Ever since day one, the Democratic party and other parties opposing the Trump Administration have been calling for the impeachment or resignation of President Donald Trump. However, a lot of people are concerned about the result of Trump's impeachment or resignation saying his appointed vice president might be just as if not far more dangerous than Donald Trump. John Oliver covers this in his Last Week Tonight segment on Vice President Mike Pence.
In the video, he brings up that Pence is the only person appointed by Trump who can't get fired, a relevant fact in the wake of a week filled with resignations and sacking of top government positions. While the investigation on Russia's involvement in the 2016 Presidential Election continues and we brace ourselves to see if they find anything that could result in Trump's impeachment, John Oliver's concern over a potential President Mike Pence becomes more relevant. Which brings up the question: Why is it we are allowing a person who was appointed by a crooked politician to come into power if the crooked politician loses his job?
I realize we created the law where Presidents pick their running mate to be of the same party to avoid things like other parties trying to get rid of the President in some way so their party can gain access to the presidency or so that a president can still push forward their plans or ideas that they had while in office, should anything happen to them. This became very important in cases like President Abraham Lincoln and President Andrew Johnson where Lincoln and Johnson ran against each other, one a Republican and the other a Democrat, Johnson becoming Lincoln's Vice President after coming in second in the race for the presidency. Lincoln was assassinated due to the unpopular opinion of abolishing slavery and Andrew Johnson became President. While President, his measures to reconstruct the South didn't go far given the house and Senate Republican majority but part of the motive of the assassination was the potential for a Democratic President. Despite the understandable origins of this law, this begs the question, is this still a good idea if the Vice President candidate was appointed by a corrupt politician?
When President Nixon had been president, he had lost his Vice President Spiro T. Agnew over a scandal unrelated to Watergate, then a few years later Nixon had resigned due to his scandal. Nixon had appointed Agnew as his Vice President and both had been corrupt in their time in office.
Perhaps I'm mixing correlation with causation here and I realize there is still a lot to be investigated with the Russian involvement in the 2016 election. It just concerns me how many politicians so close to Trump were involved in it and I am not doubtful they'll find evidence that Trump was involved. And given that Trump and those close to Trump are probably guilty of colluding with Russia it's not that far of a logical step that Pence is somehow involved in this huge mess we are trying to unravel.
Of course if Pence is impeached, we have Paul Ryan as his replacement which is also not ideal and that seems to be the theme the farther down we go. At the end of the day, it'll just be easier to vote in the upcoming November election and gain more Democratic seats stall any of the damage the GOP is trying to do. And then maybe, just maybe undo all of the damage the GOP has done in 2020 if we get a Democratic President and house and Senate majority somewhere in my wildest liberal dreams.
I also know it's very unlikely that we’ll change the law. It's just a very obvious loophole that I know they took advantage of. It feels like a crazy game of chess. I'm not sure where this will go, but I'm not sure if I like it.
