OPINION:
Former President Donald Trump will present his impeachment defense on Feb. 2, which also happens to be Groundhog Day.
As in the 1993 movie starring Bill Murray, Democrats are locked in a time warp. Instead of repeatedly reliving a day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, however, they’re in Washington, D.C., still trying to overturn the 2016 presidential election.
This is something they’ve been doing every day since January 2017, and even before, if you count the FBI’s treachery in 2016 under President Obama.
Anyway, as historians will eventually scribble, Democrats finally managed to count three million votes in Punxsutawney alone to win Pennsylvania in the wee hours of Nov. 4, 2020, securing the White House for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Or maybe it was four million. I lose track.
Victorious Democrats now want to punish anyone who suggests the election was not squeaky clean. They mock anyone who inconveniently points out that affidavit-supported reports of vote fraud never got serious consideration.
But just getting rid of Mr. Trump by every means necessary, isn’t enough. The man must be utterly destroyed, along with those who backed him. Public Broadcasting Service’s former chief counsel, Michael Beller, was caught on tape by Project Veritas musing about sending conservatives’ children to “reeducation camps.” California Democratic National Committee member David Atkins tweeted, “how [do] you deprogram 75 million people? Where do you start? Fox? Facebook? We have to start thinking in terms of post-WWII Germany or Japan.”
Democrats first impeached Mr. Trump in December 2019 over a July phone call to Ukraine’s president in which Mr. Trump asked about an actual scandal involving Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Then they impeached Mr. Trump again on Jan. 13, 2021, charging him with a single article of “incitement of insurrection” over the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot.
The trial is slated for Feb. 9. As per instructions from the Bidens’ Chinese Communist masters, er, benefactors, er, Hunter’s business partners, Mr. Trump will have to wear a Maoist dunce hat during the entire proceeding. As for the Chinese, they’re happy and getting happier. Mr. Biden has canceled the XL Pipeline, making China the largest potential customer for Canada’s tar sands oil.
Conviction of Mr. Trump is unlikely. On Jan. 25, led by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, all but five Republican senators — Mitt Romney, Pat Toomey, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Ben Sasse — moved to declare the trial unconstitutional, primarily because Mr. Trump is no longer in office.
The “incitement” charge is absurd and Democrats know it. They should all face impeachment for using colorful language like “fight” to energize their supporters. Democrats not only egged on violent protesters in deadly riots in dozens of American cities over six months, but when a Democratic mob in 2011 occupied Wisconsin’s Capitol for three weeks and issued threats to Republicans, Nancy Pelosi called it “an impressive show of democracy in action.”
Mr. Trump at no time urged rally goers in D.C. to commit violence. He gave a spirited defense of his charge that the election had been rife with fraud, and urged his followers to “fight like hell.” He told them to make their presence known outside the Capitol, but to do so peaceably. Authorities are still getting to the bottom of how the riot got underway, with evidence emerging that it was planned, not a spontaneous reaction to Mr. Trump’s speech.
In any case, the riot was disastrous, costing at least two lives and becoming a perfect excuse to justify communist-style shutdowns and censorship, such as Big Tech crushing Parler.
The Democrats’ impeachment scenario and conduct are right out of “1984.” In George Orwell’s novel, a totalitarian regime’s media manipulate people daily with scapegoating, misinformation and stoking identity group grievances. It’s a nightmare version of Groundhog Day.
Inhabitants of fictional Oceania endure a daily ritual in which ruling party members vent their rage toward an opposition leader and the enemies of Big Brother. Everyone must perform The Two-Minutes Hate ritual, and it leads up to Hate Week. In our time, this function is carried out by CNN, MSNBC, the other major networks, and The Washington Post and The New York Times. Their objects of hate are Donald Trump, Americans who voted for him, Whites, especially White males, Christians who hold to biblical morality, our market-based economy and America itself.
The so-called “journalists” mine every vein of grievance possible, informing us that America is a terrible, racist land that will be healed only when White supremacy (and by implication Christianity) is wiped out and Mr. Trump is led away in chains.
But resistance is already building, and it can take many forms.
This past week’s takedown of greedy hedge funds by a rebellious band of investors who bought up stock in GameStop Corp., AMC Entertainment Holdings and Blackberry Ltd. shocked the financial community. They foiled an expected “short sale” that would have profited a few at the expense of many.
Only Wall Street is supposed to be able to manipulate the stock market. Only The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN are allowed to report the news.
Or maybe not.
At some point, even “Groundhog Day” ended. Perhaps the American people are tired of waking up every day to the Two-Minutes Hate ritual and will respond accordingly for the sake of their children and grandchildren.
• Robert Knight is a contributor to The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
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