On December 18th, 2019, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, with 3 defections and zero Republicans joining them, voted to approve two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, one for abuse of power and another for obstruction of Congress in refusing to participate in the inquiry.

There was no seriously disputing what Trump did. In June 2019, feeling threatened by Joe Biden’s lead in head-to-head matchups of 2020 polls he bought into a John Solomon conspiracy theory, using congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine as leverage to get its then-newly elected president Volodmir Zelensky to announce a reopened investigation of Biden’s son Hunter’s business dealings in the country, and attempted to cover it up – which in turn blew open thanks to a whistleblower on the White House’s National Security Council. By December 18th, 2020 all of the relevant facts were in hand. So were the alternative facts.

Republican opposition to the impeachment was disarrayed from start to finish. They were all over the place, couldn’t settle on a single coherent message as to why Trump should not be impeached. At first it was mostly silence. A handful of them such as Reps. Adam Kinzinger, Mark Amodei, Francis Rooney sounded almost like Democrats – and then they found a noose in their offices and fell back in line. Rooney was even forced into retirement. Lindsey Graham, ever the principled man’s man, set the goal posts and kept them on wheels. The problem was for both Congressional Republicans and regular non-workaday MAGA trolls was that the story was so relatively simple and straightforward – Trump abused his power and invited foreign interference into the 2020 election in more or less broad daylight, and admitted to having done so.

Contrast this to the Russian Collusion scandal, which was monstrously complicated and involved literally hundreds of characters. Trump and his ballsuckers had to dumb it down to “WITCH HUNT!”. With Ukraine however, it was the opposite: Since Dems can explain it in one or two sentences, Team MAGA needed to add additional unnecessary layers and characters to obfuscate the plot and get voters to tune out.

So they set out to do it, making up all sorts of ridiculous stories about the initial whistleblower and House inquiry witnesses. One particularly disgraceful episode surrounded the testimony of Army Lt Col. Alexander Vindman, a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant whose identity was weaponized against him in an eerie historical parallel to the Dreyfus affair of the French Third Republic. Because Vindman is Ukrainian, he had some skin in the game, and therefore was motivated to rat on Trump for withholding weaponry and cash needed to defend itself against Russian-backed insurgents in the Donbass region. That line of bullshit had the special distinction of inadvertently confirming that the whole thing had indeed happened, while pointlessly smearing the character of an Army officer with a sterling record of service.

None of it really worked. The White House adamantly refused to participate in the impeachment inquiry, fearing doing so would lend it legitimacy – and then by December of 2019 they were complaining that they never got a chance to argue their side. The talking points changed day to day. “Oh it was just hearsay”, “Well he released the aid, so no harm no foul”, “No laws were broken”, “Improper but not impeachable”, “But what about Hillary and the pizza place?”, and “This impeachment is unconstitutional!” were some of my favorites.

In the end however, the closest I saw to a real admission from a right winger that nothing mattered – that ethics, morals, good governance, norms, laws, and the constitution were of no consequence to Team MAGA was this exchange, with a Trump fan on The Hill:

SpartanWarrior✓ TEAM SOROS™ • a year ago
Trumpsters, you guys say a lot of shit that elicits cognitive dissonance. But calling Schiff a lying drama queen only to turn around and cheer on a complete closet case psycho like Jim Jordan is one of the bigger bricks thrown from your glass house.
Thu, 11/14/2019 8:48 PM on ‘Jordan calls Pelosi accusing Trump of bribery ‘ridiculous”

ACLUGLY SpartanWarrior✓ TEAM SOROS™ • a year ago
We don’t want open borders or socialism. It’s pretty simple.
Thu, 11/14/2019 8:49 PM on ‘Jordan calls Pelosi accusing Trump of bribery ‘ridiculous”

SpartanWarrior✓ TEAM SOROS™ ACLUGLY • a year ago
Yeah, it’s so simple that you copied and pasted that reply without actually reading my comment.
Thu, 11/14/2019 8:51 PM on ‘Jordan calls Pelosi accusing Trump of bribery ‘ridiculous”

ACLUGLY SpartanWarrior✓ TEAM SOROS™ • a year ago
I know where you stand Spartan. And the 500 would be beating the crap out you and throwing you out like that humpback in the movie.
Thu, 11/14/2019 8:57 PM on ‘Jordan calls Pelosi accusing Trump of bribery ‘ridiculous”

SpartanWarrior✓ TEAM SOROS™ ACLUGLY • a year ago
It’s the 300 Spartans, shitbrain.
Jesus Christ, lol. It’s the title of the goddamned movie and you can’t even get it right.
Thu, 11/14/2019 9:00 PM on ‘Jordan calls Pelosi accusing Trump of bribery ‘ridiculous”

I left in the last three comments because he clowned himself, but it was the second one that – at the time – I didn’t realize the significance of. ACLUGLY was tacitly acknowledging that the high crime and misdemeanor had been committed as described – and he didn’t care because that not having “open borders and socialism” bullshit was more important to him and anything was worth it to keep Trump in office – past the impeachment trial by ignoring the evidence presented and letting the offense slide, and past the election for another four years by torpedoing Joe Biden’s candidacy.

As I’ve written here before, we can now say that even though Trump survived impeachment, the inquiry and trial had the effect of pre-defanging their “October Surprises” about Hunter Biden. Finding out that all along there’s currently and has been since 2018 at least a low-level investigation by the DOJ into Hunter Biden is a pretty hilarious fuck you to the MAGA kids.

2020 has been a fucked up, exhausting, terrible year. Biden being the president-elect on December 18th, 2020 does feel a just little more satisfying when looked at through the lens of December 18th, 2019 – the day the fat orange bastard earned his black mark of ignominy.