When it comes to impeachment, Nancy Pelosi is playing President Donald Trump like the proverbial fiddle.
The Speaker of the House is refusing to turn over two articles of impeachment to the Senate until her counterpart in the upper chamber, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) until he agrees to lay out exactly what he has planned for the upcoming trial.
Two former aides to George W. Bush, however, think Pelosi has another reason for not moving quickly to the Senate trial.
Paul Rosenzweig, who served as the Department of Homeland Security’s deputy assistant secretary for policy, put forth this theory on Twitter:
I think I may have figured out why @SpeakerPelosi is holding the articles of impeachment (or at least part of the reason): She wants to make sure that when POTUS gives the SOTU on Feb 4, he is still under impeachment. /1
— Paul Rosenzweig (@RosenzweigP) December 30, 2019
Imagine what it would be like if he got to give the SOTU having been cleared by the Senate — it would be a full-blown triumphal rant. But if the impeachment is still pending, it might, instead, be an unhinged narcissistic screed of almost unimaginable insanity. /2
— Paul Rosenzweig (@RosenzweigP) December 30, 2019
Just think of how painful it would be for 53 Republican Senators to sit in the halls of Congress, watching a live meltdown on national TV. That, alone, would be worth the price of admission. Maybe I’m wrong and this hasn’t crossed her mind — but I love the idea. /fin
— Paul Rosenzweig (@RosenzweigP) December 30, 2019
That led David Frum, who was a speechwriter for Bush, to expand on what Rosenzweig had said, noting during an appearance on MSNBC:
“If there’s been a trial and there’s been a sham hearing and the Senate has slapped together an acquittal, imagine the tone of President Trump on the 4th of February: triumphal, obnoxious, overbearing, ‘I win, I win, you lose, you lose.’
“If the impeachment is still pending on the 4th of February, can you imagine how insane that State of the Union is going to be?”
Frum then echoed what his former colleague had said:
“It’s going to be an hour of paranoia and grievance and narcissism of a kind that is going to terrify, as Paul suggests, that will terrify even many of his supporters. So if it’s not wrapped up by the 4th of February, that could have very dramatic consequences.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqi6I-z6XCM&feature=emb_logo
Nancy Pelosi knows how to push Trump’s buttons, and as we may see in February at the State of the Union, she may have just laid the perfect opportunity for him to self-destruct on national television, all but guaranteeing he loses badly come the 2020 election.
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