Trump’s Impeachment Proceedings Ongoing
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We ran the numbers: There are 1065 news articles covering this topic. 35% (376) are left leaning, 46% (490) center, 19% (199) right leaning.
Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced last Tuesday that Congress will pursue an impeachment inquiry against President Trump, much of the media has been focused on the inquiry and on the behavior that led to it. Most recently, the House on Monday subpoenaed Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer. Democrats in the House also requested documents from three of Giuliani’s associates who also may be involved in the Ukraine affair. Giuliani is mentioned frequently in the whistleblower complaint and has admitted to trying to gather damaging information in Ukraine on Democrats.
Many media outlets have continued their ongoing coverage of the impeachment process from a variety of different angles. Left-leaning coverage from the New York Times focuses on a small group of Congressional Democrats who have so far refrained from supporting the impeachment inquiry. This group of a dozen Democrats are largely from conservative-leaning districts and have expressed support for a fact-finding investigation rather than moving directly to a formal impeachment inquiry. The article also notes that some moderate Democrats are looking forward to using the two-week Congressional recess to return to their districts and hear feedback from their constituents on whether they should support impeachment.
By contrast, Fox News published an opinion article on Democrats’ reasons for wanting to impeach Trump, arguing that the impeachment process is not about Trump’s alleged misconduct but rather Democrats’ longstanding desire to remove him from the White House. The op-ed states “There you have it. The "most serious" thing is stopping Donald Trump from being re-elected. It's not about the Constitution. It's about retribution. They hate Trump, can't believe he won in 2016, and are worried he'll win again in 2020.” In general, right-leaning articles tend to describe the impeachment process as “frivolous” and as distracting from the legislative business of the House.
A centrist article from NPR focuses on how Trump might try to fight the impeachment push. The article suggests that Trump will use his reelection campaign to push back on impeachment. The article notes that “Instead of defending Trump from inside the White House, all signs suggest that Trump's reelection campaign will take an outsize role in pushing back on his impeachment aggressively — and with millions of dollars behind it.” Trump is the first president to face impeachment in his first term, leading up to his reelection race; the impeachment proceedings will certainly shape the conversation throughout the 2020 campaign.