Most Americans Want Trump Impeached — And Young People Are Leading The Charge

What do the majority of young people and the majority of federal lawmakers have in usual? They support a impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.


“I think for several young people, we are asking ourselves what we aspire to look back on at this moment. [We want to] know that we did everything we may to take responsibility for our nation, for our lives, for our futures,” Anthony Torres, the communications and political director of By The People, a campaign of organizers fighting for impeachment, told MTV News.


Nearly every poll on the matter reports that young people support Congress beginning its impeachment inquiry into Trump. An Axios/College Reaction Poll showed that three quarters of all college students support it, including nearly all college Democrats, most college Independents, and nearly 1/4 of college Republicans. Plenty of other polls tell a similar story, showing that young folks are slightly more likely to support impeachment than any other age order. A The Economist/YouGov poll from mid-October shows that 51 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds support impeachment. Compare that to 50 percent of people between 30 and 44, 46 percent of people 45 to 64, and to 40 percent of people over 65.


This isn’t just because young people don’t like Trump — which, to be sure, they do not. Take Joel Acevedo, the president of the Brooklyn Young Republican Club. “I personally think Trump is a racist,” he told MTV News, also calling the president a “disaster” and “not a Republican whatsoever.”


Nevertheless that isn’t what convinced Acevedo to support impeachment. For him, the president’s actions within the past four months turned the tables. While in that time, a whistleblower reported that President Donald Trump had urged Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, and to investigate a conspiracy theory linked to the FBI inquiry of Russia’s 2016 election interference. In return for Zelenksy’s help, Trump allegedly dangled a meeting between the two presidents and nearly $400 million in Congress-approved security aid for Ukraine. And Acevedo isn’t not alone, either: Young people in support of impeachment jumped 12 points from July to October, polls by The Economist and YouGov showed.


Making matters worse, the Trump administration has repeatedly mentioned demanding a favor from Ukraine in return for a meeting with Trump and $400 million in aid should not qualify as a quid pro quo — however the transcript of the call and Trump’s own chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, argue the opposite. (Mulvaney has since walked back his claim.)


“I'm from Brooklyn, I know a quid-pro-quo any time When I visualize one,” Acevedo mentioned. “Anyone can pretty much tell he was holding foreign aid from an ally who needed it … not for America's interests, however for political increase and your own interest. That right there really is impeachable.”


Young activists at By The People have been calling for Trump’s impeachment since beginning their movement in August 2018, however the Ukraine scandal pushed them further. According to Torres, holding the president accountable moves above and behind party politics and into the larger provide problem of how we wish to remember our lives, actions, and nation. For him, the president is conducting governmental malpractice — and we shouldn't let that slide. “Enough is enough,” he said.


“For young people like myself, for most of our lives, we've witnessed a series of crises from major disasters like Hurricane Katrina, to the financial crisis, to the vast abuses of power and near constant state of crisis and disorder of the Trump administration,” Torres added. “These last two plus 1/2 years [have perpetuated more] crises, like locking immigrant children in cages to incitement of racist violence and the rise of [white] nationalism. All the crises were left unaddressed by those who were supposed to be adults in the room.”


To be fair, those crises, and also the Mueller report, did push some of the “adults” to call for impeachment, including several Democratic presidential candidates and plenty of progressive lawmakers. Nevertheless Speaker of the Residence Nancy Pelosi didn’t call for an official impeachment inquiry up until soon following the news about the Ukraine scandal snowballed. Since then, 228 lawmakers plus a majority of Americans have come out in support of the inquiry.


One of the earliest representatives to formally talk about impeachment was California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who first called for an investigation into the Trump administration’s ties with Russia in a bill on January 31, 2017. She sees the power in young people joining the fight. “I am delighted of the fact that younger people have been in the impeachment conversation. They have tweeted me and supported me loudly and clearly,” she recently told Teen Vogue. “The millennials have been there and the Generation Z have been there saying they support me in impeachment and I think that their voices have been critical in all of this discussion.”


There’s a reason they’re involved, Torres added: Young folks are going to have to deal with the outcome of this inquiry and why it impacts future administrations for years to come. First though, they’ll bear witness to how representatives in the Home determine to vote on impeachment — and, if such a vote passes, a potential decision on whether to remove him from office by the Senate.


“We are right now going to take the reins and do what's needed to protect ourselves and steer us out of crisis and put us in a place where we are having a government that values our voices, and that's in a place where we can be pushing back against the division, culture, corruption, and deliberate sabotage of our democracy,” Torres said.


“It sets a precedent,” Acevedo mentioned, echoing comments made by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders at the fourth Democratic presidential primary debate in October. “If we let this to go on, if nothing ever happens and we don't impeach, there will be no standards. So that indicates that the level of what's impeachable or not, it gets and decrease and lower.”


“In 10, 15, 20 years from right now, we might get into a situation where it's worse than this,” he warned. “It's something that we need to, for lack a higher class of word, nip in the bud now.”