Hanson: Second impeachment 'a farce and travesty'

FPI / January 17, 2021

"One of the great travesties of modern politics" took place in the House chamber on Wednesday as Democrats and a few spineless Republicans voted to impeach President Donald Trump, historian and columnist Victor Davis Hanson noted.

What was this latest impeachment gambit really about?

"Of course, it was a Parthian shot to discredit President Trump’s supporters and perhaps stop Trump from running for president again," Hanson wrote for American Greatness.

"But it was also aimed pre-emptively at opponents of what will soon be the most left-wing Congress in history — one that in days will try to change the very institutions of American government in ways never tried before."

The exercise was a farce, Hanson noted, because "impeachment was never intended by the founders to become a serial effort to weaken a first-term president. But this latest try will mark the third failed attempt of Democrats in Congress to remove Trump before his allotted tenure."

The Democrats' third try to oust Trump "will likely not result in a Senate conviction, either," Hanson noted. "But from now on, House impeachment will be used by the out-party as a periodic club to wound a first-term president," so Joe Biden "should beware."

The third impeachment attempt "was even sloppier than the first two," Hanson wrote. "There was neither an appointment of a special counsel nor a formal case presented for illegal or improper presidential behavior. Trump’s advocates had no time to present a legal or political refutation of 'incitement.' There was no real debate, just for-show stump speeches in a rushed spasm of hatred — a circus entirely contrary to the Founders’ notion of a solemn and rare procedure."

Hanson pointed out that, under their own definitions of "incitement," many of the supporters of the latest impeachment could be impeached themselves.

In March, New York Democrat Sen. Chuck Schumer "riled up an angry crowd of pro-abortion protestors at the very doors of the Supreme Court — while it was in session," Hanson noted. Schumer threatened individual Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch by name, saying: “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you . . .”

In February, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "angrily tore in half the State of Union Address, after, according to custom, it was handed to her by the president on national television," Hanson noted.

Kamala Harris supported efforts to raise bail for those arrested in the violent Antifa and BLM rioting this past summer. "She also affirmed that such protests in the streets would — and should — continue," Hanson noted.

Candidate Joe Biden boasted he would have liked to take Trump, the sitting president, behind the gym of his youth and “beat the hell out of” him. Biden also excused the violent Antifa as a mere “idea.”

Biden also vowed to seek unity after the contested election and nearly a year of nonstop violence. "But so far, we have seen just the opposite. Biden has just compared two U.S. senators to Nazi propagandists," Hanson noted.

Some social media have banned Trump for life. Others barred thousands of his supporters. Silicon Valley has even tried to destroy Parler, a conservative alternative to left-wing Twitter.

"Yet another impeachment only accentuated these divisions of an already dangerously divided country," Hanson wrote.

Free Press International