Impeachment should be a “historical moment … solemn and grim,” Jim Geraghty wrote as the process commenced Dec. 3. But it felt much more “like Tuesday” instead.
That was because impeachment had been going on ever since November 2016, when it was clear that Donald Trump would be the nation’s 45th president. They made it clear from the outset that it was he they hated and not any one thing he had done. Granted, his behavior at times gave a lot to object to, but words were not deeds. That he was rude, crude, and sometimes obnoxious was not grounds for dismissal, at least not in the founders’ opinion.
The impression was there from the start that the Democrats would settle for whatever excuse to impeach that they could find. But their path to a successful impeachment was to feign reluctance, and they were not capable of that. Everyone saw it coming from a mile away. They would move to impeach when and if they took power. So, no one was shocked when they did.
Although it was evident that the Democrats would do all that they could to pry Trump from the White House, it seemed Trump was giving them all the assistance he could, as well. President John F. Kennedy’s rule was never to make others so angry they would do all that they could to defeat him. Trump’s rule seemed just the opposite — to drive his opponents into frenzies of absolute rage. Due to his tweets, taunts, and tantrums, liberals marched in the streets, organized friends, and raised tons of money that went into campaigns in the 2018 midterms that turned the House over and put Trump in the plight he’s now in.
It would have been child’s play for Trump to defang the resistance in what was its crib with a quip and a smile and a wish that they’d have a nice time in what now was his city. But that wasn’t his way. He treated it as an enemy force, and so it became one.
“We are all Federalists; we are all Republicans,” Thomas Jefferson said in 1801 at his inauguration, defusing the rage of the nastiest campaign in American history. After three years of Trump, we have plenty of Democrats. After eight years of Jefferson, there were no Federalists left.
This was the first of the Tuesdays that Geraghty wrote of — the second being the inaugural with the “weird shit” that President George W. Bush had complained of. That was followed by the feminist countermarch a day later, with theater folk who cried, sang, and swore loudly, along with a photo of a female comedian holding what looked like Trump’s severed head. After this, impeachment seems almost an afterthought — just one of a series of extravagant Tuesdays, and not such a strange one at that.
