Halloween is long over, but the ‘horror movie’ of an impeachment will continue into the new year

Donald Trump just got one of his wishes. He will definitely go down in history. But it will be as the first U.S. president to have been impeached in the 21st century. Previously there was just one each in the 19th (Johnson) and the 20th (Clinton).

On October 12, 2019 I blogged about Are we headed for a parody inversion or a caricature convergence? We have achieved a caricature convergence – I can no longer tell if headlines about the impeachment are coming from a satire site like The Onion or real news sites like CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC. There was an article on October 28, 2019 in the Washington Post titled ‘It feels like a horror movie’: Republicans feel anxious and adrift in defending Trump.

 

As Paul Brandus said in a USA Today article on December 19, 2019 Impeachment: President Trump only has himself to blame. We got here via a long series of his terrible decisions. One of the worst was to turn loose his private attorney to prematurely dig up dirt on Joe Biden, months before he could win the primary and actually become Trump’s opponent in the upcoming election. Then there was that infamous phone call with Ukraine. The context made clear it was a shakedown (an attempt at bribery, which is impeachable). President Trump’s description of it as “a perfect call” or even a “totally perfect call” is laughable – it truly was awful. That call led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to finally turn the tables and reluctantly unleash an impeachment inquiry. And then it became a “which hunt” rather than a “witch hunt”– which things go in Articles of Impeachment.

Trump likely will not be voted against in his trial by the Republican-controlled Senate, and get to remain in office to run for reelection. But large questions about his family business finances remain, given his income tax returns are still hidden. Presumably they could explain his actions.

The country will have to survive this prolonged media circus, but there will be more colossal distractions and a waste of time and money before it ends. Meanwhile over in Moscow, Beijing, Damascus, and Teheran they are laughing at us.

The image of a Frankenstein monster was adapted from a drawing at Wikimedia Commons.