In his Feb. 2 column, Bill Nemitz asks: What’s changed since Sen. Susan Collins wrote, in 2016, that then-candidate Donald Trump was unfit to become president?

Here’s what changed: American voters went to the ballot box and Trump won 304 electoral votes, including one in Maine’s 2nd District, and he was legitimately sworn in as president of the United States.

As such, he is protected by a little thing called the Constitution, with which Nemitz may do well to familiarize himself. It makes clear that a president shall be removed from office if convicted of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” What the Constitution does not allow the Senate to do is to remove a president just because they think he’s unfit, or because he’s incompetent, or even because they don’t like him. If being president were simply a popularity contest, I bet at least one would have been removed in the past 243 years.

Susan Collins has not changed. I’m quite sure she has worked with presidents she liked and some she did not. But she doesn’t get to choose our president – the American voters do. And fortunately for people like Bill Nemitz, even newspaper columnists can’t be removed from their jobs just because you don’t like them.

Nancy Bond

Shapleigh

Related Headlines

Comments are not available on this story. Read more about why we allow commenting on some stories and not on others.

filed under: