Florida Representative Matt Gaetz (R) blew his stack during the House Judiciary impeachment show this week. It was righteous anger, lending voice to the millions of Americans who’ve lost their tolerance for the parade of academics and unelected functionaries of government and their fawning media cheerleaders who continue to insist President Trump should be impeached and we voters are simply not sophisticated enough to understand why.
Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan offered particularly shrill and hysterical commentary more fitting for a guest appearance on MSNBC than expert testimony before Congress."Put simply, a candidate for president should resist foreign interference in our elections, not demand it. If we are to keep faith with the Constitution and our republic, President Trump must be held to account,” Karlan screeched.
Of course, there’s been no evidence to support that Donald Trump “demanded” foreign interference in our elections. But she believes it because she cannot accept he beat her preferred candidate in 2016. That’s all she has and all she needs. Her feelings.
Karlan is a Democrat and a documented donor to the Hillary Clinton campaign. She’s publicly confessed to crossing the street when passing the Trump Hotel in Washington D.C. rather than walk past it on the sidewalk. She’s full of rage. Not unusual for Trump haters.
What was unusual was her lack of discipline in masking it during the hearings this week. She lost herself, and in the process lost any credibility she was trying to amass.
“The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility. So, while the President can name his son ‘Barron,’ he can’t make him a Baron.”
With that, it was over.
The shrill, hateful scholar invoked the name of the President’s thirteen-year-old son while trying to score cheap political headlines in a hearing. It’s one of the last things all of us in this ugly sport of hand-to-hand politics still try to respect.
Congressman Gaetz pounced during his allotted time for questions, refreshing the professor on some of her “greatest hits” comments of her political past.
“Do you remember saying the following – ‘Liberals tend to cluster more. Conservatives, especially very conservative people tend to spread out more perhaps because they don’t even want to be around themselves.’”
Professor Karlan quickly confirmed she did say that, but of course we don’t understand her “context,” she protested. Uh-huh.
Gaetz reminded her how contemptuous she sounds from “the ivory towers of her law school” even if she doesn’t realize it (she does). Karlan began to scream about President Trump’s comments about Mexicans, or something in response.
Gaetz shut her down immediately and then pivoted to her earlier comments about Barron Trump.
“Let me also suggest that when you invoke the President’s son’s name here, and try to make a little joke - that does not lend credibility to your argument. It makes you look mean.”
Bingo. With that, it was over. It’s just that simple. It’s nasty. It’s not rooted in logic or facts. It’s pure, unadulterated, unhinged, unbridled rage on full display. A chance to get even for an election she still can’t believe her candidate lost.
The famously guarded First Lady Melania Trump tweeted, “A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering and using a child to do it.”
The American public – to the extent they still care – sees this. They’re watching. It doesn’t take an ambassador, or a diplomat, or a constitutional scholar, or member of congress to know when something crosses a line from reasonable to unreasonable.
A fair, reasonable voice in this embarrassing show was George Washington University Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley. He began his testimony by stating he didn’t vote for Donald Trump and generally doesn’t support him politically. He went on to explain why that shouldn’t matter and why impeaching a duly elected president should be much more serious than this display.
“I get it. You’re mad. Where’s that taken us? Will slipshod impeachment make us less mad? Will it only invite this madness to follow every future administration? That is why this is wrong. This is not how you impeach an American president.”
As for Professor Karlan, after a break in the day’s hearings, she returned and asked if she’d be allowed to make a brief statement.
“I want to apologize for what I said earlier about the President’s son. It was wrong of me to do that. I wish the President would apologize, obviously for the things that he’s done that’s wrong. But I do regret having said that.”
Setting the poor grammar of the scholarly congressional witness aside, Karlan’s relentless anger and rage were too great for her to simply be a human for a few seconds and apologize to a kid without lashing out about his father again.
We’re all watching. We all see it. It’s ugly. As Professor Turley said, this is just wrong. Being mad isn’t a reason to impeach a president. The American left has lost their grip on power, they’ve lost their minds with anger, and they’ve lost the public’s interest and support for impeachment.
Moreover, they’ve likely lost the next election in the process.
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