After House Democrats voted to approve two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refused to pass the articles over to the Senate.
By not doing so, that put the whole process — rushed through by Democrats — in limbo. In fact, one top witness for the Democrats during the two weeks of hearings said Trump isn’t actually impeached until the articles are delivered to the Senate.
But radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh said he knows why Pelosi is withholding the articles: She’s counting on “the idiocy of her base.”
“This is all about the blemish,” Limbaugh said of Pelosi’s motives. “This is all about the asterisk. This is all about the black mark. This is all about 2020. This is all about Donald Trump was impeached, period. Not Donald Trump was impeached and acquitted in a Senate trial. Donald Trump was impeached. And she is counting on the fact that the idiocy of her base will think that means that Trump has been claimed illegitimate and unqualified and mission accomplished. That’s it.”
After the vote in the House on Wednesday, Pelosi told reporters that she might delay the handoff of the articles because she thinks Republicans in the Senate won’t hold a fair trial.
“We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side,” Pelosi said. “And I would hope that that will be soon. … So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us. So hopefully it will be fair. And when we see what that is, we’ll send our managers.”
The next day, reporters pressed Pelosi to explain her actions, but she refused. “I’m not going to answer any more questions on this,” a defiant Pelosi said.
But Limbaugh said how the Senate conducts the trail of Trump is “none of her business.”
“All she’s really saying is she’s not going to send those things over there if it appears that there’s going to be an acquittal because that cancels out everything they’re doing here. It really isn’t any more complicated than that,” the conservative host said.
And Limbaugh said the mainstream media is skewing the story.
“All the leftist and Democrat analysts on TV today are trying to cover up for it by claiming, ‘No, Pelosi has leverage. Pelosi’s got all the leverage.’ Pelosi doesn’t have any leverage. As [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell said — I’m gonna’ paraphrase, and this was a great line — McConnell said how in the world can she have leverage when she won’t send us what we don’t want? He doesn’t want those articles. He’d be very happy if she never sent them over, just declare a mistrial and be done with it,” he said.
Harvard legal scholar Noah Feldman, one of the Democrats’ top witnesses to appear before a House committee in favor of impeaching the president, said this week that Trump may not have even been impeached.
“Impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution does not consist merely of the vote by the House, but of the process of sending the articles to the Senate for trial,” Feldman wrote in an op-ed. “Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution: The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment. And the Senate must actually hold a trial,” he wrote, noting that if the House holds the articles, Trump could argue that he was never actually impeached.