Democrats Distract Government With ‘Groundhog Day’ Impeachment

The Senate launched its second impeachment trial targeting ex-President Donald Trump Tuesday, the same week one year ago that the upper chamber exonerated the president of impeachment the first time.

This year’s trial, expected to last around two weeks, shares remarkable similarities to last year’s, when the coronavirus brewing overseas threatened to wreak havoc on the world while Congress distracted itself with a pointless impeachment. Only this time, the coronavirus is here, with new variants well on their way to becoming the dominant strains in the United States and a struggling vaccination campaign impeding efforts to combat the virus.

Meanwhile, the United States finds itself fending off far more problems this year than it did last. Draconian lockdowns have strangled the economy, provoked a housing crisis, kept kids out of school, traumatized the nation’s psyche, and exacerbated divisions. Yet Democrats remain laser-focused on impeaching a man already out of office for a made-up crime their own standards would indict themselves for having committed. Once again, Trump Derangement Syndrome controls Democratic priorities.

House Democrats passed the snap impeachment last month within one week of the Capitol riot Democrats charged Trump for inciting. Trump, goes the Democratic tale, rallied his horde of supporters at the White House and ordered them to march down to the Capitol building to storm each chamber certifying the results of the presidential election.

An honest reading of the transcript that day, however, shows no such incitement. However irresponsibly, Trump simply encouraged supporters to demonstrate peacefully in opposition of congressional certification of the Electoral College vote.

“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” Trump said. “Today we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections.”

A timeline of the events compiled by The New York Times further shows rioters launched their assault on the Capitol a full 20 minutes before the president had even finished speaking. It’s hard to incite what’s already started.

Many who stormed the Capitol that day had also already come to Washington prepared to riot, apparently determined to engage in the Antifa-style destruction to make their voices heard. After months of Democrats normalizing political violence when it came from the left, a scattered few felt this was now also their only option.

“Some came armed for battle and planning for ‘war,’” Reuters reported of the rioters in January, chronicling those who carried weapons and explosives to the riot.

Over the course of the impeachment trial this week and next, no Democrat will read remarks from the president demanding his supporters bring firearms to the Capitol to “stop the steal,” because they don’t exist. Yet one year after their first pointless impeachment, Democrats are once again distracting a nation facing serious problems on multiple fronts to take out a man already out of the Oval Office.