Some of my European friends say “Trump’s presidency is unsustainable.” Not true. We will have Trump or Vance presidency until Jan. 20, 2029 and Europe needs to figure out a strategy to deal with it.
I have enjoyed getting to know European political figures during my time in Ukraine. Contrary to conservative popular opinion, the folks in Eastern and Northern Europe are capable of and interested in defending themselves. They are our people.
The French and the Belgians? Well, it is easy to make fun of the people who are still drafting off Napoleon for military greatness. The Belgians are famous for mayonnaise and for supporting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war machine with LNG purchases while clutching Gollum-like to $200 billion in frozen Russian assets that could change the course of the war. Historically, Belgium has never let a few million human lives stand between them and the pursuit of cheap natural resources.
Trump or JD Vance will be President until January 2029. Europe needs to get a plan to deal with that fact.
I have heard a lot of people in Europe talking about Trump’s presidency soon being over, or being unsustainable. This is factually inaccurate. The Constitution sustains Trump’s presidency until Jan. 20, 2029. My European friends are accustomed to parliamentary democracies, where the legislature can hold a vote of no confidence and oust the prime minister.
The Democrats striving to take over the House of Representatives this fall may try to make you believe otherwise, but there is not a vote of no confidence in Congress. They can’t make President Trump magically disappear. In America, we can impeach a president in the House of Representatives, which the Democrats will no doubt do if they take the House in the fall elections. This has happened only 62 times since 1789, and twice already against Trump. Look for number three about this time next year if the Democrats win.
An impeachment is more like a trial than a vote of no confidence. A president can be impeached by the House of Representatives for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” according to Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution.
The Senate then acts as a court to try the crime, with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presiding. It takes a 2/3 vote of the Senate – 67 votes – to convict an impeached official.
There is almost no chance President Trump will be convicted and removed from office by the Senate after the 2026 elections. If he is convicted, JD Vance will become president.
Here is where we go from the Constitution to electoral politics. The Democrats need to win four Republican-held seats to take control of the Senate, and lose none of their own. This is hard, but within the realm of possibility. Getting to the 67-vote threshold for an impeachment conviction is another matter entirely.
The Cook Political Report has long been the most respected political prognosticator in America. By their estimation, two Republican Senate seats and two Democrat seats are a toss-up. Either party could win. Too close to call. Four more Republican seats are potentially in play, but lean to varying degrees to a Republican win. Sixteen seats are considered solidly Republican, with no chance of a Democrat win.
The Democrats currently have 47 seats in the Senate. To get to 67 votes to convict an impeached president, they would have to win all six of the seats in play, plus 14 of the 16 solid Republican seats while not losing any of their seats. This will never happen.
Would Trump’s 2027 impeachment bring in Republican votes in the Senate? I don’t think so.
In 2020, Trump was impeached for abuse of power for trying to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating then-Senator-later-President Joe Biden, as well as an obstructing justice charge for not cooperating with the impeachment. Then-Senator Mitt Romney was the only Republican who voted across party lines.
The 2021 impeachment trial for the events of Jan. 6 was the most bipartisan impeachment trial in history, but still only brought seven Republicans over to vote to convict.
- Richard Burr (North Carolina)
- Bill Cassidy (Louisiana)
- Susan Collins (Maine)
- Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)
- Mitt Romney (Utah)
- Ben Sasse (Nebraska)
- Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania)
What could bring over more Republican votes? I don’t think there is anything of which we are aware now. President Trump currently has a 92% approval rating among self-identified MAGA voters. Why does Trump’s approval rating matter in a Senate impeachment trial?
In 2024, 87% of Congressional races were decided in primary elections, the intra-party elections that decide who goes on to face the opposite party in the November elections. Some 87% of the districts in the House of Representatives are drawn to be a safe Democrat or safe Republican district, packed with so many Republicans or so many Democrats that the other side has no chance of winning in November. According to the Unite America Institute, this 87% of Congress was elected by just 7% of American voters. Primary voters on both sides are more extreme – 4x less moderate than November voters.
The MAGA voters are the ones who elect the Republican Senators. America is a representative democracy – members of Congress are elected to represent the voters. MAGA voters have a high opinion of Trump.
Trump is leaving office in one of two ways – by military helicopter on Jan. 20, 2029 or feet-first on a day none of us know. If the latter happens, or if Trump is impeached, JD Vance becomes president. From what we know of Vice President Vance, he will be less supportive of Europe than Trump.
The world is at war, Trump is not going away. It is time for Europe to get a plan to deal with Trump and Vance. Given President Trump’s unflattering way of speaking to European leaders, it is understandable that they might not want to get involved in the Iran War. But it would be nice if they would get involved in the war in their own backyard.
In the category of “Just because Trump says it doesn’t mean it is wrong,” many NATO countries have been poor partners, and continue to be. At the 2014 Wales Summit, the same year the Russians initially invaded Ukraine, the headline was a call for all NATO member countries to spend 2% of GDP on defense. It took until last year for that to happen. European NATO countries collectively underfunded the target by $13 trillion.
In 2025, almost all the military aid to Ukraine came from European countries -- $33,350,000,000, according to Germany’s Kiel Institute. Unfortunately for Ukraine, European NATO countries imported $53,086,915,999 in fossil fuel from Russia, according to RussiaFossilTracker.com. European NATO countries are funding Putin’s war machine more than Ukraine’s. Technically, the US is still funding Ukraine for more than Europe because Europe is a net $20 billion negative.
On an average day in February of this year, European NATO countries imported enough Russian fossil fuels to pay for all the drones and missiles Putin used in the Good Friday attack on Ukrainian civilians, with enough left over to pay for nine T-90 tanks. In a single day. The February funders of Putin’s war machine were France, Belgium, Spain, Turkiye, Hungary and the Netherlands.
The folks in Europe who are actually interested in defeating Russia are, in no particular order, Poland, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the UK, despite what you might think from the current kerfuffle in the special relationship. Maybe a couple of others.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said at a Davos breakfast sponsored by the Ukraine House, “We are not at war with Russia. Europe is not at war with Russia,” as justification for his unwillingness to part with the $200 billion in frozen Russian assets he controls. Prime Minister De Wever may have missed the three Russian drone incursions that shut down Brussels airport last fall, or the 150 or so hybrid attacks last year across Europe – sabotage, drone incursions, arson, IEDs and other efforts to terrorize Europe.
De Wever may not think he is at war with Russia, but Putin thinks he is at war with Belgium.
The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.