In the last two months, the admissions of President Donald Trump, his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and a series of documents released by the White House have shown the American people that President Trump used taxpayer dollars to attempt to extort the Ukrainian president for his personal political gain. This, coupled with the cowardice, bad faith, and intimidation tactics of the President, his surrogates, and Congressional Republicans, is a tremendous stain on our nation’s democratic process.
We, the University of Chicago College Democrats, believe that President Trump should be impeached and removed from office for the offenses to which he has repeatedly admitted. The national Republican party disagrees. Evidently, they believe that crimes are okay as long as they are committed by Republicans. The party of endless closed-door hearings over Benghazi now feigns outrage over appropriately classified Intelligence Committee hearings and cosplays civil disobedience by bringing cell phones into an ultra-secure SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility). The party that impeached Bill Clinton for having an affair now moves the goalposts from “no collusion” to “no quid pro quo” to whatever the latest party line is in order to avoid admitting that Donald Trump blatantly violated the law.
We have invited College Republicans to defend their party leaders’ positions in a public debate twice. Each time, they avoided stating whether or not they support impeachment in their response. For the third and final time, this time publicly, we would like to invite the University of Chicago College Republicans to decide whether or not they support the President breaking the law and compromising American national security for political gain without consequences. We have reserved the Bartlett Trophy Lounge for Monday, November 18, at 6 p.m. We ask College Republicans to join us for a debate on the merits of impeachment and removal if they disagree with us. If they agree, we hope they will speak out on this crucial topic by issuing a statement laying out their position. If they do, we will have our regular weekly meeting in Bartlett Trophy Lounge at 6 p.m. on the 18th, discussing impeachment and the current state of affairs.
What we find unfathomable is that College Republicans would be unwilling to take a stand on such an important issue altogether. We welcome the campus community to attend the event on the 18th, regardless of whether College Republicans shows up. We sincerely hope College Republicans attend the meeting and are willing to stand up for what they believe in, whatever that might be.
-University of Chicago College Democrats
