Democrats have officially started the process to try to impeach President Donald Trump again, issuing an Article of Impeachment alleging that President Donald Trump “engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States.”
NEWS: The House charges Trump with one article of impeachment: inciting an insurrection. The House will vote later this week. pic.twitter.com/L9ecR8VFxR
— Lauren Fox (@FoxReports) January 11, 2021
But in his Jan. 6 speech, Trump did not call for violence. In fact, in his speech, he called for people to act “peacefully” and “patriotically,” a specific rejection of violence.
He further said: “You’re the real people. You’re the people that built this nation. You’re not the people that tore down this nation.”
The president did also say: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
And he added in a bit of irony: “Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy.”
That would make it very hard to support a legal case of incitement, as George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley has already opined. Not only doesn’t the evidence support a legal case, it militates against it.
Here’s the thing. You can say a lot of things about his rally speech, and there’s no question that he railed about the election. But the last time I checked, questioning the election wasn’t a crime — although the Democrats are trying to make it one. There were legitimate Constitutional questions about whether state officials were operating within the bounds of the laws/rules set by the state legislatures. When they do not, that’s unconstitutional. There were sworn affidavits about irregularities. Nothing that Trump said to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was about doing anything illegal; it was about showing him the evidence they had about votes being illegal. But Raffensperger refused to hear it.
Meanwhile, if we want to talk about inciting violence, we could point to the Democrats who have encouraged violence against Trump officials, like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA).
If the problem is the rhetoric about questioning a presidential election, we could go back over the past four years and point to all kinds of remarks by the Democrats, who claimed he wasn’t a legitimately elected president, 71 of whom sat out the inauguration, as leftists rioted against the government and his election.
Let’s just talk about this tweet from Nancy Pelosi from 2017, which is still up and has no tag on it saying it’s false from Twitter.
Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts.
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) May 16, 2017
What they really mean is that Republicans aren’t allowed to question, and their speech shall be criminalized, but Democrats can say and do whatever they want to actually undermine a duly-elected president.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is indicating there wouldn’t be any hearing from the Senate, at least while he’s in charge.
Why are Democrats so concentrated on this when he’s leaving in nine days? Because they want to kill his chances of running again. That’s what it’s all about; it has nothing to do with “safety” or whatever other nonsense they are pitching.
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