It would be a symbolic gesture, but a powerful one, a rare pushback against the Left’s frenzied demonization of Donald Trump and his supporters: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Friday that he was in favor of expunging both impeachments of Donald Trump, explaining that one “was not based on true facts” and the other was “on the basis of no due process.” That’s certainly true. “I think it is appropriate,” McCarthy added, just as I thought before, that you should expunge it because it never should have gone through.” Indeed.
McCarthy’s stance now represents something of a shift. The Hill pointed out Friday that “immediately following the Capitol rampage, McCarthy went to the floor and said Trump bore ‘responsibility’ for the violence.” That position, however, was impossible to sustain in the face of the fact that Trump had told protesters to proceed “peacefully,” as well as more recent revelations that FBI agents and D.C. cops played a large role in the bogus “insurrection”; McCarthy backed off and reconciled with the former president.
The Hill notes that “House GOP Conference Chairwoman Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) launched an effort to expunge Trump’s impeachments on Thursday, unveiling two resolutions that would discard the disciplines.” This effort would “reset the historical record ‘as if such Articles had never passed.’”
This would be a matter of simple justice. The first impeachment was over a phone call Trump had with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which he spoke about Biden’s shady dealings in Ukraine; Democrats trumpeted this as an illicit “quid pro quo” while doing their best to get you to forget that Biden’s Ukraine connections are indeed questionable and that their current pretend president has engaged in behavior that was quite similar to what they falsely accused Trump of doing. The second impeachment hinged on Jan. 6, with Trump portrayed as trying to overthrow the government by sending a guy wearing face paint and Viking horns into the Capitol.
Trump was impeached in the House but not convicted either time. The “evidence” of his guilt that was presented during the impeachment hearings looks ever flimsier as more is revealed about the Biden regime’s efforts to demonize and destroy their foremost opponent. McCarthy and the Republican majority in the House could do a great deal to strike back against this effort (which is a genuine threat to “our democracy” that Democrats profess to be so worried about) by expunging the impeachments.
The reaction from the Left to this possibility was abundantly predictable. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) fumed: “It’s a continuation of Republicans acting as Donald Trump’s taxpayer-funded lawyers.” He said nothing about Merrick Garland’s astoundingly corrupt and politicized “Justice” Department acting as Hunter Biden’s defense attorneys and press agents while carrying out a banana republic prosecution of Donald Trump. Goldman added: “It’s telling who’s introducing them,” referring to Stefanik and Greene. “And it’s essentially whoever’s trying to curry the most favor with Trump.”
That may be, but it’s irrelevant because this is a larger issue than Trump alone. The Democrats have weaponized the impeachment process and the Justice Department to rid themselves of their foremost opponent, and as Trump himself has pointed out many times, it’s not ultimately him that they’re after, but us. Leftists are totalitarians at heart, as every far-Left regime that has ever been imposed upon human beings demonstrates. Leftists hate dissent and are determined to silence and destroy dissenters.
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If they succeed in destroying Trump, they won’t go back to respecting loyal opposition and the two-party system. Instead, they’ll turn the machinery of defamation, false charges, and hatred against whoever becomes the Republican nominee in 2024, and continues their efforts to create institutional means to silence what they call “disinformation” and “hate speech,” by which they mean any and all speech that dissents from their agenda.
The Trump impeachments were two major efforts not just to get Trump, but to transform what once was our two-party system into a society in which only one point of view is tolerated and accepted. There will still be political opposition, but of the kind there was in the old Soviet Union: regular elections and plenty of candidates, but all of them were members of the Communist Party.
This is why it would be a significant gesture to expunge the impeachments. Quite aside from Trump, it would be a rejection of the Left’s politicized prosecutions and determination to crush its opponents in court instead of at the ballot box. It would strike an important blow for “our democracy,” that is, our republic.
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