Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., departs the Capitol en route to a speaking event in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2019. Pelosi will meet with her caucus later as more House Democrats are urging an impeachment inquiry amid reports that President Donald Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Sometimes real life mirrors parody, and in the case of Nancy Pelosi’s gambit of refusing to hand over the articles of impeachment she pushed to pass, it certainly does.

In fact, while many of us had been under the impression that Pelosi had gotten the idea from Lawrence Tribe, a deranged Twitter Harvard professor who spouted off about not giving the articles to the Senate early on, where she really got the idea from is even more laughable.

Apparently, Pelosi decided to blow up her own charade after watching a felon on CNN. That’s how dumb her move of roadblocking impeachment was.

In new @TIME profile: Speaker Pelosi got idea to withhold impeachment articles from watching John Dean on CNN. https://t.co/0GuN6o9h9o pic.twitter.com/2llM9dhEdp

— Byron York (@ByronYork) January 9, 2020

Who’s John Dean? He’s the legendary grifter who planned the Nixon era watergate coverup. Once he was caught, he then proceeded to rat out everyone he talked into following his scheme in order to save his own skin, thereby parlaying his criminal actions into a career as an “impeachment expert” for the next five decades. CNN has him on regularly, because it doesn’t matter how sketchy your past is, if you are trashing Republicans, they’ve got a place for you.

Dean has coincidentally managed to write a book opining that every Republican president since Reagan should be impeached. Oddly enough, he never wrote such a book about Clinton or Obama.

For Pelosi to take Dean’s idiotic advice and follow through on it is actually surprising, as she’s always been painted as much better tactician than that. But she had lost control of the situation long ago, practically being shoved off the cliff of impeachment by her left-wing base and numerous talking heads.

Such a move to withhold the articles never made any sense at all. It allowed Trump to move past the scandal, McConnell to ignore it, and for any chance at momentum to evaporate. A prosecutor doesn’t threaten to not charge someone if they won’t plead guilty because that would be pretty stupid. But that’s essentially what Pelosi did and it has now cost her any opportunity of making further political hay out of the matter.

Sure, the news networks will foam at the mouth once the trial starts, but for all intents and purposes, this is over. The American people have moved on and Trump is enjoying one of the best stretches of his presidency. Pelosi was probably never holding a winning hand, but you’d still think she’d be smart enough not to pour gasoline on the table and toss a match. Her strategy was just monumentally dumb.