I guess in her idle moments, when Kirstjen Nielsen wasn’t separating families, she was beating her head against a wall that is Donald Trump, trying to convince the administration that, regarding the 2020 elections, Russian hacks—more pervasive, dangerous, and imaginative than those of 2016— were imminent.
The president’s advisors, unwilling to upset him with further implications that he was a useful idiot, if not an outright traitor during the 2016 election, frustrated Ms. Nielsen at every turn. This fact does not make her in any way a heroic figure—thousands of immigrants will attest to that—but it does underscore one truth about her: she was not a dolt. That title remains firmly in the president’s grasp.
But now we are faced with a decision. We know that the nation’s security forces are working behind the scenes to thwart the next cyber attacks, but without the president’s imprimatur—and given the fact that the president has denounced the FBI and criticized almost all our security forces, the likelihood exists that many Americans will treat these warnings as further attacks on Trump’s legitimacy instead of what they are: warnings.
Worrying about Trump's legitimacy is laughable—he has none; yet the nation is in danger because of him. It's time to act.
I know the arguments against impeachment: the senate won’t go along, Trump will come away stronger, it guarantees him another four years, etc. But from a purely small-d democratic point of view, and from a patriotic standpoint (minus the flag-waving, the songs, and the lapel pins) it is our duty to remove him from office by whatever legal means possible. And quickly.
Impeachment proceedings would get everything out in the open and expose Mueller’s conclusion of no collusion for what it is—a damning with faint praise and an invitation to explore further the high crimes and misdemeanors of which Trump has been guilty.
No collusion? No problem.
There remains obstruction done in plain sight, conniving with the enemy done in plain sight, money laundering and tax evasion provable with an investigation that transcends Mueller’s limited scope. I don’t know if impeachment is the answer, but the democrats’ political angling about how it will affect the elections and the republicans’ silence on Trump’s obvious malfeasance in office render both parties more pathetic than patriotic. Their duty—that oath that all members of Congress took—does not allow them to decide whether impeaching a criminal is dependent upon the phase in the election cycle. To make such excuses is dereliction of duty—to keep repeating them is to endanger the security of the country whose laws they have sworn to uphold.
Claiming Kirstjen Nielsen is the new Cassandra—begging to be heard but always ignored—may be imbuing her with too much nobility. But she knew that her Department of Homeland Security was being hamstrung and decimated by an ignorant egotist, and she wanted to warn us. If this time we listen, and still don't act—shame on us.