For months now, Nancy Pelosi has been advocating restraint when it comes to the subject of impeaching the buffoonish bigoted megalomaniac that tripped his way into the White House thanks to a combination of Russian interference, a cable news ecosystem desperate for ratings at all costs, and good old fashioned American racism.
Speaking with the Washington Post magazine in March, the House Speaker declared “I’m not for impeachment.” Pelosi was intentionally seeking to make news with this proclamation, basing her position on a peculiar if not comically naive underlying emphasis on maintaining civility. “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country,” she explained. “And he’s just not worth it.”
In President Trump we have a racist, sexist, and xenophobe whose hobbies include attacking dead U.S. senators, leveling sexually suggestive claims about select U.S. senators still alive, locking up migrant children in cages, describing majority Black countries as “shitholes,” giving white supremacists favorable descriptors like “very fine people” in addition to a litany of other offenses one could expect from a sociopathic narcissist who appears to have a Burger King crown filling the role of an actual heart. We have a president who only governs to his base — resulting in his failure to ever achieve a plurality in polling since this ongoing nightmare started.
Donald Trump is practically a burning cross in quasi-human form, and yet, Pelosi is very concerned that impeachment would be too divisive for our already divided country.
Although Pelosi has been channeling the theme of Mariah Carey’s most recent and very much underappreciated last album to encourage the masses to “proceed with caution,” in the wake of the release of the redacted version of The Mueller Report, calls for impeachment have only grown louder. Moreover, it’s no longer just the likes of California Congresswoman Maxine Waters or billionaire Tom Steyer and his infinite amount of impeachment-themed commercials calling for Sweet Potato Saddam to be given the Bill Clinton treatment.
Democratic presidential candidates Julián Castro and Elizabeth Warren have each offered thoughtful, impassioned arguments for why Trump should be impeached. Other candidates like Kamala Harris have added their high notes to the growing chorus, saying just this week in a CNN Town Hall, “I think we have very good reason to believe that there is an investigation that has been conducted which has produced evidence that tells us that this President and his administration engaged in obstruction of justice.” She went on to add, “I believe Congress should take the steps towards impeachment.”
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Aware of the headlines, Pelosi continued to posit that impeachment would somehow stir more chaos in an already chaotic political climate, but finally offer a slight caveat.
“[Impeachment is] one of the most divisive paths we could go down in our country, but if the path of fact-finding takes us there, we have no choice,” Pelosi repeated at the annual TIME 100 Summit held on Tuesday in New York City. “We’re not there yet,” she added.
So, Pelosi has offered a mild switch in tone: Mariah Carey’s “proceed with caution” to Mary J. Blige’s “don’t rush baby, the loving ain’t going nowhere, slow down.”
Nancy Pelosi, I like your coats and suits that serve a money bag aesthetic and respect your political acumen, but this still ain’t it.
One imagines Pelosi will never admit it, but she along with senior Democratic leaders in Congress, made a calculus on impeachment several months ago and are doing everything in their power to stick to it.
To wit, before she flat out said she was not for impeachment, she had this to say in January during an appearance on CBS News’ Sunday Morning. “If and when the time comes for impeachment, it will have to be something that has such a crescendo in a bipartisan way.”
Around the same time, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), described talk of potential impeachment of President Trump as a “distraction” from Democrats’ “substantive agenda.”
True to form, last week Hoyer told CNN: “Based on what we’ve seen to date, going forward on impeachment is not worthwhile at this point. Very frankly, there is an election in 18 months, and the American people will make a judgment.”
As others have expressed, this is a dereliction of duty though I prefer calling it “punk sh-t.”
In October 2015, Republican Congressman Mo Brooks was already advocating for the impeachment of President Hillary Clinton. A year later, another Republican congressman suggested Congress impeach Clinton. Days before his upset win, Trump hinted that a would be President Rodham Clinton be impeached.
If Hillary Clinton were president, it’s more likely than not she would have been impeached with far less credible material to work with.
Why are Democrats waiting to do the same with a president that is an unindicted co-conspirator in a campaign finance scandal based on paying off his mistress? Mind you, in that case, it has been reported that he directed his then-personal attorney to lie to Congress. There is also the issue of Trump violating the emoluments clause; again, the whole locking migrant children up in cages thing. By the way, his former Secretary of State may have called him a “moron,” but he also claimed he tried to get him to do illegal things. As for the redacted Mueller Report, Trump is obstruction of justice personified as evidenced by him presently instructing government officials to defy subpoenaed related to congressional oversight.
Pelosi, Hoyer, and those pundits I end up shouting at on Morning Joe all keep hollering about how “divisive” impeachment is or how it is a fool’s errand because it won’t yield his ouster. Impeachment is a tool and it’s up to Democrats to figure out how to best use it given the dire circumstances. I cannot believe Pelosi is letting a man who behaves like he barely reads and would get a nasty headache if you asked him to count to 50 without stopping to talk about himself control the narrative in this way.
Contrary to her feelings, Trump is worth impeachment because even if we can’t be rid of him that way, he can be compelled to finally at least feel a little pain. Attack him on his secrecy and obvious cover ups. Compel those who listen to his obstructionist instructions to either turn course or hold them in content.
As the criminally under covered Julián Castro explained this week, Democrats “can walk and chew gum at the same time.” Democratic leadership can start by not cowering to this stale hog’s head cheese colored charlatan using the rule of law as his toilet paper. They are all seem more worried about causing a ruckus and offending…uh, I guess “polite” white people. You know, those mythical “independents” who you have to treat with the utmost sensitivity in order to secure their vote. About them: if they are that enchanted by a bigot and unsmooth criminal, no amount of pleasantries will change their support.
So impeach him already because it’s the least Democrats can do for a base that’s been suffering under a criminal.