No matter the endless public whining from President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) led a now successful impeachment inquiry against him, and now he’s freaking out. As of Friday, while vacationing at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort for the holidays, Trump had tweeted or retweeted a message about Pelosi more than twenty times and counting, suggesting that no matter what vague platitudes the White House throws out: the president is angrily obsessed.
As an example of his outlandish outrage, this Friday, he ranted:
‘So interesting to see Nancy Pelosi demanding fairness from @senatemajldr McConnell when she presided over the most unfair hearing in the history of the United States Congress!’
So interesting to see Nancy Pelosi demanding fairness from @senatemajldr McConnell when she presided over the most unfair hearing in the history of the United States Congress!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 27, 2019
To be clear — there’s no evidence that the impeachment proceeding is actually the most unfair procedure in the history of Congress — or whatever. Trump’s claim to that effect is on par with his other outrageous claims about how supposedly great he is and supposedly terrible his opponents are. In a rambling six page letter that he sent Pelosi the day before the House’s final impeachment vote, he even insisted that he’s been treated worse than the targets of the Salem Witch Trials — who were hung.
He’s called Pelosi “crazy” and gone on bizarre tangents about her supposed ignorance of her “filthy” San Francisco-area district. On Christmas Eve, after participating in a video chat with military service members including some stationed overseas, Trump kept it up. He angrily railed about Pelosi:
‘She hates the Republican Party. She hates all of the people that voted for me and the Republican Party.’
Pelosi has never said that she hates Republicans or the people who voted for Trump. In contrast, the evidence that she and her fellow Democrats have accumulated against the president is quite straightforwardly publicly available. That evidence is the basis of their impeachment proceedings — not hate.
When one conservative reporter asked Pelosi if she hated the president, like the House Judiciary Committee’s top Republican Doug Collins (Ga.) had at the time just suggested, Pelosi told the reporter not to “mess with” her and insisted:
‘This is about the Constitution of the United States and the facts that lead to the president’s violation of his oath of office. As a Catholic, I resent your use of the word ‘hate’ in a sentence that addresses me. I don’t hate anyone… and always pray for the president.’
At present, she is delaying transmitting the impeachment case to the Senate for a trial while Democrats continue to advocate for fairness during that trial. Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell have explicitly advocated against that fairness, but the delay could put the spotlight on Republicans and pressure some to break away. One perceived moderate — Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski — has already said that she finds McConnell’s vow to coordinate with the White House “disturbing,” and advocates have been targeting her and other moderate and/or electorally vulnerable Republicans, including Mitt Romney (Utah), Susan Collins (Maine), and others.
There’s also the chance that a delay in transmitting the case could give Democrats the chance to add to it. It’s not as though the president and his allies have even stopped their plot to get dirt from Ukraine on the Bidens that sparked this whole mess.
