I’m from Korea, and we impeached our president last year, mostly because he declared martial law, but he was also a terrible president, and no one really liked him being there, even his own party.
Why can’t the U.S do the same, if Donald Trump is so bad? Why are some Americans even supporting him?
We don’t have a legal mechanism for it. In the US Constitution, the people do not have a direct power of impeachment. As a Federalist system, the US Federal Government was designed as a government of governments. So, the power to impeaching the US President is given to Congress, not the people.
Impeachment is a two step process in the US. The House of Representatives (the larger of the two houses) is required to pass Articles of Impeachment which list the reasons for removal. Those are then taken up by the Senate (the smaller house) which tries the President and requires a 2/3 majority to convict the President.
While it’s easy to get a sense that everyone hates the US President, especially here on Lemmy, his popularity isn’t all that far behind previous US Presidents. Yes, he is net unpopular, but not so much that his removal is politically possible. His own party (Republicans) still supports him, and they hold majorities in both houses. As such, they are neither going to pass Articles of Impeachment, nor would they convict him (and most certainly not at the 2/3 level needed in the Senate).
The US is rather starkly divided, politically speaking, at the moment. And people will overlook a lot from the leaders of their own party, if it means keeping the other party out of power. Trump is the latest, and one of the more extreme examples of this. His claims that he could shoot someone and not lose any votes may be close to true. There was a special election in 2017 where the Republican candidate had credible allegations of sexual misconduct with a minor. This was for a Senate seat from Alabama, which one would normally expect to vote overwhelmingly Republican. Moore did end up losing, but is was closer than one would expect, when one of the candidates is likely a pedophile.
Again, if your only source of information about US politics comes from Lemmy, you’re getting a very skewed view. Yes, he’s not popular at the moment, but there is a large segment of the US population which agrees with him. And that means we’re kinda stuck with him until 2018.
The South Korean impeachment only involved South Korea’s National Assembly and Constitutional Court. It is a similar procedure to the USA’s system, except that the impeachment trial would occur with the Supreme Court instead of the Senate.