POLL: Majority of profs think Trump will be impeached
While most of the country is fairly evenly-divided on the question, a new poll finds that almost two-thirds of professors are confident that Donald Trump will be impeached.
Faculty Row, a collaborative network for university professors, recently surveyed more than 600 of its members, 63 percent of whom said they expect Trump to be impeached, many of them giving him less than a year to remain in office.
[RELATED: Yale prof: Trump’s ‘mental impairment’ a ‘state of emergency’]
Among those who anticipate Trump’s impeachment, 33 percent predict it will happen within the next six months, while another 34 percent believe the process could take as long as 12 months.
Conversely, a majority of American voters (54 percent) do not think there is enough evidence to bring down Trump, according to The Independent, compared to 48 percent who believe impeachment is on the horizon.
Professor David Schultz, who teaches at Hamline University and helped develop Faculty Row’s survey, explained that the sentiment among academics is common “across a wide range of disciplines,” and even suggested that the survey could be underestimating the proportion of professors predicting impeachment because it was conducted prior to the release of “damaging allegations” against Trump, Jared Kushner, and other administration officials.
“Across a wide range of disciplines, there is a belief among many university faculty that President Trump’s performance in office, especially as it relates to alleged connections with the Russian government, is increasingly making it more and more likely that he will be impeached,” Schultz stated in a press release. “What is remarkable is that the survey was done even before the more recent and damaging allegations came to light about Trump, Jared Kushner, and other members of his administration, suggesting that the predication of impeachment might be even greater now among faculty.”
[RELATED: Prof tells grads Trump is a ‘racist, sexist megalomaniac’]
Notably, one University of New Hampshire professor, Seth Abramson, has long advocated for impeachment, recently tweeting that Trump’s “covfefe” gaffe—which Trump has insisted contained “no typos”—demonstrated his “sociopathy” and the need for him to be “impeached ASAP.”
“Why did reporters laugh when Spicer quoted Trump as saying ‘covfefe’ is code? It means he is unwell and must be removed from office ASAP,” Abramson later tweeted, though he has since explained to Campus Reform that his comment have been skewed by some conservative outlets, which have claimed that “a professor wants Trump impeached for a typo.”
[RELATED: Harvard law prof joins suit challenging Trump’s legitimacy]
“My Twitter feed has been making the case for the president's impeachment for months now and when I said in this much-quoted tweet going around conservative media that President Trump should be impeached, I was referring to the three current bases for his removal from office, all of which I've been talking about on my Twitter feed for a long time: violations of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Obstruction of Justice, and lack of mental fitness for the position of President of the United States under the 25th Amendment,” he told Campus Reform. “It is both sad and deeply distressing that instead of covering the President's inappropriate, unethical, and at times criminal behavior, conservative media is hunting around on Twitter to find tweets that can be taken out of the context of their home feeds so that a certain narrative about academia can be extended.”
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @AGockowski
