Donald Trump faces two years of investigations and “relentless impeachment” after his Republican Party relinquished control of Congress in an election wipeout, one US senator has warned.
The Democrats toppled Republican strongholds with midterm results that have turned both the House and Senate blue.
“It’s a historic outcome,” University of Canberra’s School of Government professor Simon Jackman told 7NEWS.com.au.
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“It’s very rare in American politics that the opposition party wins both houses of Congress in one go.
“That’s only happened three times in the last 100 years and (this is) the fourth.
“The other thing to note is just the breadth of it. It is from coast to coast.
“You’re seeing a deep and broad repudiation of a Republican Party, at least the version of it that Donald Trump has given to us.”
Ted Cruz says Donald Trump faces being impeached following the US midterm election results. Credit: Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
Trump — who claimed “we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE” if he was on the ballot — congratulated the Democrats on their election victories, saying: “I look forward to working with you for the good of our country.”
He has conceded the Iran war was at least partly to blame for the significant losses.
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While Trump will continue to “wield sweeping executive power”, the Democratic majority could stymie the current administration’s legislative priorities and mean the remainder of second term in office is consumed by “investigations“ into his government and business dealings.
Speaking on the All-In podcast, Senator Ted Cruz earlier predicted “most legislation will grind to a halt” and forecast 24 months of “relentless impeachment”.
“I believe the House will impeach Donald Trump if (the Democrats) have the House. They may impeach him multiple times,” Cruz said.
“We will see subpoenas, we will see investigations. I think they will go after president Trump, I think they will go after his family.
“I think they will go after cabinet members.
“I expect in the lame duck we will see an impeachment of (Defence Secretary) Pete Hegseth. I think they’re eager to go forward with that and so I think it’s just all-out partisan war.”
What is federal impeachment?
Impeachment refers to the process of Congress bringing charges against a government official for wrongdoing, including treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors.
If a trial is held and the accused is found guilty, that official will be removed from office.
Trump was impeached twice in his first term in office and acquitted by the Senate both times.
He flexed in October that he was unconcerned about the possibility of a third.
“I’m getting good at it,” Trump said.
“It’s a fake impeachment. We could have done that with Sleepy Joe (Biden), but we didn’t do it.
“I could have done that with Hillary Clinton. I had the chance to do it if I wanted, and I said that would be inappropriate.
“But with me they like to do it.”
Will the Democrats impeach Donald Trump?
Jackman said there are “a lot” of Democratic voices that would like to go down that impeachment avenue.
He pondered whether Congress would consider the war in Iran, tariffs, investigations into Trump’s political opponents, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency known as ICE, or the deployment of Elon Musk with DOGE as grounds for such action.
“I mean, take your pick,” he said.
“There is no shortage of things that Democrats could plausibly argue constitute ground for impeachment because grounds for impeachment are fundamentally a political calculus, not a criminal law calculus.”
Ultimately he believes impeaching Trump would end up being “just a colossal waste of time”.
“I do think that politically, (the Democrats would) be better off putting positive concrete proposals to end the war, to end the tariffs, rather than seeking to remove Trump from office, which I think is a futile quest given that it requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate,” he said.
“And although the Democrats will wind up with 54, 55 seats in the Senate, you need 67 votes to remove a president, at the end of an impeachment proceeding, and there’s just no way on the facts before us that that’s going to happen.”
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