Nolte: Impeachment Proves Nancy Pelosi Is an Idiot

For more than a decade the media have told us House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is some kind of master strategist. Oh, yes, President Trump has met his match in Madam Pelosi…

Me? Well, I’ve always found her to be something closer to an idiot. But even with my low opinion of her, never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined she would botch this impeachment as badly as she did.

Seriously… wow.

What I mean is, even when a particular strategy is a bad one, it is at least a strategy. You can at least see the strategy in a bad strategy. For example, I understood why John McCain quit his 2008 presidential campaign to go off and try and save the economy. He was hoping to throw the game board over, a game he was losing. It was terrible strategy, laughably terrible, but you could at least see the strategy.

I even understood why Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) released a DNA test that definitively proved she was not an American Indian with the claim it proved she was. It was a terrible strategy, but I get what she was going for. It was neurotic and moronic, but it was at least a strategy.

Pelosi’s impeachment “strategy” baffles me beyond words, because I see no strategy. In fact, when I close my eyes and attempt to picture Pelosi’s impeachment strategy, I see Brian Stelter giggling as he tries to snatch a pork chop away from a ravenous Rosie O’Donnell. In other words, no strategy, just impulse and appetite that cannot end well.

Forget your biases, your own beliefs, your likes or dislike of those involved, and ask yourself what in the world Pelosi was thinking as I tick through these…

 

1. Impeaching the President with No Crime

The questions surrounding Joe Biden’s corruption in Ukraine are not only legitimate, Trump has a responsibility to look into it. Pelosi impeached him for something that was not only not a crime, it wasn’t even unethical.

 

2. Impeaching the President for Asking for a Judicial Ruling

Every defendant in the country has the right to go to court to challenge every aspect of the prosecution’s case, from witnesses to search warrants to document requests, and so on… This is the backbone of our legal system. Trump was perfectly within his rights — legally and with regard to historical impeachment precedent — to go to court for a judicial ruling on the issue of subpoenas and documents … and this dizzy broad impeached him for it.

That’s not a strategy. That’s insanity.

 

3. There Was No Quid Pro Quo

Even if a quid pro quo was a crime (it’s not), it has been firmly established by 18 witnesses and thousands and thousands of documents that Ukraine did not know Trump had paused the aid package.

If the second party doesn’t know about the carrot, there can be no bribery.

If the second party doesn’t know about the stick, there can be no extortion.

Johnnie Cochran might have put it this way, “If Ukraine didn’t know, there can be no quid pro quo.”

 

4. Rushing Impeachment

This is the one that baffles me more than any other.

In the House, Pelosi has total control over the process. She runs the House of Representatives, and as Speaker, she has even more power than the Senate Majority Leader.

Why rush things? Why the hurry to give up a process you have total control over?

Let me back up just a bit…

I don’t think it was good strategy, but I do understand why Pelosi violated Trump’s due process rights and precedent. I get why she refused to allow the president to cross examine witnesses, or to bring on his own witnesses, or face his accuser (the fake whistleblower). She rigged the process so that he had no chance of winning. I get that.

It’s the rushing that I can’t wrap my mind around. It’s the haste to give up a process she controls to hand it over to a Senate that she not only doesn’t control, but that is controlled by a legitimate master strategist, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Not that anything would have turned out different as far as Trump’s acquittal, but had Pelosi kept the process in the House, under her control, she could have 1) probably got most if not all the witnesses she wanted, 2) got most if not all of the documents she wanted, 3) left Trump twisting in the wind for months, 4) bought more time for a legitimate bombshell to drop, and 5) handed a respectable impeachment over to the Senate with all the crossed “T’s” and dotted “I’s.”

“Impeaching Donald Trump before Christmas” is not a strategy; it’s a giggling Brian Stelter trying to take that pork chop from Rosie — a baby move, all impulse, no thought. Dumb.

 

5. Sitting on the Impeachment Articles for a Month

Pelosi said her strategy in holding on to the impeachment articles for a month was to force McConnell to agree to her terms on the Senate trial, but come on…

Come on, that’s not a strategy, that’s a temper tantrum. Holding your breath while the other side enjoys watching you turn blue, is not a strategy.

Out of one side of this ditzy dame’s mouth, we were told impeachment must be rushed in order to save the country. Then, in the same breath, she holds up impeachment a full month…

You want to know how dumb Nancy Pelosi is…?

She thinks Twitter and CNN are the real world; because that’s where she got this irrational idea from. Holding up the impeachment articles wasn’t a strategy; it was a way to get the elite bubble to cheer her on by giving the extremist animals what they want.

Granted, there’s an argument out there that Pelosi sat on everything hoping against hope (after 18 witnesses and thousands and thousands of documents) that some bombshell would come out and save an impeachment she already knew was doomed, an impeachment that had not even proved there was a quid pro quo, much less a crime.

Okay, but if that was the case, why not wait for the Hail Mary while you’re waiting for the court to rule on those additional witnesses and documents? Stupid.

 

6. Demanding the Senate Do What She Refused to Do

You want to know when I knew there would be no witnesses, and therefore no hope of dragging this out to embarrass the president, and therefore absolutely no hope of conviction? Over two weeks ago when Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) publicly complained that the House was asking the Senate to do what the House refused to do: namely, fight Trump in court to gain access to certain witnesses and documents.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Murkowski was saying. “You assholes want us to do all the work you not only refused to do but that the Constitution and over a century of precedent says you’re supposed to do? Sorry, no.”

Had that come from a Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But this is Lisa Murkowski we’re talking about, one of the top three cucks in the Senate.

Seriously, Nancy, if you’ve lost Murkowski…

 

7. Terrible Choice of House Managers

As I tweeted yesterday, an unappreciated fact of the Senate trial was Trump’s astute decision to not use House Managers from the House. Instead of Republican Representatives, instead of politicians as his defense counsel — who would arrive with a ton of baggage and be seen as fire-breathing partisans — Trump brought on a real legal team, a team of brilliant lawyers like Patrick Philbin, Alan Dershowitz, Jay Sekulow, and Ken Starr.

Pelosi chose Laurel & Hardy — Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler.

The contrast was striking: smirking, hyper-partisan politicians up against mature, thoughtful, well-prepared lawyers.

Trump knew his audience, and I’m not just talking about the very few people who watched this farce at home. The Senate likes to see itself as above politics, as superior to the rowdy House. Had Trump brought over the stars of the House trial — Reps. Mark Meadows (R-NC), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Elise Stefanik (R-NY) etc. — that would have been nowhere near as effective as sober, qualified, respected attorneys.

—

Nancy Pelosi is less than two months from turning 80, and she acts every day of it. Her advanced age means there is no time for a political comeback, for a rebound. Her legacy will be one, not only of failure, but of raging incompetence. Her legacy will be the disastrous Obamacare bill that has been rejected by the public, raised healthcare costs, and is slowly being dismantled by the courts.

Worse still will be history’s verdict on her epic mishandling of something as serious as impeachment. She has now entered the pantheon of committing one the greatest unforced errors in all of American political history — right up there with Newt Gingrich and Chuck Schumer forcing the government to close, McCain quitting his presidential campaign, George McGovern not properly vetting Thomas Eagleton, the Alien and Sedition Acts, Prohibition, and the Bay of Pigs.

For the last five months, Nancy Pelosi has not only made every godawful choice and decision possible, but even with billions and billions of corporate dollars in media propaganda at her side, she has been out-strategized and out-maneuvered at every turn — by the reactionary extremists in her own caucus who pushed this debacle, but mostly by McConnell and the president.

Madam Speaker the Master Strategist has stepped on every rake, bungled every opportunity, been her own worst enemy, and it has been a glorious spectacle to behold, especially…

Watching Trump’s job approval and re-election numbers rise above pre-impeachment levels.

Nancy Pelosi is an idiot.

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.