A day ahead of opening arguments in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial beginning on Tuesday, his longtime adviser Kellyanne Conway dug into absolutely outlandish defenses for his behavior. After a reporter asked her on Monday how the president planned to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day, she replied with a belligerent tirade that included an assertion that the late civil rights leader himself would not support Trump’s impeachment. During his life, King demonstrated extensively against authorities at multiple levels. He did not push the kind of blind partisan loyalty that Conway is now trying to desperately ascribe to him.
In willful complete ignorance of the publicly available evidence that has emerged outlining the president’s plot to bribe Ukraine into punitively investigating the Bidens, Conway railed:
‘I can tell you that the president… agrees with many of the things that Dr. Martin Luther King stood for… including unity and equality. And he’s not the one trying to tear the country apart through an impeachment process and a lack of substance that really is very shameful at this point. I’ve held my opinion on it for a very long time, but when you see the articles of impeachment that came out, I don’t think it was within Dr. King’s vision to have Americans dragged through a process where the president is not going to be removed from office, is not being charged with bribery, extortion, high crimes or misdemeanors.’
Kellyanne Conway: "When you see the articles of impeachment, I don’t think it was within Dr. King’s vision to have Americans drag through a process where the president is not going to be removed from office." #MLKDay https://t.co/CWvImrSrsJ pic.twitter.com/VZk4TM2AzZ
— The Hill (@thehill) January 20, 2020
That’s completely ridiculous. Trump stands for unity, she says? Is that why at rally after rally he dehumanizes his opponents and takes opportunities like a public appearance at a recent NATO summit to claim that they’re mentally incapacitated?
Is that why he refuses to acknowledge the evidence on record from the White House revealing how he tried to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden? Is that why he derides the press reporting on all of these issues as the “enemy of the people,” even as physical threats against these journalists pile up? Is that why he falsely and baselessly claims that immigrants are invading the U.S. and refuses to retract that claim even after it’s explicitly used as justification for a mass murder?
Conway’s argument is outlandish on its face. Donald Trump does not stand for unity and equality. He stands for belittling whoever he feels like might give him a temporary boost politically with his core, rabid base — and Conway is willing to engage in whatever kind of desperation might be necessary to help that along, apparently.
A day ahead of the opening arguments beginning, House impeachment managers acknowledged the president’s side’s complete disconnection from the facts. They wrote that Trump abused his power in order to “cheat in elections, betray our national security, and ignore checks and balances,” and added:
‘That President Trump believes otherwise, and insists he is free to engage in such conduct again, only highlights the continuing threat he poses to the Nation if allowed to remain in office.’
Trump’s impeachment defense team has been gearing up to argue that even if abuse of power was proven, it wouldn’t be fitting to be impeached over — which is ridiculous.
