Shit’s official. They impeached the motherfucker. The articles are now formally in the Senate’s hands and the House Managers have been approved. In the lead-up to the vote, Speaker Nancy Pelosi went to the floor to advocate for passage of the bill, and I’m going to paraphrase what she said here because I don’t yet have a transcript.
Pelosi said, essentially, “The Russians are still hacking on the behalf of the president. Everything Trump does seems to be for Putin’s benefit, including his decision with respect to (the Kurds in) Syria and Turkey. With Trump, all roads lead to Russia. Some people think it’s okay for Putin to select our president, but I don’t.”
What’s fucked up is that this would normally be alarming. We should worry when the Speaker of the House sounds like some tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist who accuses the president of being a Manchurian candidate. Unfortunately, the truth of what she was saying was so obvious that the cable news commentators who came on afterwards didn’t even think it important enough to mention.
And I think it’s important not only because it’s true and everyone has noticed even if some’s self-interest precludes them from admitting it. It’s important because the impeachment investigation and the impeachment articles haven’t really been directly about Russia (or Syria or Turkey) in any way. They’ve been about Ukraine. But Pelosi didn’t give a shit about staying within the four corners of the indictment. She just went out there and laid it out. She believes Trump is compromised and serving a foreign adversarial power, and she wants him removed before he can do any more damage.
I agree with her 100 percent, but I’m still surprised she chose to say these things in the context of this vote. It’s kind of awesome, but extremely disturbing at the same time.
Our country is so fucked.
