First off, anyone who says that they actually can impeach Donald Trump at this stage is flat out lying to you or woefully ignorant of the process.

Yet, Trump opponents seem keen on pretending like this is a doable option, that somehow they can wave a magic wand and remove the president from office. Instead of working with the new elected leader, many clueless members of Congress and the media continue to churn out nonsense about removing the president from office.

Impeachment itself is not actually what removes a person from public office. It is simply leveling charges of misconduct or criminal activity to a holder of public office, and unless the charges are substantiated, impeachment alone does not result in removal from office.

Impeachment is a power of the legislature, and impeachment is initiated by votes in Congress; conviction is determined by a two-thirds majority Senate trial. Republicans control all of these right now, which should stop this idea there.

In the context of the president of the United States, impeachment has usually been the avenue for Congress to attempt to remove a sitting president. Only two presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Nixon was technically never impeached, as he resigned from office before the congressional vote was complete.

In fact, no president has actually ever been removed by impeachment and subsequent conviction, though Johnson was very close to a conviction and Nixon resigned out of fear of the impeachment.

So, what does this all have to do with Trump?

Well, our new president has many political enemies. There have been calls to remove Trump on grounds of his business ties, alleged connections to the Kremlin, accusations of mental instability and — most recently — his Twitter comments concerning the Obama administration wiretapping.

Each of these things is either unworkable or bogus. Trump’s business ties are worrying, yet there exists no concrete evidence that he is deliberately using the executive office to further his business interests.

The ongoing Russian conspiracy is unsubstantiated as well, and is a product of media frenzy, not facts.

Mental instability would most likely need to be established by a doctor and hasn’t been done — no, unpopular opinions are not evidence of mental insanity. His Twitter comments would necessitate an investigation into the intelligence agencies to see if Trump’s accusations are true, making it also unworkable.

However, let’s say for sake of argument, Trump is an insane Russian corporate spy guilty of Twitter crimes. Opponents of Trump would just be putting traditional, hard-line conservative Mike Pence into power.

So, anyone telling you that impeaching Trump at this point is either possible or even preferable, is lying or woefully ignorant of what a vice president is. The impeachment conspiracies are an absurd waste of time right now, and I will not be wasting a second further on it. I encourage anyone reading this to do the same.

Stephen D’Abreau is a columnist, contact him at [email protected].