One of the individuals who interrupted a ceremony honoring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) last week said she chose to heckle the Democrat leader because her inaction on impeachment will “make Trump’s re-election more likely.”
Karen Fleshman, one of the progressive activists who crashed the event at the InterContinental hotel, wrote a piece for the San Francisco Chronicle explaining why she chose to call the House Speaker out.
She built her piece on a series of fake news narratives commonly touted by left-wing activists, accusing the White House of “inciting violence against people of color” and “separating families at the border.” She echoed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), calling migrant detention centers “concentration camps.”
She continued, calling Trump “treacherous and illegitimate” and crediting his momentous presidential victory to Russian interference, even though former Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not find a scintilla of evidence of collusion or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“Our democracy is ablaze before our eyes, and Democrats won the House in 2018 promising to do something about it,” she wrote. “So what is the most powerful woman in America, the House speaker, doing?”
Not enough, according to Fleshman. She believes Pelosi’s lack of urgency to impeach the president will “make Trump’s re-election more likely.”
She wrote:
The speaker often asserts that no one is above the law. If that’s true, it’s her job to enforce it. That is what the Constitution says and what San Franciscans elected her to do. And if she thinks the American people don’t understand the necessity of impeachment, it’s her job to explain it to them.
Pelosi is not only failing to fulfill her moral and constitutional responsibilities, but also making a huge political error that will make Trump’s re-election more likely.
Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro put it well during last month’s debate: “What’s going to happen in … 2020, if they don’t impeach him, is he going to say, ‘You see. You see. The Democrats didn’t go after me on impeachment. And you know why? Because I didn’t do anything wrong.’”
If Pelosi takes action, Trump and his allies will not be able to use that narrative in 2020, Fleshman said. The argument will instead become, “They impeached him in the House, but his friend Moscow Mitch let him off the hook,” she wrote.
“People are dying, and our democracy is dying. We can’t risk Trump’s re-election, and we can’t wait. Impeach the president now,” she concluded.
Despite the cries of leftist activists, Pelosi has remained wary and deflated the most recent impeachment efforts during a House call last week, warning eager caucus members that the American public “isn’t there” yet on impeachment. She repeated her long-held talking point of taking it one day at a time in order to ensure that their impeachment effort will be “as strong as it can be” if it comes to that.
“The public isn’t there on impeachment. It’s your voice and constituency, but give me the leverage I need to make sure that we’re ready and it is as strong as it can be,” Pelosi said, according to the Hill.
“The equities we have to weigh are our responsibility to protect and defend the Constitution and to be unifying and not dividing,” she continued.
“But if and when we act, people will know he gave us no choice. If he cannot respect the Constitution, we’ll have to deal with that,” she added. “It’s about patriotism, not partisanship.”