The President Should Be Impeached for Recklessly Endangering the Life of the President
By: Michael Austin
Tags: President, Impeachment, Trump, Elections, Covid 19

The President Should Be Impeached for Recklessly Endangering the Life of the President Michael Austin Follow Oct 3 · 5 min read

The King has in him two Bodies, viz., a Body natural, and a Body politic. His Body natural (if it be considered in itself) is a Body mortal, subject to all infirmities that come by Nature or Accident, to the Imbecility of Infancy or old Age, and to the like Defects that happen to the natural Bodies of other People. But his Body politic is a Body that cannot be seen or handled, consisting of Policy and Government, and constituted for the Direction of the People, and the Management of the public weal. — Edmund Plowden, English Jurist, 1518-1585

According to English Common Law, the monarch had two bodies. One body, the body natural, was a normal, frail, mortal human animal. But when someone became the king or queen, they also became the embodiment of the state — the body politic. An attack on that body by a foreign power was an act of war against the state. And an attack by a domestic enemy was an act of treason.

We do not have kings in the United States, but we do have laws with their roots in the two-body theory. This is why the President is protected by an enormous security apparatus at the public’s expense. Every time Trump plays a round of golf, the taxpayers foot the bill for around $600,000 worth of extra security to make absolutely certain that a golf outing does not become a national catastrophe. And it is also why it is a federal felony to make “any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the president of the United States.” Threatening the president is a much worse offense than threatening an individual citizen because threats on the president’s life endanger the entire nation.

This is not a vague metaphysical argument. When presidents die in office or are injured by enemies, the entire nation experiences a shock. Stock markets crash, alliances teeter, and the possibility of civil unrest increases dramatically. We protect our presidents because a violent assault on the person of the president is a violent assault on our entire Constitutional system, in which elections, not violence, are supposed to dictate the president’s term of office.

Protecting the president is especially important in the midst of a highly contested election. Voting begins more than a month before the election in many jurisdictions. After millions of people have cast a vote for or against a sitting president, the thought of something happening to that that president before the election is final becomes horrifying — even more so because we do not have strong Constitutional mechanisms for replacing a candidate in such a situation. A chief executive’s death or incapacitation at such a time could seriously threaten the peaceful transfer of power in ways that have never happened in the United States.

This is why I suggest in all seriousness that Donald J. Trump, the President of the United States, should be impeached for endangering the life of Donald J. Trump, the President of the United States.

As a human being who is suffering from a potentially debilitating disease, Donald Trump has a valid claim to our sympathy. Decent people do not take joy in anybody’s pain and suffering. The President and the First Lady are our fellow human beings, and they have contracted a horrible disease. The President is in an especially vulnerable demographic with an elevated risk for serious consequences from COVID-19. The fact that the President himself frequently does not show sympathy to others does not mean that others should not show sympathy to him. Our moral responses should never depend on the examples of the people we disagree with the most.

But the President is not just another human being. If he were just some guy, he would not have hundreds of people protecting him everywhere he goes, ready to trade their lives for his without a thought. Neither would he have access to the best medical care in the United States at a moment’s notice, without standing in line or filling out forms. It would not be possible to have a helicopter take him the 7.9 miles from the White House to Walter Reed Hospital the moment he begins to manifest symptoms. He gets this special treatment because what happens to the president has a dramatic effect on the nation.

Of course, bad things happen, and it would be unfair to blame a president for contracting a disease through no fault of his own. But it would be totally fair to blame a president for, say, drinking gasoline or lighting himself on fire. It is becoming increasingly clear that Trump’s actions are more like the latter situation than the former.

For months, Trump has been weaponizing his response to the virus, silencing public health officials, disregarding safeguards, and making reckless behavior a test of loyalty among his followers. He has repeatedly refused to cover his face in situations where face-coverings were required by state law. He has held in-door rallies without significant safeguards that have had dramatic effects on the health of the communities he has visited. And just last week he mocked his opponent for wearing masks in public at a debate that, we now know, he arrived at too late to undergo the mandatory testing.

Donald Trump has worked hard to create a counterculture of disregard for public health and has blocked measures that would have saved tens of thousands of lives. In April, the White House blocked a plan by the Post Office to send 650 million masks to Americans at a time when masks were hard to find for sale and their use could have prevented the spread of the virus. But Trump did not want to normalize a culture of safety that highlighted his own dangerous inaction on a serious public health threat.

But the reckless endangerment goes well beyond the abstract policy level. On September 26, Trump hosted a reception on the White House Lawn for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. We now know that this was likely a “superspreader” event. Very few people wore masks at this event, and no social distancing guidelines were observed. Nearly two dozen people who attended this event have now tested positive or COVID-19, including the President, the First Lady, two US Senators, and the President of Notre Dame. And it is likely that there will be more to come.

It would be bad enough if the President were a private citizen and hosted an event like this that endangered his own life and the lives of his friends and family. But the President is not a private citizen. He is the leader of our country, and he has now produced a national crisis by recklessly endangering his own life and the lives of others. This is a felony worthy of impeachment because it is a serious crime for anyone — including the President of the United States — to threaten the life or health of the President of the United States.