Democrats fail again in scheme to remove Donald Trump from office

The outcome was never really in doubt, but now it is official. The Senate has acquitted President Trump of the two articles of impeachment that alleged he abused his power and obstructed Congress. He remains in office, retains all his power, and can finally focus more of his efforts on campaigning and governing the nation. The good guys won this round.

Democrats, on the other hand, once again tried and failed to oust this president from office using the most desperate and dishonest tactics imaginable. It is hard to view the impeachment sham as anything other than a political blunder for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The scorched earth tactics of the left are backfiring. The approval rating for Trump is now at 49 percent, according to Gallup, the highest it has ever been.

In stopping at nothing to remove him from office, Democrats may be helping to ensure he stays in the White House for another four years, and they would richly deserve that. Opponents of the president in Congress have exhibited a clear pattern of bad faith, not just during impeachment, but from the earliest days of his administration. Democrats have never accepted the legitimacy of his admittedly stunning 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton. They decided that the election outcome must have been illicit, and then have desperately sought evidence over the last three years to support that belief so that Trump will be ejected from the White House.

Through a combination of delusion and denial, Democrats convinced themselves that the most extreme measures to oust Trump are justified. They do not want to beat him at the ballot box. They want him gone now. Any plot, excuse, or mechanism of removal will do. Never before has an American president been subject to such outlandish theories from the opposition political party about why he needs to be kicked out of office.

With the connivance of the mainstream media, Democrats in power have been scheming to doom this presidency by every undemocratic method conceivable. They have claimed that Trump is a traitor, out of his mind, an election cheat, subject to foreign bribery, and guilty of criminal campaign finance violations. They insist that Trump should be removed by his own cabinet under the 25th Amendment as a result of his alleged insanity, or because of a personal payoff to Stormy Daniels, or the “corruption” of foreign diplomats having beer and burgers at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. There are so many reasons Democrats claim they should be able to boot Trump that it is hard for them to focus on one.

Before impeachment, the main effort to push Trump out was the Russia collusion theory rooted in false premises that led to a special counsel. That investigation of all things Trump had involved no small amount of government malfeasance and stunning media malpractice. In the end, Trump was exonerated of “colluding” with Russia, however, the blatantly partisan team of Robert Mueller bent over backwards to hand Democrats numerous counts of “possible” obstruction crimes, within an absurd and Kafkaesque perversion of the justice system. If Mueller could not force Trump out, then Democrats in Congress would pick up where he left off.

But that scheme also failed. The Justice Department found that Trump committed no crimes, and Democrats moved on to impeachment as the latest manifestation of Trump derangement syndrome. They abandoned the long standing consensus that presidential impeachments should be bipartisan and based on clear and egregious wrongdoing. Instead, the government “whistleblower” alleged a nebulous violation of the “thou shalt not ask uncomfortable questions about Joe Biden” golden rule.

Once the whistleblower set that latest round of hysteria in motion, the only thing that mattered to Democrats was undermining Trump. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff began an impeachment inquiry. Every move he made was calculated to undermine Trump and present the most unbalanced and distorted view of the facts possible. After a series of sham impeachment hearings, the House Democratic majority voted across strictly partisan lines to impeach the president.

In the Senate, however, the story was different. Not only was Trump safe from Democrats reaching the supermajority vote needed for his removal, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell prevented the Schiff circus from continuing its smear campaign. House impeachment managers whined constantly about a lack of fairness, after they put on a master class in the mockery of due process when the House was in charge of the process.

With the impeachment trial over, reality has set in for Democrats. Trump has now been acquitted, and another soft coup effort has been defeated. Democrats may soon return to protests about the 25th Amendment or the emoluments clause, but this routine is wearing thin. Their endless cycle of plots to remove Trump has been shameless and contemptible. Perhaps if they had focused on economic growth policies instead of Trump removal schemes, Democrats would not be so terrified of the upcoming election. The only thing that scares them more than this president is the prospect of the American people choosing him as the commander in chief again.

Buck Sexton is the host of the Buck Sexton Show. He is a former analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency and served in the intelligence division of the New York City Police Department. You can follow him @BuckSexton.