President Donald Trump has escalated his false attacks against his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, as some Republicans in Congress have indicated that they are prepared to support an impeachment inquiry into the president. Trump has long maintained that Biden improperly used his office as Vice President to benefit himself and his son, and has made false claims that Biden, as Vice President, sought to shut down an investigation into Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company at which Hunter Biden, his son, served as a board member.
These claims, which have been thoroughly debunked by multiple outlets as well as members of the intelligence community, have been used by Trump and his allies to sow doubts about Joe Biden’s fitness for office. In recent weeks, the president has further doubled down on his false attacks, despite the findings of multiple investigations that could not find any concrete evidence to support them.
The continued false rhetoric by Trump and his supporters has led some Republicans to publicly call for an impeachment inquiry into the president. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, for example, recently stated that an investigation into Trump’s potential misconduct is warranted, given the wide range of potential violations of the law that the president may have committed. Meanwhile, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan has been even more vocal in his criticism of Trump, going so far as to publicly call for the president to be impeached.
While it is unlikely that any Republican in the Senate would actually support impeachment proceedings against Trump, the fact that some within the GOP are now publicly making the case for it suggests that the president’s false attacks against Biden, and his broader pattern of distorting the truth, may be having an increasingly perilous political effect.
