Washington Watch with Tony Perkins
Liberals are nothing if not reliable. It’s been 13 years since Barack Obama’s chief of staff sat down with ABC and declared, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Rahm Emanuel’s party has lived and died by those words through two administrations, taking advantage of every situation to push an agenda that no one would even consider under normal circumstances. We’ve seen it with the coronavirus, the election process, voting laws, and now the Capitol riot. In every challenge, every catastrophe, Democrats prove: they don’t want to help America. They want to exploit it to help themselves. And this impeachment is no exception.
People will debate for years whether Donald Trump’s speech on the National Mall was actually incitement. A lot of constitutional scholars, including some who openly despise the president, say no. But the technicalities have never mattered to House Democrats. They see an opportunity. Not to heal the divide or preserve the Republic, but to power and control. Of course, the irony is, Democrats have been trying to get Trump out of office before he ever got in. “Now,” Byron York says, “they’re proposing to remove him from office after he leaves office.” As Congressman Michael Burgess (R-S.C.) lamented on “Washington Watch,” “This has been a time that has sort of defied prediction.”
He, like every other person who genuinely loves America, was sick over what happened under the Capitol dome last Wednesday. But Burgess also understands that our country didn’t arrive there by accident. Americans had lived through a year of depression, lockdowns, death, and uncertainty. By the time the election rolled around, our entire democratic system had been upended. On the morning of November 4, voters woke up to see an inexplicable surge of votes in key states had put Joe Biden ahead. Allegations of fraud and irregularities started streaming in — which no court or state official seemed willing to pursue. Suddenly, the people who felt understood and heard by this president felt everything he worked for slip away.
As a result of that horrible day, a lawless, violent siege that cost five people their lives, the Left has every pretense they need to finish the job they started. “The riot was an accelerant for what was already likely planned under Democratic rule in Washington: crushing dissenters from its leftist orthodoxy, as part of an effort to achieve total power…” Ben Weingarten warns. The end game for Democrats is not Trump. The end game is all of us. “They’re coming for me, because I’m fighting for you,” the president was fond of saying.
At the end of the day, this impeachment isn’t about banning the president from running for office again. “If that were all, the revenge agenda would be loathsome enough,” Michael Goodwin agrees. “But Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and their co-conspirators in Big Media and Big Tech are proving Trump was right when he said his supporters were the ultimate target.”
While the repressive hand of the Democrats and their Big Tech allies will only fan the flames of resentment and hostility, it may very well leave many of those who voted for Biden on the promise of unity and healing questioning their vote. Surely today’s spectacle, an exercise in reckless, selfish, retaliation, isn’t what they signed up for. Not only does it destroy their trust that Democrats can be the adults in the room, but it exposes them for the hypocrites they are. Men and women like Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) are blaming Trump for starting an “insurrection.” They argue that the senators and congressmen operating within their constitutional rights to object to the election results should “resign.”
Where were they in 2000, 2004, and 2016 when Democrats protested the presidential results in battleground states? “Thirty-one Democrats voted to overturn the presidential election results in Ohio in 2005,” Rachel Bovard tweeted. Ten of them are still in Congress. They serve beside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who herself insisted in 2017, “Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to protect democracy and follow the facts.” What about the violence Democrats called for against the president and his supporters? “Get up in their face!” “Be ready to throw a punch!” “Push them,” “Kick them,” “Fight him in the streets!” And that’s on top of the looting, burning, and rioting they all condoned in the summer.
The Left lives in a swamp of hypocrites. They say they want to bring civility back. But who can watch what unfolded today and believe it? No one is saying Trump is blameless. What they are saying is that it’s time for Democrats to stop using these crisis points to sow further resentment, division, and turmoil.
Why am I voting against impeachment, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) answered? “To lower the temperature.” “Look, the fact [is], we’ve only got 10 days left, and the priority we need to be engaging in is unifying the country, not escalating things further.” His new colleague, freshman Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) agreed, insisting that if Congress is looking for the people responsible for this toxic climate, they all need to look in the mirror. “There is violence on both sides of the aisle,” she said. “We’ve contributed to it. We need to… take responsibility for it — and stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution.”