Talking About Political Extremism: If Trump is impeached and refuses to step down would you support his decision even if it meant armed conflict?

American democracy is truly skating on thin ice if Trump supporters really believe they can react with gun-wielding violence if  "their" President is impeached. 

On Quora, a Trump supporter with the unlikely name of "Anth Jesus" asks:

If Trump is impeached and refuses to step down would you support his decision even if it meant armed conflict?

This is my answer:

A point that needs to be addressed before reading my answer:

The term “impeach” does not mean “remove from office.” It means to “put an elected official on trial before a legislative body. Removal from office is the outcome upon conviction, but since there are two likely possibilities - acquittal and conviction, President Trump could be impeached, but not necessarily removed from office if he is acquitted.

First of all, Donald Trump is not going to be impeached. Based on what I’ve read in the official Mueller Report about Russian interference in the 2016 election and how the Trump campaign benefitted from such interference, I believe he should be, but I’m not a member of Congress, so my opinion doesn’t count. I live in a district where my representative is a Republican, so even if I asked him to vote in favor of impeachment should Congress decide to go that route, I’d just get a polite reply (if I receive any at all) letting me know he appreciates my input but that he won’t vote to impeach Trump. And since Nancy Pelosi is politically savvy enough to realize that the GOP-controlled Senate won’t convict Trump, I think we can all consider impeachment as being highly unlikely.

Second, in my many years as first an Independent and later a Democratic Party voter, I’ve only had to think about “what if a President I voted for was impeached and convicted” once already.

Of course, this happened in the late 1990s, when the Republican-controlled Congress, desperate to find something to pin on Bill Clinton after a bogus investigation on a real estate deal that did not go well for the Clintons (it turns out they did nothing illegal), impeached for lying to Ken Starr about getting a blow job from Monica Lewinski during a GOP-instigated government shutdown and other, non-nation endangering legal issues resulting from a civil suit filed by Paula Jones.

While I was disappointed with Clinton’s philandering ways, I was more disappointed and disgusted with how the GOP got its information in the first place (Linda Tripp basically wore a wire and got an unwitting Monica to tell her the story, all the while recording the conversations.).

I admit that I did not watch the coverage of the impeachment trial on live TV; I kept track of it on the evening news and in my morning copies of The Miami Herald at breakfast. I was thus informed without having to sit through the whole process, which was both comical (of all the things to impeach a President for, and the Republicans chose to pick a willingly-proferred series of blow jobs) and upsetting. Here was the first political party - the GOP - I had cast votes for, taken over by overzealous and aggressive “conservatives” led by people such as Newt Gingrich and Jeff Sessions.

But if Clinton had been convicted by the Senate nearly 20 years ago and removed from office, I would have accepted it. Not necessarily because I agreed with the GOP and its tactics, but because in a land where allegedly the rule of law is sacrosanct, if the Senate had found Bill Clinton guilty, he would have stepped down and transferred his Presidential duties and powers to Al Gore. I do not believe he would have defied Congress and said, “Hell no, I ain’t leaving.”

Nor would I have said, “I support Clinton. The hell with Congress, I’m getting a gun and gonna fight to keep ol’ Bill in the White House no matter if it means becoming a rebel.”

I find it amusing (and more than a little disturbing) that some people (mostly male, mostly white, mostly Christian) would even ask questions such as this one on social media. It’s such a weird, sick, and awful notion that sometimes I wonder if people like the guy who wrote this question are playing with a full deck of cards.

So, if Trump is impeached (and convicted) and refuses to step down would you support his decision even if it meant armed conflict, there is no way in hell that I would support his refusal to follow the U.S. Constitution. I would not do it for a President from my party; why should I do it for the MAGA Cult?