Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson reacted to the President Donald Trump’s impeachment articles issued by the House of Representatives earlier in the day.
Carlson honed in on the reaction from some Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: So it looks like they are impeaching Donald Trump again for the second time in four years, a week before he leaves office. With strong bipartisan support, leaders of both parties appear in favor of this.
No matter how angry you may be at Donald Trump tonight and many of his voters are angry at him, watching this happen may confuse you. The chaos of an impeachment trial is hardly the peaceful and orderly transition of power both parties assure you they want. So why are they doing this? There has to be a reason and indeed there is one.
First, let’s be clear about what that reason is not. Legitimate moral outrage will play absolutely no role whatsoever in whatever impeachment proceedings occur, no matter what you hear, no matter how many times Jim Clyburn goes on television and talks about the Civil Rights Movement; no matter how often you see the frail, but determined Nancy Pelosi read lines like this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): We know that we face enemies of the Constitution. We know we experienced the insurrection that violated the sanctity of the people’s Capitol and attempted to overturn the duly- recorded will of the American people, and we know that the President of the United States incited this insurrection, this armed rebellion against our common country.
He must go. He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Oh, “the nation we all love,” of course, yes, that lovable irredeemably immoral nation that must change by force immediately and forever because it is so disgusting and stained by your sin.
Yes, they really love it here. It is defended by Donald Trump.
Right? Remember that for decades and not that long ago because we recall it vividly, the two most powerful Democrats in the United States Senate were Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd. Ted Kennedy left a young woman to drown in a drunk driving accident; Robert Byrd was a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan.
Democrats did not seem bothered by any of that. They never said a word.
They praised Kennedy and Byrd at every turn including at their funerals, so no, Democrats are not actually outraged in any moral sense by Donald Trump. They never have been. They’re too cynical to have feelings that authentic.
As if to prove that point, they’ve named as one of their so-called impeachment managers the young, Eric Swalwell of California who was a sitting Member of Congress who had sex with an actual Chinese spy. So please, ladies, spare us the self-righteous indignation.
What’s happening here instead is old-fashioned hard-eyed politics. Democrats have every practical reason for wanting to see Trump impeached during his final days in office. The first and most obvious reason is to make Republicans weaker.
Every loss diminishes a political party, and impeachment is nothing if not a loss, so there’s that. But there’s also another thing. Democrats need to keep talking about Donald Trump, next week and forever if they’re going to keep their own party together.
Most political coalitions are built on shared interests. The Democratic coalition is built on shared genetics. The basic idea is that everyone who is not a straight white man must be united as one in unshakable solidarity. The problem is that can’t happen because it’s not true.
In real life, many Democrats have nothing in common with each other. Once Donald Trump leaves the scene, the great unifier, and it’s time to divvy up the spoils of the United States Treasury to begin the great pinata party of 2021. Various components within the Democratic Party, the fabled communities you hear so much about will turn on each other with feral ferocity. You can see glimpses of it now, it’s going to be highly ugly.
Democrats would like to delay that disaster as long as they can, so they need to keep Donald Trump at the center of the conversation. They are impeaching him so they can continue to give speeches about him. It’s that simple.
But why are Republicans playing along? They don’t really have a sound political rationale for any of this. They are just dumb and guilty. Honestly, that’s the reason.
Here’s how it works: from the perspective of the Republican leadership, it would be best if Donald Trump just went away forever. He is embarrassing. They don’t want to talk about him. They’d like him to disappear.
So that’s their plan with impeachment: make it so that Trump can never run for office again — not that he actually plans to run for office again — and then disgrace Trump so thoroughly that he cannot appear in public ever again, then pretend that Donald Trump never happened. Call it the suburban Connecticut denial strategy. Whatever you do, don’t talk about mom’s alcoholism, just act like it’s not happening and maybe it’ll go away. Good luck with that.
There are a couple of obvious problems with this approach. The first problem is, it won’t work. By impeaching the President during his final week in office, Congress will not succeed in discrediting Trump among Republican voters; in fact, it will enhance Donald Trump among Republican voters, obviously.
Who does your average Republican voter trust more? Donald Trump or the many people who hate Donald Trump? Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell? Donald Trump or CNN? Come on, you know the answer. It’s not complicated.
But apparently, it’s too complicated for the dummies in the Republican Party who think impeachment will help them in the long run, they are that stupid. Maybe you shouldn’t be surprised by that. These are the very same people who still defend the war in Iraq, the ones who will tell you with a straight face that Iran is the single biggest threat we will ever face as a nation. Iran.
Not your falling wages or the runaway healthcare costs you can’t pay or the financialized hollowed out economy that feels like it’s about to collapse, not the Chinese fentanyl that just killed your nephew. No, none of that. Iran? An isolated faraway country you could not find on a map at gunpoint. That’s the real threat.
The amazing thing is, they mean it when they say it. They are dead serious. That’s how stupid and brainwashed they are.
And by the way, they are so dumb they assume you agree with them. They have no idea what you really think. They haven’t spent five minutes wondering why you voted for Donald Trump in the first place, and by the way, they don’t care.
The sad thing is, a smart party could do a lot for itself and for the country with a moment like this.
A week ago, a violent mob attacked the capitol. Republicans should have no problem opposing that. It ought to be consistent with what they have been saying for decades. Republicans are for law and order.
Smash a cop in the face with a fire extinguisher, go to jail. Break windows, hit people with flag poles, the same thing, jail.
We are Republicans. We have no tolerance for that kind of crap. This is a civilized country. We won’t put up with it.
The next time a mob gathers outside the U.S. Capitol Building, and by the way, outside a Wendy’s in Minneapolis, or a Federal Building in Seattle or occupies a commercial district in Portland, Oregon by force, Republicans can say, loudly and with a clear and consistent conscience, we are against that.
In America, laws are real. They apply to everyone equally. That is the Republican position. It is not hard.
But apparently, it is hard. Because for the last week, slow learners like Mitch McConnell have missed it completely. They’ve allowed themselves instead to be led into rhetorical cul-de-sacs on the question of Donald Trump’s personal character as a man.
At no point does it seem to have occurred to McConnell or any of these sort of geniuses clustered around him that what is really at stake right now is not the future of Donald Trump. He is elderly and retiring next week, but instead the future of his voters, tens of millions of them, American citizens who in the space of the last seven days have seen themselves redefined as domestic terrorists, that has happened.
Republicans in Washington don’t seem to have noticed that it happened.
Just today, the former MLB pitcher, Curt Schilling announced that he has had his personal insurance policies cancelled by his insurer. Why? Because Curt Schilling wrote a social media post defending Donald Trump, and in 2021, that’s not allowed. You could lose your insurance for that.
You could also lose your bank account, your website, your access to e-mail and social media, your ability to communicate with the outside world and there’s nothing you can do about it because you can also lose your lawyer. No legal representation for.
You how long before they cut off your water and electricity? Before UPS won’t deliver your packages, and not to wreck your day, but guess what? Amazon is now one of America’s biggest grocery providers. Good thing you don’t need to eat.
But no problem says Mitch McConnell, the real problem is Donald Trump and once he is gone, everything will be fine.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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