Donald Trump faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles in his unlikely anti-establishment quest for the presidency. Now he may face an obstacle designed to prevent him from finishing his presidency: an effort to impeach him.
The Washington Free Beacon reported in late January that it had obtained a confidential David Brock memo listing the “ways the Democratic operative plans to use his numerous organizations to take down President Donald Trump through impeachment,” the site writes.
Brock (shown), once a conservative investigative reporter who switched sides and later founded the leftist propaganda site Media Matters for America, discussed his scheme late last month in a weekend conference with 100 liberal donors at Turnberry Isle Resort in Aventura, Florida. Reporting on their agenda, the Beacon tells us:
Brock plans to defeat Trump “through impeachment,” using American Bridge, his liberal super PAC, as the main vehicle to do so.
“No other progressive organization has the resources and assets that American Bridge has amassed over the past several election cycles to hold Trump, his administration, and the politicians accountable,” the 44-page confidential memo states.
“Only Bridge stands ready with staff already hired, Trump’s web of business ties mapped out, and a massive video archive at our fingertips.”
…Brock’s group claims to have more than 20,000 hours of video, 289 candidate research books, and the largest available archive of Trump research in the Democratic Party. Within weeks of the election, Bridge launched a “Trump War Room,” which has already scrutinized Trump’s transition team and will continue to watch the personnel, policies, and practices of the administration.
“… American Bridge will use every means at its disposal to hold Trump and his administration accountable—including FOIA requests, lawsuits, and regulatory complaints. As the progressive movement’s political research clearinghouse, we will arm our allies to join us in taking on the administration through paid advertising, earned media, grassroots efforts, and legal recourse.”
Of course, all this would be fine were the goal to hold Trump accountable relative to the Constitution. But Brock is about politics, not principle.
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Apparently, however, his power-principle scheme is off to a low-power start. He had announced the creation of a “Breitbart of the Left” operation code-named “True Blue Media,” yet Heatstreet reported February 7 that the initiative is hobbled by a lack of resources and the resignation of its presumptive CEO — who complained about the lack of resources.
Whatever the case, the Brock scheme underlines an important fact: The riotous mentality displayed by the Left’s modern-day Brownshirts in the street is also being applied in the political arena, the judiciary, and in activist circles — not to mention the media, academia, and entertainment. And this won’t stop.
Yet this brings us to an interesting point. Obviously, the Left would resist and try to undermine Trump at every turn regardless, with most of its members driven by raging emotion. What, however, if there also are some Machiavellian sorts among them endeavoring to make it so hard for the president to govern, people who are trying to paint him into so tight a corner, that he feels compelled to break out of it in a way they can portray as an impeachable offense?
Consider Judge James Robart’s patently unconstitutional decision halting Trump’s immigration order. I’ve written here and here about how judicial supremacy is not constitutionally mandated, usurps the people’s power, and doesn’t have to be respected by the president. He could simply ignore Robart’s opinion.
What I wanted to include in my most recent piece, however, but didn’t due to concern over length, is that I wouldn’t recommend Trump ignore the courts just yet. After all, judicial supremacy is so accepted a status quo that such a move would be painted as “illegal” — and as an abuse of power justifying impeachment. The effort could be successful, too, with establishment Republicans joining in with Democrats.
This is ironic, of course, and illustrates how far from constitutionalism we’ve strayed. The usurpative judges should be impeached or their circuits eliminated (a power Congress has); instead, a man who resisted their overreach by exercising his lawful constitutional authority would face removal from office.
So before Trump could contend with the courts without courting disaster, more people need to be educated on the judiciary’s proper role and an anti-judicial-supremacy movement must be sparked, with governors encouraged to ignore unconstitutional rulings.
For example, state executives could announce that they will henceforth ignore the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges faux-marriage decision (though don’t hold your breath waiting). They likely could do this without facing impeachment.
The bottom line is that in pursuing an anti-establishment agenda, a far-reaching endeavor, President Trump cannot go it alone. An anti-establishment movement is just that — a movement, not merely a man. As Benjamin Franklin said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, “We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Photo: AP Images
