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and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
It actually was, for all intentions and purposes, a “perfect call” between President Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the evidence the American public has now bears this out.
While House Democrats try to figure out a way to sell the impeachment process to an increasingly skeptical electorate, Republicans have now published chapter and verse on the matter, in the form of the House Intel Committee’s report of evidence into the inquiry.
Democratic Committee Chairman Adam Schiff will nonetheless be squeaking with excitement as his colleagues vote to move the process to the next step. I wouldn’t be so cocksure, were I in Schiff’s shoes.
While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues in the House have effectively marshaled a media circus around a 960-second phone call, a Senate trial won’t be as kind as CNN has been.
The evidence bears out the following, and it ain’t good reading for House Democrats in swing districts.
There was clearly no pressure placed on Zelensky nor Ukraine. The president of Ukraine and his staff all continue to reaffirm this publicly. There have been clear and frank admissions from unelected, career bureaucrats that President Trump got their goat up because he opposed their long-standing foreign policy objectives which the American public elected him to “drain” from the “swamp.” All the relevant witnesses to the impeachment inquiry either affirmed that they heard nothing illegal or impeachable, and that their conclusions about “concern” over the call were reached through presumption, hearsay, and opinion.
A Senate trial isn’t going to be a secret Star Chamber hearing that Schiff can selectively leak from. Nor will the witnesses in such a trial be within the control of the Democrats — as has been the case in the House hearings.
Instead, Americans will potentially get a warts and all picture of what the president has been facing down in his attempts to drain said swamp over the past three years. It will likely give many the previously lacking belly fire and impetus to reelect him.
Polling is already revealing an unexpected Democratic Party disconnect with the electorate. Swing district Democrats are being harangued at town halls across the nation. Televisions have been turning off as the process continues. Now you’ve got Michael Bloomberg attempting to ride to the 2020 candidate fields’ rescue, replete with his apologias for China and his Big Gulp ban plans.
At some point we all have to start feeling quite sorry for Nancy Pelosi, who is now less of a steward than a captive of the leftists in her party.
When Rep. Rashida Tlaib got on stage to announce she wanted to “impeach the motherf***er [Trump],” she meant it. She and the other loud extremists of the Democratic base pressured Pelosi into this fine mess.
Still, it will allow the speaker to point to something after all this is said and done: hard-left populism doesn’t win elections, as Jeremy Corbyn is about to find out for the second time in the United Kingdom.
Pelosi may be able to capitalize on an impending public and electoral shellacking over the impeachment process by purging the hard left of her party, or banishing it back into the shadows. The cost will have been forgiven by 2024. At this point, that’s the best she can possibly hope for.
Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) co-hosts “War Room” with Stephen K. Bannon and Jason Miller. He is the author of two bestselling books: “No Go Zones” and “Enoch Was Right.” He is a senior fellow at the American Principles Project and the Bow Group.