The journalist Yoni Appelbaum says that to understand what impeaching Donald Trump would mean, it helps to look at the case of the 17th president, Andrew Johnson. His impeachment, Appelbaum says, brought order out of chaos.
Thursday, we’re talking about the power of impeachment. The journalist Yoni Appelbaum says that to understand what impeaching Donald Trump would mean, it helps to look at the case of the 17th president, Andrew Johnson. He was a brash and profane businessman-turned-politician who stoked racial tensions. Appelbaum says that impeaching Johnson moved the debate about his fitness for office out of the court of public opinion and into Congress, where it belonged. It also brought order out of chaos.
Yoni Appelbaum is a historian and a senio editor at the Atlantic, where he oversees the Ideas section. His article "The Case for Impeachment" appeared in magazine's the March 2019 issue.
