Editor's Note - Say What? is the segment of Liberty Nation Radio where we unveil some of the most wacky, astonishing, and damnable things uttered by politicians and the chattering class.
Tim Donner: You asked for it, you got it, Toyota. It seems President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans complaining about the secret investigations going on in the basement of the U.S. Capitol were goading the Democrats to hold public hearings on the record, so now they finally have.
Nancy Pelosi
Now it may or may not be that Trump has committed an impeachable offense, but he probably has, because it's Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), and their fellow Trump-hating House Democrats who get to decide what's impeachable. They and they alone set the ground rules for the impeachment inquiry passed by the House with all but two Democrat votes and no Republican votes. They and they alone will determine whether the president's phone call with the Ukrainian president amounts to the kind of high crime or misdemeanor described in the impeachment process outlined in the U.S. Constitution. Simply put, an impeachable offense is anything the House says it is. True or not, fair or not, provable or not. And the GOP minority will make some noise and ask some uncomfortable questions and serve as a watchdog or check on the Democratic majority but ultimately will have no power to stop the investigation.
In calling the vote not for impeachment itself but to launch an investigation into whether they should vote on impeachment, Pelosi tried not to sound like she was celebrating as she said repeatedly, “this is a solemn duty.”
Nancy Pelosi: This is something that is very solemn, that is something prayerful … Again, this is a solemn occasion. Nobody, I doubt anybody in this place or anybody that comes to Congress to impeach the president of the United States unless his actions are jeopardizing our honoring our oath of office … And contrary to what you may have heard today, we give more opportunity to this case than was given to other presidents before … I don't know why the Republicans are afraid of the truth … What is at stake in all of this is nothing less than our democracy.
Tim: Right. Our democracy hanging in the balance, a solemn occasion. All because of a phone call between President Trump and the president of Ukraine that Democrats allege was a shakedown operation with Trump threatening to withhold funding unless Volodymyr Zelensky agreed to investigate Joe Biden. Of course, the Democrats never expected Trump to release the transcript of the call, which showed no quid pro quo. But by that time the Democrats were already in too deep. But after last week's vote to conduct this impeachment inquiry, prominent Republican Rep. Jim Jordan (OH), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said there are many problems with the Democrats’ allegations.
Jim Jordan: Four facts have never changed, and they will never change. Four fundamental facts, we have the transcript. There is no conditions in the transcript. There is no quid pro quo in the transcript. Even the day after the call came out, Democratic chairmen were saying, "Well, there's no quid pro quo there, but we're going to keep on doing what they've been putting our country through." Second, the two individuals on the call both have said, President Trump, President Zelensky, both said there was no pressure, no pushing, nothing. Third, the Ukrainians didn't know aid had been held up at the time of the phone call. And, fourth, and most important, what action did they take? What action did President Zelensky take or the Ukrainians take to ever free up the aid that was held up? They did nothing. No statement, no announcement of any type of event. Those facts have never changed, will never change, but they don't care.
Tim: But no matter the facts, the Democrats have now made their fateful decision. They're essentially saying no issue in the election that's now one year away matters other than removing Trump from office -- and they'll rest all of their electoral hopes on impeachment.
So this is it. The big moment the left has been waiting for for years and calling for from about 2 a.m. on the morning after the 2016 election: impeachment.
And you have to believe it's a riverboat gamble of the highest order because it could very possibly backfire absent proof that we haven't seen yet. This is the Democrats’ admission that they cannot beat Trump in an election, so the only way to take down this despicable president is to remove him from office.
But what happens if they roll the dice and come up snake eyes, and the people conclude that Trump's offenses do not merit removal from office? What happens if they put all their chips on this impeachment inquiry and then don't come through with an actual impeachment vote, the one that issues an indictment against the president? They'll no longer be able to say it was just a bunch of investigations that produce nothing impeachable. They have made their bed on impeachment for better or worse, and now they will have to sleep in it.
Bottom line is that there are a million variables for the Democrats, but just one for Trump: whether there is a piece of evidence yet to be unveiled, at least in public, that would cause 20 Republicans in the Senate to flip on their own president, vote for his conviction, and remove him from office.
So this is do or die for the Democrats, win or be slaughtered. I'd give them about a one-in-three chance of winning this argument, and if they lose it they may well get beaten worse than in 2016. What's true with kings is also true with presidents, especially Trump, who famously hits back with a level of force previously unseen in the D.C. swamp.
If you shoot at the king or you shoot at the president, you better kill him.
Now, while the 45th president tries to fight off impeachment, the 44th president delivered a stern and surprising warning to his fellow Democrats. Barack Obama said radical proclamations will not get the job done.
Barack Obama: This idea of purity and you're never compromised, and you're always politically woke, and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws … That's not activism. That's not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far.
Tim: But at the same time, same event, Barack’s wife Michelle was promoting her new book -- casting stones at white people.
Michelle Obama: We grew up in a period called white flight, that as families like ours, upstanding families like ours, you know, who were doing everything they were supposed to do, and better, as we moved in, white folks moved out, because they were afraid of what our families represented … I want to remind white folks that you all were running from us … and you’re still running, because we’re no different than the immigrant families that are moving in … we can so easily wash over who we really were … because of the color of our skin? Because of the texture of our hair? … And so yeah, I felt, I feel, a sense of injustice.
Tim: I wonder if her personal sense of injustice was assuaged when she was admitted to Harvard on a full scholarship and then given a job at a prestigious law firm in Chicago, created just for her. But then we should hardly be surprised -- this is the woman who said the election of her husband as president was the first time she felt proud to be an American.
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