Not so long ago, CNN President Jeff Zucker gathered his minions on a morning conference call and commanded them to play up the ongoing impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives. "Impeachment, impeachment, impeachment!" Zucker squeaked. "Nothing else matters, yell about impeachment until your throat bleeds. That's an order!"

And with that, he slithered off back to his lair, deep beneath the CNN Center in the ice caves. And of course, the minions obeyed. They were afraid not to obey.

But we happen to disagree with Jeff Zucker. Now if you're a committed partisan, as he is, impeachment often looks like the most important story there is. But if you're not, sometimes it seems like about the fifth or sixth most important story playing out in America right now. There's an awful lot else going on. So that's pretty much how we've been covering the story on "Tucker Carlson Tonight," which is to say not very closely.

GOP REPS SAY SCHIFF STOPPED IMPEACHMENT WITNESS FROM ANSWERING CERTAIN GOP QUESTIONS

But there's some actual news to report. We want to take a moment to assess what exactly is happening with impeachment.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced that later this week, the House will hold a formal vote on procedures that could lead to a formal impeachment of President Trump at some point. And what exactly does that mean? Why is it happening? What will result from it? All of that, unfortunately, is still opaque. It's still not exactly clear what high crime the president supposedly committed. There's some disagreement on that question, actually, even on the left.

So to solve the riddle, we are taking you, as we often do when cloudy issues demand clarity, to the pride of Yale Law School -- the oracle of Newark, the single most famous bachelor vegan in the United States Senate. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Cory A. Booker, who will read to us from his newly released spoken word prose poem entitled, "Politics Be Damned."

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Dim the lights. Be still and listen to Cory.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., presidential candidate: Politics be damned. I have a job to do, which is to hold the executive accountable.

Politics be damned. This is our country. This is our Constitution.

Politics be damned right now. This is a sad day, a sad chapter in American history.

Politics be damned. It's time to do what is right.

And politics be damned. I just want to get the truth. I want to do my job.

Politics be damned. I swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. I need to do that.

The politics of this be damned.

So there you have it. "Politics be damned" more in sorrow than in anger, mister. This isn't about politics, Cory Booker says. It is about doing what's right, as it always is in Washington. And if you've got any doubt about that, he will say it again and again and again and again until you are too exhausted or hypnotized to protest, which ought to be a tip-off that, in fact, the opposite is true.

Washington may have two parties, but only one position on Ukraine is allowed here -- and Trump doesn't have it.

Actually, this is entirely about politics. There is no real crime behind the impeachment proceedings. Instead, the president's chief offense appears to be disagreeing with policies set by the bureaucratic state in Washington. How do we know that? Because they've essentially admitted it.

Over the past two weeks, the House has heard testimony from a diplomat called Bill Taylor, and then an Army lieutenant colonel called Alexander Vindman. Their statements, we are told, will sink President Trump. Maybe.

So what have they said? Well, to start, both Taylor and Vindman are intense Russia hawks. Both have testified that they want heavy American aid to Ukraine because they want to weaken Russia. Both have emphasized that they don't want any debate in the U.S. about these policies. They've said that out loud.

In his remarks, Vindman said that he opposed President Trump's phone call with the president of Ukraine for this reason: "I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play, which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it is thus far maintained." And the implication is that would be unacceptable.

Now Taylor said something almost identical to that. Here it is: "To restore Ukraine's independence, Russia must leave Ukraine. This has been and should continue to be a bipartisan U.S. foreign policy goal."

So in other words, Washington may have two parties, but only one position on Ukraine is allowed here -- and Trump doesn't have it.

His phone call was unacceptable because it might prevent America from automatically -- unthinkingly -- spending billions of dollars over many years to prop up a country that most Americans could not find on a globe at gunpoint.

There's just one problem with this arrangement. Voters disagree.

We know this because when he ran three years ago, President Trump didn't hide how he felt about U.S. foreign policy. He told voters that America was involved in too many pointless wars. He criticized then-President Obama for having bad relations with Russia. The Trump administration, he promised. would pursue better relations with Vladimir Putin.

Now, that may sound shocking, but in fact, it was not an unprecedented idea. Obama ran on something close to this in 2012, and the public supported it then, too. He won.

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But now that same idea isn't simply unpopular in Washington; our ruling class considers it illegal. Former CIA head John Brennan put it this way on Twitter: "As in previous times of national peril, we rely on our military, diplomats, intelligence officials, law enforcement officers and other courageous patriots to protect our liberties, freedom and democracy. May they stay resolute and strong despite corrupt political headwinds they face."

Got that? Unelected bureaucrats uphold -- wait for it -- "democracy." Elected officials subvert democracy. In John Brennan's Orwellian world, the most pressing and imminent threat to this republic is voters.

Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on Oct. 29, 2019.

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