Trump will wear impeachment like a proverbial scarlet letter

‘I would like you to do us a favor, though’, is clear evidence, proof of Donald Trump's quid pro quo.  #IMpotus45

Donald Trump's administration and his bullying arrogance has been pretty much a train wreck.

Opinion echo published in the Boston Herald.com by Joyce Ferriabough Bolling

His campaign vow to “build the wall” (that Mexico was going to pay for!) is under construction, as funding for the massive project continues to circulate through Congress and the courts. 

Trump touts a great economy, but actually he inherited a pretty strong one, pulled from the brink of disaster by his predecessor, President Obama. No doubt Trump deserves credit for building on Obama’s success. He’s also given Twitter a boost with his incessant, and often insensitive posts — that have some calling him the Commander-in-Tweet.

Whether the impeachment train sputters and finally derails in the Senate as expected, history will judge Trump and his entire administration through the prism.of impeachment. 

Trial or not, he will wear impeachment like a proverbial scarlet letter as only the third president in our history to be impeached

Despite his brashness, and new way of doing business, impeachment unfortunately will be his most enduring legacy. 

That has to hurt, especially since he is only three years into his first term. Trump supporters argue that impeachment was on Democrats’ radar even before the president was sworn in, and the levying of impeachment charges a way to reclaim the 2016, election and deny him a second term in 2020. But they deny the litany of guilty verdicts, since day one of his administraton and the subsequent jail sentences given to Trump associates.  

But, watching so many of Trump's friends, employees and associates being handed prison sentences for their criminal activities has to also hurt, even if just a little. 

At the very least, it leaves a not so favorable impression of the president as a member of a “birds of a feather, flock together” crew that includes former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, ex national security adviser Michael Flynn, political adviser Roger Stone and longtime attorney Michael Cohen. While conventional wisdom is that Trump is sure to pardon most of them, the public and history will not. They, too, as well as their shenanigans will also be part of Trump’s legacy.

Sure to be debated ad nauseum, in the next few weeks and months, is whether the president’s actions rise to the “high crimes and misdemeanors” status warranting impeachment. I have to admit, I pondered that as well and in a previous column I wondered whether censure might be the right course of action. 

Either way, impeachment or censure, neither is a good look for a president’s record

I do think acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said it best when he stunned reporters by admitting that quid pro quo happens. Perhaps, — but not so blatantly, "though". I think most can agree that this situation was poorly executed, to say the least. I don’t think there can be much dissent about the messy way all this was handled by the president and many of the president’s men.

I feel sorry that President Trump either didn’t know better or just didn’t care.