The Founding Fathers would have impeached corrupt Trump in a New York minute

[Zorro]

Conservatives, we are constantly told, believe in strict adherence to the Constitution based primarily on the text and secondarily on the views of the Founding Fathers, who wrote and breathed life into our founding document. If conservatives really were “originalists,” they would be the first to say that Donald Trump is exactly the kind of president who ought to be impeached.

Unique among presidents, Trump has divided loyalties. He has entangled his business interests with his official duties, creating the impression, if not the reality, that his own financial interest — not his duty as president — guides his thoughts and actions.

The Founding Fathers, savvy students of history and human nature, were highly attuned to the risks of public corruption — actual or perceived — and inserted language into the Articles of Confederation and later into the Constitution to guard against such human frailties. They wanted to make sure that anyone who held a public office would serve only one master: the American people.

For the Founders, public corruption wasn’t just a theoretical danger. They viewed it as the primary threat to their independence. Living in a small, fledgling country, the Americans feared that the European powers would seize control of the American democracy by flattering and bribing our officials.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-founding-fathers-would-have-impeached-trump-in-a-new-york-minute-2018-08-10

[Vogon_Glory]

1. No doubt about it. The US faced similar circumstances in the 1790's

with the X-Y-Z Affair, with the French government pressuring the US government and demanding bribes.

But the major difference between the X-Y-Z Affair and now was that John Adams was President, and John Adams was a man of courage with a measure of integrity, and a man who made his bones in the War for American Independence, unlike no.45.

I challenge any lazy, chicken-scratch, brainless right-wing bozos lurking on this thread to show the cojones to read up on the X-Y-Z Affair and see what the REAL Founding Fathers would have done. Assuming, of course, that they’ve got the guts to do it.

[Runningdawg]

2. Dueling was still legal

And you know his ego would have made it easy to call him out. 10 paces...problem solved.

[Rhiannon12866]

5. That was my first thought, too!

[world wide wally]

3. It wouldn't have taken them that long!

[Haggis for Breakfast]

4. The 25th Amendment

was passed in February 1967, due the the assassination of JFK. It provided for the orderly transition to the presidency in the case that a sitting president died, resigned, became incapacitated or was removed.

Our Founding Fathers never considered that someone of such low moral character or unethical comportment would ever be taken seriously as a candidate, much less become the president.

We are past the point where trump is merely "incapacitated." He is mentally and emotionally unstable, foolishly reckless and STILL does not comprehend the responsibility or the oaths of the Office.

As Mueller gets closer and closer to naming trump an "un-indicted co-conspirator" we are going to see more and more desperate, irrational and dangerous behavior from him.

For the protection of our country, he MUST be removed from office before he decides in one of his 4am rants that the nuclear option is the only way for him to exert control, whether through martial law or national emergency.

[appalachiablue]

7. The Founding Fathers well knew the dangers.

Gouverneur Morris was one of the founders who argued against emoluments,

From the OP article: During the Constitutional Convention, Gouverneur Morris (who is regarded as the chief architect of the presidency) argued that receiving such emoluments would justify impeachment of the president: Because the president would not have a lifetime office or income, Morris said, “he may be bribed by a greater interest to betray his trust; and no one would say that we ought to expose ourselves to the danger of seeing the first Magistrate in foreign pay, without being able to guard against it by displacing him.”

Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816) was an American politician, public official and diplomat. Born into a prominent New York family, he earned election to the state’s provincial congress, and signed the Articles of Confederation as a New York delegate to the Continental Congress. Among the most vocal participants of the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Morris argued for granting Congress veto powers over state laws, direct election of the president and proportional representation in Congress based on taxation. Morris served as American minister to France from 1792-94, and as a New York senator from 1800-03. He later helped form the New-York Historical Society and was the founding chairman of the Erie Canal Commission. More, https://www.history.com/topics/american-revolution/gouverneur-morris