Buoyed by an incurious media that is eager to carry water for their agenda, the Democratic Party is successfully convincing the public that they are actually engaged in a formal, traditional impeachment inquiry that is in concert with the House’s role as a check on the Executive Branch. But closer scrutiny of this secretive, leaking, cherry-picking whirlwind of nonsense shows it to be nothing more than a political ploy meant to smear President Trump and drive down his approval ratings in advance of the 2020 election.
Let’s face it: This is the Democrats running Playbook B. Their first playbook was destroyed and burned when Robert Mueller released his decidedly-underwhelming report. Now, with the (reluctant) blessing of Nancy Pelosi, they’ve seized on a nothingburger even emptier than the Trump/Russia conspiracy theory: Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his “political rival,” Joe Biden.
But okay, you want to make a federal case out of President Trump temporarily withholding aid from Ukraine? Cool, let’s do it. But let’s do it out in the sunshine, where we can all see what’s going on. Let’s hold a full House vote on whether to move forward with this inquiry. Let’s have every member of the House put their name to a vote so they can be held accountable for their decision. Let’s have this mysterious registered Democrat known as the whistleblower come out of the shadows and defend his hearsay allegations.
But no, Democrats don’t want to do any of that, do they?
No, they want to interview witnesses in closed-door depositions, away from the prying eyes of the public. Then they can feel free to do just what they’ve been doing, which is to selectively leak a quote or two here or there, and then launch a thousand headlines about how “disturbing” the testimony was for our president. How damning. How this is a “sea change” in the impeachment inquiry. How Trump is surely going down now. It’s all BS.
Under ordinary circumstances, we might have mixed feelings about the stunt Republican lawmakers pulled on Wednesday, storming the secure deposition room and throwing the impeachment inquiry into temporary disarray. But you know what, it was completely justified under the circumstances. Cell phones in the SCIF areas probably aren’t advisable, but hey, when the other side is making up the rules as they go along, drastic measures are called for.
If Democrats really thought they had the goods on Trump – the evidence that could even convince his supporters to think twice about him – they would do all of this out in the open. They would invite Republicans in on the process. The fact that they’re doing the exact opposite proves that this is a sham circus meant only to pander to the liberal base. It should not be treated any more seriously than that.
