Miranda Devine: Election result is the only Trump verdict that counts
US President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is a farcical temper tantrum aimed at overturning the result of the 2016 election, writes Miranda Devine. And the gambit is backfiring.
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As the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump opens in the US Senate, two images on the front page of the New York Post last week encapsulate this surreal moment in American history.
In one photo, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is signing the impeachment papers and in the other, the President is signing a breakthrough trade deal with China.
Pelosi signed with 30 fancy gold pens engraved with her name, using each pen to draw a single stroke, and then triumphantly handed them out as impeachment souvenirs to her grinning colleagues.
“The House’s partisan process distilled into one last perfect visual,” Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted. “A transparently political exercise from beginning to end.”
Trump, by contrast, used a $2.99 Sharpie pen to sign the “phase one” trade deal with China which promises to enrich America by $200 billion over the next two years.
That was Wednesday, and the next day Trump’s approval level hit a near record high of 51 per cent, at least according to the most positive pollster, Rasmussen.
It’s hard to convey the political polarisation of America in the Trump era.
It makes Australia’s last decade of political dysfunction look like a picnic.
Trump Derangement Syndrome afflicts Democrats so deeply they have lost sight of the main game, winning the November election.
They are demanding Trump be removed from office now over allegations he attempted to pressure Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter over their business dealings with a corrupt Ukrainian energy company.
“President Trump’s continuing presence in office undermines the integrity of our democratic processes and endangers our national security,” the Democrat impeachment managers wrote in a 107-page trial brief.
MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: Impeachment stench is an electoral gift for Trump
But their case is astonishingly flimsy, and contains no evidence of the high crimes and misdemeanours required for impeachment, not even a “quid pro quo”.
It is a farce, the culmination of a three-year temper tantrum aimed at overturning the result of the 2016 election.
The opportunity cost, for Congress, the White House and Chief Justice John Roberts who has to preside over the Senate trial, is enormous.
Instead of making life better for Americans, they are caught up in an ultimately pointless exercise that just deepens divisions in the country.
The fact is the Democrats still don’t have a candidate capable of beating Trump in a fair contest in November so their aim is to weaken him before the campaign. They are like the picadors and banderilleros in a bullfight who drive lances into the bull’s back to cripple him before the matador enters the ring to finish him off.
But at this point the gambit is backfiring.
The president’s popularity has only risen, Republicans are united around him, his base is animated, fundraising is up, with $200 million in the bank already.
In crucial swing-state polls, voters are against impeachment.
A recent Des Moines Register survey found 48 per cent of Iowa voters say Trump should not be removed from office, while just 40 per cent say he should.
Although it rankles with him, Trump is even joking about it. In a speech to farmers in Austin, Texas on the weekend, he listed his achievements, then riffed: “And what do I get out it? Tell me. I get impeached! That’s what I get out of it. By these radical left lunatics, I get impeached. But that’s okay”.
All the Democrats have achieved is a short-term morale boost for Trump-demented supporters and a distraction from their internal civil war between the hard left, represented by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and the moderates, represented by Biden. Hating Trump is the only thing unifying the Democrats.
Reflecting the confusion, the New York Times was unable to make up its mind about who to endorse this week and wound up choosing both Warren and mid-west moderate Amy Klobuchar.
By endorsing two women, the Times hoped to avenge Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat, as it makes clear in an editorial which accuses the “incumbent president” of “white nativism”, “brazen corruption”, “escalating culture wars” and “a judiciary stacked with ideologues”.
MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: Impeachment ruse just an attempt to overturn 2016 election
The Senate will sit now for six days a week, starting with two 12-hour days each for the two sides to make their opening arguments.
But with 67 votes needed to remove Trump from office, it would require 20 Republican Senators to vote with the Democrats, which isn’t happening, so a speedy trial is expected.
Trump ally Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News on Sunday the President wants to get impeachment out of the way before he delivers his state of the union speech on February 4.
The goal for Trump is to be exonerated in such a way that the Democratic-controlled Congress is shamed for using impeachment as a partisan weapon to enhance their electoral chances.
Or, as Trump’s lawyers put it, “a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election, now just months away”.
In the end, the only verdict that counts on the Trump presidency is the one the voters deliver this November.
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Abbott a hit at Hockey’s DC farewell
Tony Abbott was a surprise guest at outgoing US ambassador Joe Hockey’s farewell party in Washington, DC, on the weekend.
While he was humble about his recent firefighting efforts, the former prime minister acknowledged that this summer’s bushfires are worse than any he has seen in his 20 years with the RFS.
Hockey said his former boss had spent three days a week since September away from home fighting fires on the north and south coasts.
“He’s a man of great integrity, he’s a very decent human being,” Hockey said.
Abbott drew laughter from the crowd of 350 when he sympathised with Hockey having to work with “at least two of the last four prime ministers [who] have had narcissistic personality disorder”. No guesses which two he meant.
Hockey and Abbott have remained close since losing their jobs as PM and Treasurer. So Abbott was delighted to receive a giant cheque on the night for $648,159 for a bushfire relief fund, presented by Hockey’s mutual friend with Donald Trump, golfer Greg Norman.
The money was raised by the American Australian Association, of which Hockey’s wife Melissa Babbage is a board member.
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Say no to Greens agenda
You’d think Gladys Berejiklian and her government would have learned a lesson from the furious reaction to their abortion ambush last year that nearly split the party.
When the voters re-elected a Coalition government, it wasn’t to enact a Greens-left cultural agenda. Quite the opposite.
And yet, here we are again. In the middle of the bushfire crisis, the egregious Nationals MP Trevor Khan decided to launch a new euthanasia campaign, in cahoots with a Greens MP, Cate Faehrmann.
How can a party that is meant to represent country people be so out of touch?
It was only a little over two years ago that Khan’s last euthanasia bill failed to pass.
Why can’t he take no for an answer?
The dangers of institutionalised euthanasia are clear when you look at Belgium, where it has been legal for almost 20 years.
Belgians went from assisted suicide for the terminally ill to the sanctioned killing of inconvenient humans, children as young as nine, people with disabilities, the elderly and the mentally ill, as an article in the American journal First Things recently pointed out.
Three doctors in Belgium currently are being prosecuted for illegal euthanasia.
One of the cases was a 39-year-old woman who was suffering from depression over a broken romance.
This is the inevitable slippery slope that Australia will also endure if Khan ever gets his way.
Miranda Devine is in New York through 2020 to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph.
Originally published as Miranda Devine: Election result is the only Trump verdict that counts
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