There's nearly a Nixon '74 level of public support for impeaching Trump
CNN ^ | June 22, 2018 | Byron Wolfe
Posted on 6/22/2018, 3:36:40 PM by Rennes Templar
(CNN)There is a truly remarkable number in the most recent CNN poll, conducted by SSRS and out this morning.
In it, 42% of Americans say President Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office. What makes it remarkable is that he's on par with President Richard Nixon, who 43% of Americans said should be impeached and removed from office in a March 1974 Harris poll. That was after the scale of Watergate came to light, but months before the House started to move against Nixon, who would go on to resign in August 1974 rather than be impeached.
Impeachment requires "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors," according to the Constitution, which also lists it as the the only thing for which a President can't issue a pardon. Trump has bragged that he certainly has the power to pardon himself but won't need to use it. Nixon got a pardon from Gerald Ford, the man to whom he gave the keys to the White House.
The 43% supporting Nixon's impeachment in that Harris poll, by the way, is much higher than the 29% who supported impeachment for President Bill Clinton in 1998. Or, for that matter, the similar number who wanted Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush impeached. As CNN's Grace Sparks writes, there's basically "a baseline of pro-impeachment sentiment for a modern president" and Trump far eclipses it. So why aren't top Democrats clamoring to impeach Trump? To be sure, there are efforts on the outskirts of the party and in Congress, but they do not have the backing of party big wigs.
Most Democrats in Congress, for the record, have opposed efforts by Rep. Al Green, a Texas Democrat, to bring the issue to the floor of the House.
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