United States: the threat of dismissal of Donald Trump upsets the presidential campaign

The course of the American presidential campaign is now changed. For weeks, and more likely months, investigators and parliamentary committees are going to find out whether US President Donald Trump has pressured a foreign leader – the Ukrainian president – to investigate a political rival – Joe Biden, the former vice president of Barack Obama now presidential candidate 2020- and so "violated the Constitution". The impeachment procedure launched on Tuesday by the House of Representatives (majority Democratic) Nancy Pelosi is not new, but it is very rare: the last initiated against a president in office was Bill Clinton, in 1998, for perjury in the context of the Monica Lewinsky case – and it did not succeed.

For Donald Trump, whose line of defense has declined as the case mounted in the US press in recent days, the operation is "presidential harassment." "There has been no president in the history of our country who has been treated as badly as me. Democrats are full of hatred and fear, "he said again Wednesday on Twitter, betting in the end that the charge will deflate and he will benefit at the polls. In the past two years, the Democrats had already repeatedly threatened the prospect of a dismissal on suspicion of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The White House has also published Wednesday morning the transcript of the telephone conversation with the Ukrainian president, while Donald Trump has long suspected the Obama administration of having weighed in to dismiss a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating a local gas group in which was working Joe Biden's son. "There's a lot of talk about Biden's son, about Biden stopping the process, and a lot of people want to know, so it would be great if you could do something with the Attorney General (American William Barr, Ed)," asks Donald Trump according to this document. "Biden boasted about arresting the prosecution, so if you could inquire (…) It all sounds horrible," says Donald Trump. The source at the origin of the leak in the US press, apparently from the intelligence services, could be allowed to testify before the investigators.

"It will last forever"

For the democrats

   , who want to block the road of Donald Trump to a second term in November next year, the launching of the procedure became, in recent days, a "constitutional duty". "If we let a president get away with shredding the US Constitution, it will last forever," said Joe Biden. The most overtly favorable to the procedure, however, is Elizabeth Warren, who had been calling for an inquiry since
the report of the special prosecutor Robert Mueller

    on Donald Trump's links with Russia. In a series of tweets, the Massachusetts senator, who is progressing in polls for the Democratic nomination, praised the decision, ruling that "no one is above the law – not even the president of the United States" .

But other candidates are more cautious about the interest of the procedure,
as was the case before the Ukrainian case, Nancy Pelosi

   . "My message is: OK, he must be removed, but now let's talk about the real topics and care you need," summed up
the youngest of the race Pete Buttigieg

   during a trip to Iowa – which will be the first state to vote for the primary.

Bernie Sanders also preferred to appear on Tuesday with the Chicago teachers. One way to remember that American voters are less interested in a possible removal of the US president than in their daily problems. "I doubt that any Republican, or only a few, will vote against Trump," he said, underlining the lack of chances for the process to succeed, given the Republican majority in Congress. "The priority of the Democratic House is not to improve the lives of Americans, but this three-year fixation on the removal," mocked Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

As for the Ukrainian president, he is in New York for the UN General Assembly and was expected to meet Donald Trump on Wednesday. "The only person who can put pressure on me is my six-year-old son," Volodymyr Zelensky told a Russian television channel.