By Andrea Shorter–
“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.”
—Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The incoming Biden-Harris administration’s rally to Build Back Better in 2021 must be precluded with the actual removal of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States—now!
Years prior to the January 6 mob-driven seditious coup attempt and insurrection led by impeached President Trump, there was mounting and ample cause for his actual removal—not just impeachment—from the presidency.
Here are three more increasingly urgent national security related reasons that should be central to the cause of his removal:
Classified Intelligence
Former-President Trump cannot and should not be entrusted with any form of classified intelligence. His removal should ensure that he is barred from ever receiving any form of confidential or classified intelligence briefings afforded to former presidents. He has demonstrated repeatedly his inability to protect any single area of U.S. national security or interests over his own personal, political, or business interests, all of which are of singular accord as far as he is concerned. There should be no doubt that he will commodify any modicum or element of classified intelligence to sell, broker, or pilfer away to any adversarial foreign or corporate interests solely for his own benefit.
The incoming president, the defense, and intelligence sector leaders should guarantee that this former president will not be allowed any access to such assets. Even the idea of his continued access or possession presents a grave and dangerous perpetual material and existential threat to our national security and sense of safety.
Furthermore, and perhaps equally imperative, this publicly shared restriction will also signal to adversaries and bad actors that he has no such currency for illicit transactions or deals.
“The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.”
—Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
White Supremacists, White Nationalists Domestic Terrorism
Removal of this president now would ideally work to mitigate the imminent risks he poses to further abuse his formal authority and bully pulpit as president to incite further destructive, violent, and deadly domestic terrorist actions before his term officially ends not soon enough on January 20. However, it will not likely work to fully mitigate, quash, or stop the violence and mayhem of brainwashed, hell-bent loyalists.
We should be prepared that definitive, active motion towards his lawful and emergency removal from office prior to January 20 will incite white nationalist cult followers to further violence and insurrection in D.C. and around the country. The narratives for the described aggrieved, displaced white citizenry he and his enablers have constructed and reconstructed over the majority of his grossly failed one-term presidency suggesting his re-election loss as solely the intent and result of a rigged, conspired injustice against him and by extension to them, would warrant violent uprising, self-declared civil war on un-American and non-American foes are meant more of a promise than a threat.
Trump fomented and weaponized the grievances, fears, hatred, and hostility among, ingrained, and trained within populations of a largely white nationalist minority of potentially dangerous extremists that has existed for decades. There is nothing new about the existence of this ilk other than their ability to connect, coalesce, organize, and mobilize with greater ease and speed through the invention of internet and social media tools.
Since the time of the legitimate Civil War to end a slave-based and driven southern economies and empire building, the end of slavery, and the intended and derailed Reconstruction period into Jim Crow and cruel racial apartheid, white supremacists have been dreaming of, preparing for, and spoiling for the great, violent, and triumph blood in the street fight with Black, Brown, and other non-white people whom they are convinced are the primary source and cause of whatever troubles and unfairness are in their lives. Trump has virtually promised—not threatened—that he would deliver unto them the opportunity and pathway for such a final, glorious showdown.
As an African American, I see the clearly incited horrific reign of terror of violence and destruction visited upon our nation’s Capitol and the members of Congress as a half-delivered, in-lieu-of race war in the streets promise by Trump to a primed, pent-up mob. For too many of these people, January 6 was a warm up, rehearsal, or taste of such a bloody race war in the streets confrontation. It will have amounted to a premature ejaculatory moment. Until then, their urge remains unsatisfied, their ability to execute achingly impotent.
Removing Trump as president will not end white supremacy or nationalism. And, there will always be more privileged predatory political and cultural actors more than willing to caress and arouse this deep, pathological phenomenon for their benefit—2024 presidential hopefuls and seditionists Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are at the ready to shamelessly slither in as a Trump heir apparent.
Trump is an over-privileged, spoiled, self-entitled white American. He is the leader of a white nationalist cult. Removing him from the presidency as a direct consequence of his direct role in inciting an insurrection of white nationalists towards a coup to overturn a presidential election result is important. If he is not removed before his term sunsets on January 20, his privilege and entitlement as a wealthy white man and golden calf in the eyes of his followers will have triumphed over what will be ultimately understood as a feckless, meaningless, and hollow bellowing about the rule of law and order in a civil, democratic society he has so aggressively sought to dissolve. It will be an unforgivable, and insufferable fail and precedence not to remove Trump as president before January 20—or at least by Martin Luther King, Jr., Day on January 18.
“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”
—Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
COVID-19
Trump was overwhelmingly voted out of office by 82 million voters in large part because of his abject failure and neglect to lead a critical response against the deadly COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly 400,000 Americans will have died from COVID-19 within less than a year, and by January 20.
A month ago, I lost my grandmother to COVID-19. That her long and well-lived life came to end because of unavoidable effects of this pandemic is unbearable. So, yes, it is personal for me. I know in my heart and mind that the justified removal of Trump for revenge will not bring back any of our grieving and injured families’ loved ones from the finality of death.
No one could have foreseen that, had he been removed as he should have been at his impeachment two years ago, that perhaps thousands of lives would have been saved from an eventual pandemic. Still, the lawful and urgent forced removal of this careless, reckless, dangerous, and inhumane president before the official expiration of his destructive single term will bring hundreds of thousands of grieving American families and friends a tinge of karmic good at the start of this new year, and a new beginning to build back better from the carnage left by soon to be citizen Trump.
Andrea Shorter is a Commissioner and the former President of the historic San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women. She is a longtime advocate for criminal and juvenile justice reform, voter rights and marriage equality. A Co-Founder of the Bayard Rustin LGBT Coalition, she was a 2009 David Bohnett LGBT Leadership Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
Published on January 14, 2021
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