Democrats weaponized impeachment against Trump. Now the GOP is taking its turn vs. Biden.
By Gary Abernathy
Even if it’s politicized, House GOP is following proper procedures on Biden impeachment
The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives is on track to make an impeachment inquiry focused on President Joe Biden formal, with a vote likely coming soon.
Impeachment of a president was once a solemn process reluctantly pursued. But when Donald Trump was president, Democrats politicized impeachment, with some pledging to impeach Trump even before he took office in January 2017.
After initially promising not to allow impeachment to proceed unless there was bipartisan support, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) finally caved to her far-left caucus members and rushed a snap impeachment centered on a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – despite absolutely no chance of conviction in the Senate.
At least the second effort to impeach Trump – over Trump allegedly inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol – had slightly more merit in regard to the underlying reason. But impeaching a president already out of office was nonsensical, since the primary punishment is removal from office.
But in both cases, House Democrats rushed impeachment at lightning speed. During the first impeachment, Pelosi almost gleefully explained to talk show host Bill Maher why the House was carrying out impeachment against Trump.
“You are impeached forever,” Pelosi said with a broad smile. “No matter what the Senate does, it can never be erased.” There you have it.
No one should be surprised, then, that after taking control of the House following the 2022 midterm elections, Republicans are on track to return the favor, determined to impeach Biden.
There are differences. To their credit, House Republicans are at least going through the motions of conducting an investigation and holding hearings over the course of weeks and months. That’s how impeachment is supposed to work – the House is the investigatory and prosecutorial branch, the Senate is the judge and jury. The House is supposed to meticulously build a case, gather evidence, interview witnesses and so on. Once completed, the House then votes on one or more articles of impeachment. If the articles are approved, they’re sent to the Senate for a trial.
Under Pelosi and the Democrats, the impeachment vote was rushed after just a few days. Then, Pelosi and company complained endlessly that the Senate wasn’t doing more of an investigation and calling witnesses. In other words, House Democrats complained that Senate Republicans weren’t doing the House’s job!
In a Washington Post column in January 2020, I wrote:
Rather than a response to an actual constitutional crisis, this impeachment is a reflection of the revenge culture in which we live. Democrats would probably gain more respect by simply admitting they impeached Trump because they consider him loathsome — a judgment with which many Americans concur — and because he ruined their dreams of electing the first female president. At its core, this impeachment represents a grudge — let’s “impeach the [expletive deleted]” and “beat the hell out of him.”
Those last two quotes, by the way, were from, respectively, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) declaring, “We’re going to impeach the [expletive deleted],” and Biden boasting that if he and Trump were in high school, “I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.” And they complain about Trump’s language and demeanor.
Another difference is the not-so-far-fetched notion that there really may be fire behind the smoke surrounding the Biden family and the president’s possible link to unsavory business deals. The mainstream media’s lack of interest – or, if they’re interested, it’s usually in trying to explain it all away – in the Biden entanglements in foreign deals is remarkable, but no longer surprising.
The mainstream media is dropping the ball, but some respected outlets on the right are filling the gaps. National Review has been meticulously documenting the dots and, often, plausibly connecting them.
A recent example is a report on a podcast featuring former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy commenting on the revelation that Joe Biden’s brother, James, wrote Joe a $40,000 check after a $400,000 payment from a “Chinese concern” was made.
From McCarthy on his podcast, via National Review:
“It’s 10 percent for the big guy,” he said.
“I can’t see any other way of looking at this,” he continued, “except to say that Joe Biden, as it turns out, is what they accused Donald Trump of being: He is a clandestine agent who’s been well paid by a hostile foreign power.”
Addressing what makes someone “a clandestine agent,” he explained: “That you’re doing work for a foreign government and not disclosing what your status is or the fact that you’re doing it.”
He added, “I don’t know what more to say about it. CEFC, this outfit that Biden was courting, it turns out according to James Comer’s committee’s report that came out in the last few days, it’s an arm of the Xi regime and the Chinese Communist government. There’s no mystery about that.”
Couple that with this Nov. 29 report from National Review:
A bank money-laundering investigator expressed serious concerns about a transfer of funds from China that ultimately trickled down to President Biden in the form of a $40,000 check from his brother, James Biden, according to an email obtained by the House Oversight Committee.
Can you imagine the mainstream media’s breathless reporting if the family involved was Trump, not Biden? It would be “Russia, Russia, Russia” hysteria times 20.
Yes, House Republicans were determined to impeach Biden no matter what, as payback for the politicized Trump impeachments. But it may well turn out that Republicans actually have some substance behind the politics – and they’re building their case as the impeachment process requires, one block at a time, unlike the Democrats and the Trump impeachments.
The threat of the costly climate cult will be one of the top factors in the 2024 presidential race
There has seldom been as great an example of “bait-and-switch” than the case of Joe Biden, who sold himself to Americans as a moderate, gatekeeper candidate, but, once elected, became one of the most liberal presidents of all time when it comes to spending, social issues, immigration (essentially allowing open borders) and, most disturbingly, “climate change.”
I used quote marks on “climate change” to emphasize that the phrase has become completely politicized, no longer meaning what it originally meant. We virtually all agree that climate change exists. Climate change has existed since the dawn of time. But today, for the left and most of the media, “climate change” is defined as a belief that mankind is guilty of destroying the climate ecosystem and must drastically change how humans live in order to reverse the damage.
If you don’t buy that, you are labeled a “climate denier” – despite the fact that no one denies there is climate.
The Biden administration’s approach to “climate change” is, frankly, terrifying. Biden is joining with the most extreme climate cultists on the planet to use hocus-pocus accounting tactics to justify the changes he wants – at whatever cost to our economy and to common sense.
It’s all happening in plain sight. Consider this piece from the New York Times on Dec. 2:
The Biden administration’s crackdown on methane leaks from oil wells is based in part on a new powerful policy tool that could strengthen its legal authority to cut greenhouse gas emissions across the entire economy — including from cars, power plants, factories and oil refineries.
New limits on methane, announced Saturday by the Environmental Protection Agency during the COP28 climate talks in Dubai, take aim at just one source of climate warming pollution. Methane, which spews from oil and gas drilling sites, is 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide when it comes to heating the atmosphere in the short term.
But within the language of the methane rule, E.P.A. economists have tucked a controversial calculation that would give the government legal authority to aggressively limit climate-warming pollution from nearly every smokestack and tailpipe across the country.
The number, known as the “social cost of carbon,” has been used since the Obama administration to calculate the harm to the economy caused by one ton of carbon dioxide pollution. The metric is used to weigh the economic benefits and costs of regulations that apply to polluting industries, such as transportation and energy.
Here’s the key takeaway:
As scientists have increasingly been able to link planetary warming to wildfires, floods, droughts, storms and heat waves, estimates of the social cost of carbon have grown more sophisticated.
The higher the number, the greater the government’s justification for compelling polluters to reduce the emissions that are dangerously heating the planet. During the Obama administration, White House economists calculated the social cost of carbon at $42 a ton. The Trump administration lowered it to less than $5 a ton. Under President Biden, the cost was returned to Obama levels, adjusted for inflation and set at $51.
The new estimate of the social cost of carbon, making its debut in a legally binding federal regulation, is almost four times that amount: $190 a ton.
The “social cost of carbon” is used to argue that costly new regulations are outweighed by their benefit to society. Read the above carefully. Under Obama, the “social cost of carbon” was $42 a ton. Under Trump, it was dropped to less than $5 a ton. Under Biden, it’s back up to $51 a ton. And the new, legally binding estimate would jump the cost to $190 a ton.
That means that Biden administration officials, who already jacked up the “cost” from less than $5 a ton under Trump to the current $51 a ton, are on the verge of nearly quadrupling what they claim is the “social cost of carbon” — which, in turn, allows them to jack up the level of expenditures they want to make on new regulations, all the while insisting that those expenditures are cheaper than the “social cost of carbon.” As the New York Times put it in an admirably frank assessment, the plan “would give the government legal authority to aggressively limit climate-warming pollution from nearly every smokestack and tailpipe across the country.”
It’s undeniable that we live in a humanistic world increasingly separated from a belief in God, as studies show. But there is one religion on the rise – the religion of climate change. Without a reversal of these far-left policies, the United States’ energy resources will be crippled, heating and cooling costs will skyrocket, millions of acres of land will be home to rusting and decaying solar panels and windmills, and what was essentially an energy independent nation under the Trump administration will be at the mercy of other countries – including Russia and China, which will thumb their noses at energy regulations and restrictions while the U.S. cripples itself.
More horror stories of the brutality of Hamas
In case anyone needs more convincing of the brutality of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, consider this from over the weekend from the Sunday Times of London:
Eight weeks after the attack in which 1,200 were killed and 240 taken hostage, there is mounting evidence of widespread rape on October 7. Israeli police have begun their biggest investigation into sexual violence and crimes against women. “It’s clear now that sexual crimes were part of the planning and the purpose was to terrify and humiliate people,” says Shelly Harush, the police commander leading the investigation.
They have collected thousands of statements, photographs and video clips, which she says “as a Jewish mother the mind and soul cannot bear”, including “girls whose pelvises were broken they had been raped so much.”
Warning: It’s a graphic and vivid story, but it needs to be read to put this situation into perspective. Read it and then try to make an argument that Israel should consider a ceasefire after these atrocities.
Talking op-ed writing with Harvard Extension School graduate journalism students
A big thank you to Matthew Brown, the Americas editor at The Washington Post, for inviting me to speak via Zoom with a graduate journalism class he is teaching at Harvard Extension School, which is Harvard University’s continuing education program.
Matt is teaching a course on Commentary and Opinion Writing, and during my Zoom visit we talked about the process of coming up with ideas, putting those ideas into written form, the importance of being factual even in opinion writing, working with editors, dealing with reader feedback (both positive and negative), etc. The students were great, and it was a pleasure discussing opinion writing and politics with the class for about an hour a couple of weeks ago. Thanks everyone!
My new book is out soon. Plan to buy several!
My new book, “MAGA Republicans Are Already Normal — And Other Shocking Notions,” is coming soon. It’s a compilation of many of my Washington Post columns, along with a few from one of my old stomping grounds, the (Hillsboro, Ohio) Times-Gazette.
From the back cover:
Abernathy’s goal was to counter the fear expressed so often that “normalizing” Trump supporters through positive media portrayals was somehow dangerous. Among many other topics, “MAGA Republicans Are Already Normal” presents a collection of essays arguing that Trump supporters are unfairly disparaged – and it’s often their critics who are outside the real mainstream of American thought.
It will be available in three versions – ebook, and both print and hardcover editions. There are plans for an audio version someday soon. So make sure to budget at least one for yourself and several more for friends and relatives, in whatever format they prefer to read books. More details soon!
Sign up or share this newsletter
Please sign up to receive this newsletter directly into your inbox or, if you are already a subscriber and reading this by email, share with a friend using the convenient button below. Thank you.