A Shocking Suggestion From Speaker Pelosi

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The New York Sun

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s suggestion that President Trump emulate President Nixon and resign is, in our opinion, a shocking démarche unworthy of her office. And a glimpse into the predicament of the Democrats, who, though they began beating the drums for impeachment more than three years ago, still don’t seem to know what charges to lay against the president.

Mrs. Pelosi hauled out Nixon in her interview on the Columbia Broadcasting System, where Margaret Brennan asked the speaker whether the President would get, “as he says,” to “confront his accuser.” The question was met with a slippery evasion that began with Mrs. Pelosi snapping, “What do you mean confront his accuser? Confront the whistleblower?”

“Presumably, that’s what he means,” Ms. Brennan said.

“Well,” Mrs. Pelosi huffed, “I will make sure he does not intimidate the whistleblower.”

Then again, too, Mr. Trump wasn’t asking to intimidate the whistleblower. He has been pointing out that he’s being brought up for impeachment on a complaint by a person he has been, in the resulting proceedings, unable to confront. That, it seems to the President and to millions of other Americans, ourselves included, to be crosswise with the spirit of the Rights Bill.

Then Mrs. Pelosi assured Ms. Brennan that the President can come before the committee and talk. Which is not what Ms. Brennan or Mr. Trump had asked about. Then Mrs. Pelosi qualified it by saying “speak all the truth that he wants,” which we took to be a sly underscoring of the fact that he would be facing a perjury trap. Ms. Brennan reacted by saying, “You don’t expect him to do that?”

To which Mrs. Pelosi said: “If he wants to take the oath of office.” Which we took, again, to be a warning that they’d have an ear out for perjury. And with that she called it “a really sad thing” and then summoned the ghost of Richard Nixon. “I mean,” the Speaker said on live television, “what the president did was so much worse than even what Richard Nixon did.”

Given that the House hasn’t yet said what Mr. Trump did, that struck us as a bit rich. “At some point,” she said, “Richard Nixon cared about the country enough to recognize that this could not continue.” It was plainly a backhanded — that’s the Pelosi method — way of suggesting Mr. Trump resign the presidency. What an extraordinary thing to be done on live television or any other venue.

Amazing, actually. For our part, we opposed Nixon’s resignation at the time and ever since. It was outrageous for Senators Goldwater and Scott to go over to the White House and, in effect, urge the president to resign. The House hadn’t even voted out articles of impeachment (the Judiciary Committee had but the House hadn’t). And the Senate hadn’t had a chance to properly weigh even a particle of evidence.

In the case of President Trump, though, no committee of the House, let alone the House itself, has voted out a single charge. When Ms. Brennan asked the Speaker whether “bribery” would be one of the charges, Mrs. Pelosi retorted, “I have no idea.” Then she said: “Well, there’s not even a decision made to impeach the president. This is a finding of fact, unfolding of the truth. And then a decision will be made.”

So the Speaker of the House goes on national television to suggest that President Trump resign without disclosing whether the President is likely to be impeached or what the charges would be. It’s just Democratic Party demagoguery pure and simple, and soon people are going to start asking why Mrs. Pelosi is such an all-fired hurry to run the president out of office without a trial in the Senate at all.


The New York Sun

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