Playing both sides: Why AOC doesn't want Trump impeached

FPI / September 26, 2019

Analysis by Jeff Charles, LibertyNation.com 

Impeachment! That seems to be the word of the day. After news broke that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was going to file a formal inquiry into the possibility of ousting President Trump from office, the Democrats and their allies in the establishment media were more excited than Jim Acosta in a house full of mirrors. Progressives in Congress have been preparing for this moment since Trump took office in 2017. But one leftist politician seems to be more gung-ho about the idea than most.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), everyone’s favorite socialist, has been beating the drum for impeachment quite loudly of late. Indeed, she may have even surpassed Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) in her public calls for the removal of the president. But is there more to her zeal than meets the eye?

Ocasio-Cortez recently posted a series of tweets calling on the Democrats to pursue impeachment. “At this point, the bigger national scandal isn’t the president’s lawbreaking behavior — it is the Democratic Party’s refusal to impeach him for it,” she claimed.

 Later, she reiterated her point, adding that: ”It is one thing for a sitting president to break the law. It’s another to let him​. The integrity of our democracy isn’t threatened when a president breaks the law. It‘s threatened when we do nothing about it. The GOP’s silence & refusal to act shouldn’t be a surprise. Ours is.​”​

These are only a few of the lawmaker’s calls for impeachment; if we were to document them all, it would likely fill the entire library of Congress. But why is Ocasio-Cortez so adamant about pushing the Democrats to pursue this course of action? After all, it is unlikely that the myriad investigations being carried out by the Democrats will turn up any piece of dirt that would persuade a Republican-controlled Senate to vote for conviction and removal of Trump. Is it possible that the representative has an ulterior motive?

Ever since she took office, AOC has been elevated by a fawning media and factions within her own party. Despite making enemies in the establishment wing of the party, she has managed to take center stage on some of the progressive left’s most important issues. When it comes to the effort to remove President Trump, the lawmaker might be playing a shrewd political game.

Ocasio-Cortez stands to benefit from an impeachment effort regardless of the outcome. If the Democrats fail to remove Trump, she can use her social media influence to place the blame on establishment Democrats, casting them as incompetent. Indeed, it seems most progressives realize that getting Trump out of office through impeachment is a pipe dream, but they can use the process to turn up information that could damage him politically in 2020. In the unlikely event that the Democrats succeed, AOC can simply claim credit for pushing them to take action. Either way, she, along with the hard left Justice Democrats, achieve a victory.

Free Press International