Since the Democrats gained the majority in the House of Representatives in January, they have shown over and over again that they are not interested in governing. Governing, especially when there is a split government, requires a certain level of cooperation and compromise. The Democrats, however, have only done what President Trump asked them not to do in his State of the Union address in February – investigate him.
“An economic miracle is taking place in the United States,” Trump said, “and the only things that can stop it are foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous partisan investigations.” Well, “ridiculous partisan investigations” are certainly the Democrats’ top priority. After spending two years and $30 million, Democrats have decided that the 450-page Mueller report and the subsequent hearings are not sufficient to impeach President Trump. However, as the Democrats always do when they lose, they moved a little further to the left; so they set their eyes on Ukraine.
This Ukrainian scandal has all the elements of being a partisan political hit job on the President, whom the Democrats are hoping to kick out of office before the 2020 election. The whistleblower is a registered Democrat who went around the chain of command for a whistleblower complaint to collaborate with Adam Schiff’s office. (Schiff, the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is a known liar, and a hater of Trump.) Schiff, who appeared on CNN countless times during the Mueller investigation saying he had secret information that would convict Trump (he didn’t), actually read a “parody” transcript at the beginning of an official Congressional hearing. He needed to do so because the actual call summary wasn’t damaging enough to be read aloud.
Not everyone got the memo that Schiff lied about what was in the call, though. Nancy Pelosi, during an interview with George Stephanopoulos, actually claimed that Schiff was “using the President’s own words.” By Schiff’s own admission when called on it later in the hearing, he was not using the President’s own words. Simply reading the summary, which was made available to the public by the Trump administration, one would know that Schiff was lying. Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House and the third in line for the Presidency, did not know that Schiff lied during a Congressional hearing.
Pelosi, before the call summary and whistleblower complaint was released, and simply based on the media narrative, stated on September 24 that the House will be “moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.” Just saying that at a press conference does not accomplish anything; there are steps that must be taken. On Thursday, October 3, nine days after her proclamation, Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy sent a letter to Pelosi asking if she was planning on actually opening up this inquiry and what the process will be. She hasn’t done so because the Democrats have no actual case against the President, only the fact that they don’t like Trump. The media, as per their usual arrangement with Democrats, are acting as spokespeople for the “impeach Trump” narrative.
Trump did ask Ukraine, and later China, to conduct investigations in Joe and Hunter Biden’s activities in those countries while Biden was Vice President. For a party that consistently says “no one is above the law” when making the case against Trump, they clearly believe that a Democrat is above the law when running for President. There are legitimate concerns about Biden, Ukraine, and China. Even if they come up with nothing, merely asking for an investigation is not a crime, nor is it solely political (as the Democrats claim). Additionally, it is not out of character for Trump, who is not careful with his words, both on camera and Twitter, to ask for investigations. He asked the DOJ to investigate Hillary Clinton, James Comey, the FBI, and Obama’s Netflix deal for starters. He talks a lot, and that’s bad, inappropriate, unpresidential, and completely within character. So far, none of these investigations have actually been opened, because everyone in the administration knows the difference between a Trump rant and a Trump request.
However, there are currently 30 open investigations by partisan Democrat operatives into Trump: 12 Congressional, 10 Federal, and eight State and Local. New York, in particular, is having a field day, with 12 of the 18 non-congressional investigations. This shouldn’t be a surprise, considering that New York’s Attorney General Letitia James has vowed to investigate Trump personally, searching for a crime to have occurred. (Normally, evidence of a crime should exist prior to an investigation. That doesn’t matter to James.) James, who refers to Trump as an “illegitimate President” or “the current occupant of the White House,” has opened four investigations into Trump, all on the taxpayer’s dime.
The one thing the Legislature is not doing is legislating. The House has not held a vote on the USMCA, which replaced NAFTA. Trump signed it on November 30, 2018, and in over 300 days the vote has not been called by the Democratic majority. The House has not voted on S.1, The Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019. In terms of “major legislation,” the House has only voted on partisan bills that have no chance of passing the Senate, like gun control. There is no interest in working with the Republicans, despite the many overtures that the Trump administration has given to both Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
In 2010, prior to the midterm election, Mitch McConnell received incredible backlash to his statement that “[t]he single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Despite the blowback, McConnell was making a direct appeal to the voters who were frustrated by the Obama agenda. Given that Republicans won an incredible 44 seats in the House between 2008 and 2010, that appeal obviously resonated with voters. What the Democrats are doing with their midterm electoral victory is not appealing to voters, because they know they have a weak slate of candidates. Instead, they are trying to undo the vote of 2016 instead of campaigning for 2020. If this is what they choose to do with the small amount of power they have, they have proven that they don’t deserve more.
Moshe Hill is a political analyst who has written for The Daily Wire, The Queens Jewish Link, The Jewish Link of New Jersey and JNS.org. He is regularly featured on “The Josh M Show” podcast. Subscribe to aHillwithaview.com for more content from Moshe Hill. Like him on Facebook at facebook.com/ahillwithaview and follow on Twitter @TheMoHill.
