We don’t hate Punchbowl News. Their guy Jake Sherman is a freaking bloodhound and his reporting has been an invaluable source for National Zero through the great many dramas on Capitol Hill during the last year or so, while their daily morning newsletter more often than not has something useful even if it’s usually buried under dry jargon about appropriations negotiations and what not.

However now for the second time this autumn we’re going to have to call them out for leading with a section about the House GOP’s inept effort to impeach President Joe Biden that reads like it was dictated word-for-word by malevolent razorback Elise Stefanik or some other MAGA asshole, writing that “swing-district Republicans look ready to green-light the Biden probe. And the political reality is that if this investigation is authorized, it may prove impossible to stop the momentum for Biden’s impeachment by the House,” before firing off a bunch of quotes from such members.

It’s only a little ways down that they acknowledge the reality that “there are still a number of Republicans cool on the idea, and impeaching Biden is still no sure bet,” before mentioning that Congressmen Ken Buck and Tom McClintock are still opposed. There are 222 Republicans in the House and they need 218 votes to pass an impeachment inquiry. George Santos will more likely than not be gone within the next 36 hours. Who did the math on the “impossible to stop the momentum”?

Now it’s only fair that if Punchbowl included such caveats that we do ours: Of course the holdouts could end up caving and the inquiry gets authorized. They are Republicans after all. A formal inquiry would certainly create “momentum” in that the expectation from the MAGA base is for them to follow through with it and actually impeach Biden – even though the entire time it will remain glaringly obvious that they’re just trying to find a way to work backward from that predetermined outcome.

We also get that sometimes they have to eat this kind of shit to maintain the access required to keep us informed. Too many libs fail to understand the broader utilitarianism at play here, constantly bitching about Maggie Haberman and Bob Woodward this or that – only for those same libs in the audience to thrill to the reporting when those two nail something entertaining and outrageous.

The better test of whether a Beltway outlet or reporter’s commitment is how well they manage that balancing act between keeping the public informed and laundering malign propaganda. Punchbowl clearly failed at that Thursday morning just as they – along with Politico Playbook and Axios – did back in September. It was the day after Kevin McCarthy hastily and unilaterally declared the impeachment inquiry was in a desperate bid to placate Matt Gaetz (which didn’t work).

We wrote that those three DC outlets seemed “to want to simply make it ‘feel’ like the GOP will have the wind at their backs and they’ll figure out how to paper over the complete void of evidence without having to worry about fierce rottwieler Dems like Dan Goldman, Jamie Raskin, Jasmine Crockett, and others tearing into them in hearings that’ll even be carried on Fox News” at the time.

How’d that take hold up?

In a way the weeks of chaos as the House GOP failed and failed and failed to elect a new speaker before finally settling on Mike Johnson was sort of a blessing for the effort as Comer and Company’s stunning incompetence got memory-holed by the overall House GOP’s stunning incompetence.

Now they’re trying to fire up the engine again, spurred by who the fuck knows. It could be Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell making Comer look like a total pussy, indicating that there’s going to be fights in court and the House GOP need to formalize the inquiry to authorize the subpoenas. It could be Mike Johnson desperately trying to quell the same restive elements in the House GOP that felled his weak and feckless predecessor with the same exact offering that failed. Probably a mix of both.

That’s the way CNN put it in their report on Wednesday. They even used the word “momentum” in it while quoting from a few of the same members that Punchbowl did. What they didn’t do is lead with an assurance that the MAGA chodes are in control of the situation, headlining it with “House Republicans push to formalize Biden impeachment inquiry to compel testimony but lack the votes.”

It doesn’t appear that any other ostensibly mainstream political news outlets framing this new “momentum” as a force stronger than the headwinds, not even Politico or Axios are with them this time around. The bottom line is it was as real as the evidence that is supposed to form the basis of this “inevitable” impeachment. That hasn’t changed yet, no matter how hard outlets like Punchbowl get strong-armed into making it sound like a sure thing. We’ll let you know when it does.