Trump’s Letter To Pelosi Highlights His Unfitness For Office
President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (AP)
Ahead of Wednesday’s impeachment vote, President Trump had a full-blown meltdown. The White House released a 6-page letter that read like one of Trump’s infamous angry Twitter threads but with a presidential seal.
Rather than sending a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that made substantive legal arguments or credible defenses of President Trump’s conduct, the letter served as an unhinged airing of authoritarian grievances. It was unlikely written by Trump himself but contained his worst sentiments nonetheless. While this was a desperate attempt to claim the impeachment inquiry is illegitimate, the effect of the letter did something else entirely: it proved Donald Trump is terrified of becoming the 3rd President of the United States to be impeached in the House of Representatives.
No Trolls. No Bots. Just News.
The letter started off with a brazen act of projection. President Trump accused House Democrats of an “unconstitutional abuse of power” in their effort to impeach him. Trump accused House Democrats of violating their oaths and dared to claim that Democrats threaten to “destroy that which our Founders pledged their very lives to build.” As we’ve reported before, President Trump’s conduct is exactly what the Founding Fathers feared when they crafted the impeachment clauses.
Trump went on to repeat the same false impeachment defenses that Republicans have been repeating for months. It would take an entire article to break all that down, so we won’t dive into all that right now. Luckily we’ve already written that article.
The letter then launched into a rambling, angry tirade calling impeachment unfair and falsely accusing the Democrats of an “illegal partisan coup.” In one of the lines from the letter that is getting the most attention, President Trump took his witch hunt cries to a new level of depravity by comparing himself to innocent women who were executed:
More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.
The Mayor of Salem Massachusetts weighed in, pointing out just how ridiculous a claim this was:
Oy vey…again
Learn some history:
1) Salem 1692 = absence of evidence+powerless, innocent victims were hanged or pressed to death2)#Ukrainegate 2019 = ample evidence, admissions of wrongdoing+perpetrators are among the most powerful+privileged
Kim Driscoll, Mayor of Salem, MA https://t.co/AFR14jLktU
— Kim Driscoll (@MayorDriscoll) December 17, 2019
CNN’s Jake Tapper, far from a partisan anchor, said this letter could’ve been written by North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un:
Video: CNN’s Jake Tapper says this about Trump’s letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responding to his impending #impeachment: “[H]onestly this is almost a letter like Kim Jong-un wrote” pic.twitter.com/zMGN0BTV55
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 17, 2019
In the letter, President Trump went on to claim:
One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again.
In reality, 100 years from now, kids will be reading this letter in history class stunned. This letter is toxic. It is weakness. It is depravity. It is insecurity. It is un-American.
Looking to make a difference? Consider signing one of these sponsored petitions:When asked about the letter, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) didn’t dignify it with a full-throated response and also sent a letter of her own to members of her caucus.
Pelosi’s first reaction to Trump’s letter. “I don’t have a reaction. It’s ridiculous,” she told me. I asked her why no reaction: “I mean, I haven’t full read it. We’ve been working. I’ve seen the essence of it. It’s really sick.” pic.twitter.com/pPhvsb0axh
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 17, 2019
NEW: Speaker Pelosi sends letter to Democratic lawmakers on eve of House impeachment vote: “If we do not act, we will be derelict in our duty.” pic.twitter.com/LGHBBocTyO
— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) December 17, 2019
In spite of Republican lies, the facts at the center of this impeachment inquiry have remained the same. President Trump attempted to extort foreign election interference from the Ukrainian government in the form of investigations into his political targets. In furtherance of this scheme, President Trump deployed multiple allies, in and outside his administration, to pressure Ukraine to launch the investigations into the Bidens and the Russia-created Ukraine meddling conspiracy theory.
At the core of this extortion campaign was the fact the Trump Administration withheld military aid and a White House meeting from Ukraine, and it was explicitly made clear to Ukraine that they needed to launch the probes in order to receive either. After President Trump was made aware of the existence of the whistleblower complaint regarding his July 25 phone call with President Zelensky, and the House launched their investigation, Trump released the aid on September 11. Ukraine has still not obtained a White House meeting with President Trump.
House Democrats are set to vote on both articles of impeachment, Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress, tomorrow.
