Expert dismantles Trump’s futile obsession with undoing his biggest humiliations

President Donald Trump is obsessed with undoing two of the biggest public humiliations that still haunt him from his first term and is demanding Congress act on it, but according to one political expert who spoke with The i Paper, it will be a pointless win if successful.

Trump is the only president in U.S. history to have been impeached twice: once in 2020 for attempting to extort Ukrainian leaders for dirt on the Biden family, and again in the final days of his first term in 2021 for his part in inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. While he was acquitted by the GOP-controlled Senate each time — meaning that he was not removed from office and was not barred from seeking reelection — these impeachments still weigh heavily on his mind, and he remains anxious about a third impeachment should Democrats regain power in Congress in the upcoming midterms.

This week, reports emerged that Trump and his administration are pushing Congress, where Republicans control both chambers for now, to pass a measure that would attempt to void his two impeachments, with a White House spokesperson calling them "sham efforts" and "shameful."

“I think it makes a lot of sense the more the evidence comes out, the more we know they really were sham impeachments,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told the Wall Street Journal about the idea. “We were saying it at the time, now we know. And they make a very compelling case that it should be expunged from the record, because it was a hyperpartisan attack job.”

Despite this push, experts have stressed that this measure, if it somehow managed to pass, would be a purely symbolic and largely pointless endeavor, as Trump can never erase the fact that he was impeached twice. Dr. Carla Winston, a senior lecturer on international relations at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said as much in a conversation with The i Paper, noting that it is especially useless, given that Trump was never convicted in the Senate.

"A repeal of the impeachment vote might be legally possible, but it wouldn’t alter the original impeachment happening in the first place," Winston explained. "The actual practical effect of an impeachment by the House is to set up a trial in the Senate … but since the trial did not end in a conviction, there really is no legal effect to void or nullify."

She noted further that this whole push from Trump is just another part of his obsession with building his legacy president, which has also led him to slap his name on famous buildings and remodel Washington D.C., in his own image.

"Trump’s approval rating is already near historic lows, and voters are not enamored of his other efforts to build his legacy,” Winston added. “These include the destruction of the East Wing of the White House for a ballroom, illegally adding his name to the Kennedy Center, the proposed ‘victory arch’ in Washington DC and putting his signature and possibly face on money.”

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