I attended the impeachment table talk this week, and I felt that it was a very rewarding experience due to all the different perspectives I got exposed to around the niches of impeachment proceedings. One of the interesting points brought up was a theory on how Trump wants to be impeached because it would take attention away from the democratic primaries. This was definitely a new take that I had not heard before, and it was something I actually sat with as the week progressed, and I kept viewing various statements on impeachment on social media. The second thing discussed at the talk that I found very interesting was the topic on how the nuances of government influence the act of impeachment. For example, the fact that we currently have a democratic dominated house and a republican dominated senate completely changes the dynamic of what could even become of impeachment if the investigations were able to leave the house and result in a trial. Would a republican senate take a trial seriously at all?

The last point of the talk that stood out the most to me was another unique take wherein a participant brought up the notion of celebrity. She stated that the relationship between celebrity and the office of the president has, as a whole, changed what the presidency looks like and, as a result, what impeachment would look like. We now consider various things impeachable that may not have been impeachable in the past due to the fact that the president is a celebrity now and, perhaps, has more cultural expectations to uphold rather than just political ones. I think this is something that I definitely agree with, though I would even add that it is something that has been happening over time and has been primarily enhanced by technology. I remember learning in APUSH how those that watched the presidential debate between Richard Nixon and JFK felt that JFK won, while those who listened on the radio felt that Nixon one. This is an example from decades ago of how new technology was changing the qualifications of presidency as people preferred a president who looked a certain way and had a certain kind of physical demeanor, yet this is something that they would not have had as much care for if the technology to allow us to view people in real time (via video and TV) never existed.