That the sitting president of the United States talked to a foreign official about potential dirt on a political rival is shameful.
That the House of Representatives would move to impeach him, without confirmation that this conversation did indeed take place, is just as bad.
Both are examples of U.S. governing bodies shirking their constitutional duties for political ambition and gain. As such, both should be condemned. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska, seems to be one of the only politicians willing to do so.
“There’s some really troubling things here,” he said after reading the whistleblower report. “Republicans ought not just circle the wagons, and Democrats ought not have been using words like impeachment before they knew anything about the actual substance.”
There wasn’t a rush to judgment — there was just prejudgment from the beginning.
The problem is twofold: Congress seems to have forgotten it is first and foremost a deliberative body, and President Trump seems to have forgotten that not everything is about him and his reelection campaign. There are real, lasting, constitutional consequences to his actions, and one of them might just be impeachment.
There’s an even bigger problem: Democrats are moving full steam ahead toward impeachment with little confidence or substance, simply because 2020 is around the corner. As a result, Republicans are busy setting up the defenses. But they too picked a side without waiting for the facts.
Regardless of whether Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is impeachable, it is troubling. Trump might not have asked Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden in exchange for monetary aid, but congressional Republicans shouldn’t pretend that the inference cannot be made or at least argued for. As Sasse noted, it will take time and thought to determine how to move forward, given this revelation.
But time and thought are in short supply on Capitol Hill. Deliberation? Never heard of her!
The House Intelligence Committee held its first hearing on the matter this morning, with acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, and the entire event was chock-full of meaningless, loaded questions. Neither Republicans nor Democrats attempted to get to the bottom of this scandal because each side was too busy reciting its prewritten talking points. There is no interest in truth in Congress. There is only the Democrats’ truth and the Republicans’ truth, and there is certainly nothing in between.
