David Harsanyi of the Federalist responds to news that the U.S. House will move forward with a formal impeachment inquiry against President Trump.
To put the Democrats’ newest plans for the impeachment of Donald Trump into perspective, consider this: Nancy Pelosi backed an impeachment inquiry before ever reading the whistleblower’s complaint or the transcript of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. She had absolutely no idea what the president said or didn’t, and it didn’t really matter to her.
Pelosi’s support for an “impeachment inquiry”—really, the status quo—was also contingent on the reporting of media outlets that were consistently and spectacularly wrong about alleged Russian collusion, even if many of their debunked stories congealed in the Twitter hive-mind as truths. In this world, every tweet and utterance is an impeachable offense.
In the pre-Twitter era, a political party that saw scores of supposedly game-changing stories blow up in their faces might have adopted a more judicious strategy for impeachment than “if it’s true.” In Twitter politics, there’s no political or professional price exacted from those perpetuating conspiracy theories. If the Ukrainian collusion story turns out to be a dud, everyone will just move on to the next outrage. …
… [B]y my rough calculation, approximately 100 percent of progressive Twitter media and MSNBC Republicans are fully and immediately on board. (And, hey, a scandal that pulls in aging neoliberal Joe Biden and Trump … well, that is just a home run for the media.) Pelosi is placating the far-left, the hysterical podcasters, the CNN hosts, and WaPo bloggers who believe everything Trump says is an existential threat to democracy. Democrats convicted Trump the day he was elected.