It may seem like California billionaire Tom Steyer’s “Need to Impeach” campaign is farfetched.
But, in fact, he has drawn more than 5 million people to sign a petition to oust President Trump from office, a move that, maybe surprisingly, has rattled both Republicans and Democrats.
“I believe this year we’re in a struggle...for the soul of America,” Steyer told Cheddar Monday.
The hedge fund manager launched “Need to Impeach” in October, funding the cause out of his own pocket.
It revolves around what he calls Trump’s eight “impeachable offenses,” including obstruction of justice for firing former FBI Director James Comey and advocating violence for siding with neo-Nazis at the Charlottesville, Va., protests last year.
“I think that this is a lawless president,” said Steyer. “He’s somebody who from the very beginning had no respect for the rule of law.
“He’s a dangerous president, in the sense that he put our democracy at risk.”
Much of Steyer’s campaigning has been geared towards voters aged 35 years or younger. He hopes the strategy will ramp up pressure on lawmakers going into the November midterm elections to talk about the issue.
“People under 35 are the largest age cohort in American history. They vote at approximately half the rate of other citizens...and our attitude is if they don’t participate in our democracy, we don’t have a successful democracy.”
He points to the success of the student survivors of the Parkland, Fla., shooting as an example of younger voters determining the political conversation.
But impeaching Trump would be a massive undertaking, requiring both bipartisan support in Congress and a strong legal case.
There has never been an instance in U.S. history where an impeached president was removed from office. Only President Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton have ever been impeached. President Nixon resigned before he could be impeached and voted out of office by the Senate.
Steyer’s determination to pour his time and money into this campaign has given rise to questions of whether he himself will be running for President in 2020.
But Steyer says he isn’t thinking that far ahead.
“I’m not looking past November 6th, 2018, because I don’t know what’s going to happen [then].”
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/the-man-behind-the-need-to-impeach-campaign).
As the U.S. comes up on the first anniversary of the January 6 insurrection.,A.C. Thompson, investigative reporter at ProPublica, joined Cheddar's Baker Machado to discuss updates to American Insurrection by FRONTLINE, ProPublica and Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program. The documentary investigates the attack on the Capitol touched off by the lie that the presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump but with new information gleaned since the event including interviews with lawmakers and law enforcement and the evolution of groups like the Boogaloo Boys and the Proud Boys behind the attack. "In some ways those groups that were kind of the vanguard of January 6 are maybe no longer relevant because their message is everywhere," he said.
A new report from ProPublica and the Washington Post found that Facebook Groups played a major role in the spread of misinformation linked to the January 6 insurrection with more than 650,000 posts claiming that Joe Biden's election victory was illegitimate.
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U.S. President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the week-end, just days after he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The call comes as Washington prepares to meet with Moscow on January 10, as tensions mount over Russia's military build up near its border with Ukraine. Cheddar News speaks with Mustafa Tameez, a former advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, about the issue.
Several Silicon Valley insiders are being accused of contorting a 1990s-era tax break to avoid taxes on millions of dollars of investment profits. The tax break is known as the qualified small business stock exemption, and it allows early investors in certain companies to avoid half of the taxes on up to $10 million in capital gains. A piece recently published in the New York Times says venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz replicated the tax exemption by giving shares of companies to friends and family, who would otherwise face a 23.8% capital gains bill. The CEO of Roblox is also accused of replicating the tax break for his family members at least 12 times. Although the loophole known as 'stacking' is considered to be legal, the Times piece implies that the exemption has been manipulated for the ultra-wealthy to become more wealthy. Greycroft co-founder and Chairman Emeritus Alan Patricof joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
Chris Sommerfeldt, City Hall reporter for the New York Daily News, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he discusses both the wins and losses of Bill de Blasio's eight years as New York City Mayor.
The push to regulate the gig worker economy is gaining steam as the share of workers who participate in freelancing through businesses like Uber and Lyft have also exponentially grown during the pandemic. Employment attorney Mark Kluger, founding partner at Kluger Healey, LLC, joined Cheddar to break down how the battle to reclassify gig workers will continue in the new year, and why the issue continues to generate conflict. "More and more workers are using gig work as their primary source of income and as a result of that they are not like employees in the sense that they don't have benefits like health insurance," Kluger noted.
