As President Trump likes to remind us, his victory in November was not widely predicted by professional pundits and statisticians. One exception to that rule was Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, D.C., whose formula for calculating the country's partisan mood has accurately called the last eight presidential elections.
Lichtman now has a forthcoming book explaining his new prediction: President Trump will be impeached and either resign or be removed from office, even with a GOP majority in Congress. Politico reports:
The book, rushed to the presses after the election, provides a brief history of the thinking that led the Framers to include impeachment, and the behavior that led presidents to get impeached — counting Richard Nixon along with Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton (the two presidents who didn't resign before the Articles of Impeachment were read in the House), Lichtman points out that one out of every 14 presidents has been impeached: "Gamblers have become rich betting on longer odds than that."With a heavy hmm, he cites Johnson's obituary in The New York Times, which said the 17th president's fatal flaw was "he was always headstrong, 'sure he was right' even in his errors." [Politico]
If Trump wants to avoid the axe, Lichtman offers a list of political and personal steps for the president to take forthwith, including divesting his business interests, embracing fact-checks, and hiring a shrink.
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