went too far in his second term and would've voted to remove him if Dems had held a vote!". Or "I didn't know everything Trump was up to - Dems didn't even know, or they would've impeached him!"

they need to stop wasting valueable time on preformative and wastefull impeachment bills and focus there efforts elsewhere.

Such as? Republicans are calling all the shots in Congress. There's arguably nothing else they can do.

Especially for how little Republicans have done, everything they do is mostly performative leading up to elections. Though performative actions do help in elections, otherwise Congress wouldn't bother.

If you're in a heavy democrat district, you can use your vote to impeach Trump to try and demonstrate you hate Trump more than your opponent, particularly in races which are less about ideas and more about "My policies are whatever is against Trump".

Another one recently was a vote to condemn socialism. Absolutely zero policy determined there, but it speaks a little to both Congressional and national elections if most of one whole Party can't bring themselves to condemn socialism.

It's also not entirely meaningless in that democrats have established precedent here. If the reasons for the vote are mostly meaningless or at least based on lies, it becomes established that whenever the majority of Congress or at least just the House is of a different party than the president, they'll have a vote for impeachment.

There is no way to impeach him right now anyway with republican majority in house and senate, and he’s going to win the midterms bigly after everyone gets their tariff dividend and housing continues to go down. By the midterms gas will be under a dollar and all the factory construction will be in full swing with more Americans employed no one will vote against that. Unfortunately the democrats keep pushing the worst policies in American history and it gives him no competition at all. His only competition is himself. Inflation is down and in 26 groceries will come down just in time for the midterms and he’s going to get supermajorities in federal and state congresses. Then he’s gonna go after his enemies which will make what Biden did seem like child play and with the national guard and military he will quash any violent protesters and insurrectionists so fast they will have almost no impact. If you are a leftist, prepare to have the worst 3 years of your lives.

yeah i totally get why it feels like theater when the math is so brutal, but i used to think the same and then watched the jan 6 hearings flip a bunch of folks in my red county. even when removal fails, the process itself forces ugly stuff into daylight-remember how trump’s first impeachment made 10 house republicans vote yes and scared mcconnell enough to leak that “i hate him” tape?

the bigger thing is that letting corruption slide sets precedent. when kavanaugh lied under oath and nothing stuck, it normalized more of the same. re-nominating cronies costs capital too; devin nunes got bounced from intel chair after the ukraine stuff and never really recovered. plus investigations feed the 2026 campaigns-dem candidates are already running ads on rfk’s horse paste buddies.

honestly curious, do you think oversight hearings without impeachment would land different, or is it all just noise till the votes flip?

> First off,even if the incompetent members of his admin like RFK and Hesgeth are removed...Then what? theres nothing preventing him from just reominating another person who is as bad or incomptent into the role,weve seen this happen multiple times during his first term

part of impeachment proceedings are documenting what they did. subpoenaing records and testimony.

one of the functions of congress is investigation.

I think impeaching President Trump for posting on social media that he thought members of congress should be executed isn't reasonable. I think impeaching President Trump for saying on social media that he thought a judge should be impeached isn't reasonable.

but, investigation and impeachment for misconduct, even when those impeachment votes have no chance to succeed, is reasonable.

the reason why i say the attempts to impeach him are preformative,is because lets be honest.the democrats know DAMN WELL there impeachment bills arent going to pass.

The point is to get the rest of the Rs on the record supporting these scumbags. Trump will be gone eventually, but far-right politics isn't going anywhere, and most of the GOP are still going to be around in 2026 and onward. Most people, I think, expect the GOP that remain to distance themselves from Trump when he goes (same as they did in 2021), but getting them on the record voting to support him, his goons, and his politics makes it much harder for them to do that.

This is about ensuring they wear the badge of Trump around their necks whether they want to or not.

 First off,even if the incompetent members of his admin like RFK and Hesgeth are removed...Then what? theres nothing preventing him from just reominating another person who is as bad or incomptent into the role,weve seen this happen multiple times during his first term..

If that many gop senators actually voted to remove it’d mean they had enough of the outrageously incompetent ones and he needs senate approval 

 And second of all,the reason why i say the attempts to impeach him are preformative,is because lets be honest.the democrats know DAMN WELL there impeachment bills arent going to pass.

What kind of logic is this haha, the other branch isn’t going to do their job, so why do ours? 

Performative isn't always bad though.

In doing a thing that is itself performative we can still trigger other people to change their way of thinking. We can make people uncomfortable by making them say a thing. We can have our words resonate in unexpected ways.

I do get what you're saying and I don't mean to totally dismiss your view, in politics it's probably better to be effective than morally correct.

But pragmatism just isn't always satisfying. And there's nothing wrong with trying to impeach the impeachable.

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Trump isn't the only president that acts like an azz. Nixon had an issue or two, Kennedy couldn't keep his pants zipped, Clinton loved cigars, and Obama went on an apology tour to nearly every nation on this planet. For those of us that voted for Trump, many knew exactly what they were getting. Trump was not unheard of before all this. Why did we continue to vote for him? Because even with all his numerous flaws, he was still a better choice than a democrat.

You can’t ignore the damage this President and his administration have accomplished in a years time. Not attempting to hold them accountable is just a signal for the next narcissistic leader to try to turn our democracy into a dictatorship. The message must be loud and clear, the government works for all the people not just a select few. We must demand that those traitors, all of them are put before our courts and convicted of high crimes.

You're right that getting them removed isn't going to happen and wouldn't fix things anyway. This is about future elections, getting the evidence on the record and making Republicans vote to defend each other despite it.

Yes, we need more Democrats to get rid of those people. This is part of the plan to get more Democrats in office. So, yes, it's performative, and it's politics, but there is an actual goal that they're working toward.

I mostly agree with you on the numbers—removal isn’t happening with a GOP trifecta, and everyone knows it. Where I disagree is that impeachment is only performative. It also creates a formal record, forces evidence into the open, and sets boundaries for what’s considered acceptable behavior. That said, it shouldn’t be the main focus right now; oversight, courts, and elections probably matter more in the short term.

And second of all,the reason why i say the attempts to impeach him are preformative,is because lets be honest.the democrats know DAMN WELL there impeachment bills arent going to pass.

Swing district Republicans who do not support these impeachments will be attacked on that premise during midterm elections. Without impeachment, they're let off the hook because they can campaign on plausible deniability.

If democrats sweep the midterms it can absoloutly happen and would slow down the destruction of the constitution. It could also save many many lives by stopping the illigal war hes clearly starting over oil.

As of now they dont have the votes. But even the blind are starting to feel his bad policy hurt them. And there is a big election less than a year away.

Has Trump committed impeachable offenses? Obviously, yes.

If you're a member of congress, it is your duty to uphold the law and impeach him. We're lead by cowards.

I think the reason it does matter is because it forces many of the representatives to showcase officially which side they land on these issues. It’s like with the Epstein files, before the dems had the votes to release them, they were still going to force a vote on it so that the republicans have to undeniably show they are against releasing the files.

My question would be, when do you think it wasn't performative, all this outrage ?

The politicians are whipping you into a frenzy over Trump to make you into a loyalist. Their own voting patterns and the corruption behind the laws they pass is the real democrat not the fake outraged actor face they put on.

And impeachment to my knowledge requires 2/3rds of both chambers to vote in favor of it.

No. Impeachment requires a bare majority of the House, one half plus one.

Conviction in the Senate following an impeachment in the House requires 2/3rds of that chamber.

It’s not performative and a waste of time. It’s downright counterproductive and EXACTLY what Trump needs right now.

The Democrats need to do the one thing they have consistently failed to do since 2015: LET TRUMP HANG HIMSELF!! He will destroy his own base if you just leave him alone and stop martyring him.

He has already lost the independents and swing voters because of Gaza, Epstein, and Venezuela. And now, he’s even losing moderate conservatives and bit by bit even MAGA itself because of the absolute hypocrisy behind his Rob Reiner comments. Stop making him look like a victim to his base. Leave him alone and he will expose himself as a fraud.

Instead of worrying about Trump, the democrats need to focus on winning back the center, and in particular white male voters. A lot of them have already turned against Trump but still won’t support democrats because of their rhetoric for the past decade. Instead of vilifying them constantly, now is the time to bring them back (many were Obama voters before turning to Trump) If they blow it, then those voters will just support the next republican.

WITH THE SHEER VOLUME OF POLITICIANS & CELEBS ON UTUBE, ABSOLUTELY LAYING OUT THE REMOVAL AND IMPRISONMENT OF DONALD TRUMP, I'M WONDERING IF HE KEELS OVER IN THE PROCESS?

THANK YOU GOD ! ! !

It's about integrity, and accountability. Everything needs to be on paper. Otherwise, Democracy is degraded.

Let's put it this way: years of Republicans "performative" politics has worked.

What do you mean by "focus [their] efforts elsewhere"? As you point out Republicans hold a trifecta, so what specifically do you want Democrats to do?

I agree with the only exception of RFK jr which would just get replaced by a "boring" republican health secretary which would be a huge improvement

If Dems win big in 2026 they can impeach without needing Republican votes, and they can be the deciders on who gets in next

Holding people accountable and enforcing the law, especially at the highest levels of power, is never a waste of time.

Congress has attempted to impeach and remove Trump at least 13 times so far. So I’m forced to agree.

OH, IT'S ON LIKE DONKEY KONG AND TRUMP CAN'T FIRE ANY JUDGES.

LIFE IS GOOD !

THANK YOU GOD ! ! !

Well. . That viewpoint could readily extend to all of politics. Now we do nothing at all....

IMO the current situation is beyond the comprehension of the framers of the constitution.

People need to be on record. At some point there will be enough votes

I think its clear at this point that the function of the government is to strategize how best to bleed the American people so billionaires and corporations can become even richer.

Did you proofread this post?

why the remove the GOAT president???

TDS