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The calls to remove Donald Trump from office began before Donald Trump assumed office. They’ve wanted him gone from pre-day one and remain determined to run him off Pennsylvania Avenue by hook, crook, or any other means necessary.

If not for firing James Comey, then go to Michael Flynn. If that peters out there’s Stormy and Avenatti. No traction? Russian collusion. Didn’t get him? Ukraine’s up next. The effort to oust Trump has been nonstop for three years and shows no signs of slowing.

Why? Why is the inside-the-beltway permanent political class so determined to send Trump packing? Because he’s not a member of “The Club.”

Yes Trump is ruff, gruff, combative, and bombastic, but there’s lots of Club members who are all of those things, yet they’ve been around Washington for decades. Truth is that The Club has been effectively insulating itself from the American people, enriching itself and its family members by burying self-pay schemes in the largess of government, and Trump is a threat. There are dark corners inside The Club’s clubhouse, lots of them, and Trump is wandering around with a flashlight.

Upon her private email server being subpoenaed by a congressional investigative committee, Hillary Clinton sent the computer to be professionally wiped clean of all files and then turned it over. Yet, the same people who expressed no interest in pursuing that clear obstruction of justice have been calling secondhand witnesses to a phone call, whose transcript has already been made public!

In his amazing tell-all book, "Drain the Swamp: How Washington Corruption Is Worse Than You Think," U.S. Congressman Ken Buck (R-CO) describes how, upon his arrival as a freshman legislator, he bounced from cocktail party to cocktail party, soiree to soiree: “Waiters swarmed the rich, red carpets offering equally rich hors d’oeuvres. Fancy cheese and fruit trays decorated circular tables laden with salmon and tenderloin appetizers. Elegant orchids adorned the tables and wine flowed freely. The entire room swelled with the dulcet strains of a string quartet.”

All this opulence caused Buck to wonder, “Who’s paying for all of this?!”

We of course know the answer. Club members have at their direct disposal hundreds of billions of dollars and indirectly, multiple times more. There’s a reason they’re more concerned about Trump’s inquiry into Joe Biden’s dealings than they are with Biden’s dealings. Washington Club members have been money laundering taxpayer dollars guised up as “foreign aid,” “military aid,” and “humanitarian aid” back to themselves through family, friends, foreign nations and corporations for decades. Ukraine is not unique.

While he was vice president, Joe Biden's brother, James, with no real background in housing and real estate development, went to work for a company that was then awarded a $1.5 billion federal contract to (re)construct houses in Iraq. How does that happen?

Also while he was vice president, Biden's son, Hunter, with no real background in oil and gas, secured a paid position on one of Ukraine's largest gas company's (Burisma Corp.) board that compensated him $83,000 per month.

How many companies hire someone with no experience for $83,000 per year, let alone per month?

Maxine Waters (D-CA), who won her last reelection bid with 76 percent of the vote, has paid her daughter, Karen Waters, $750,000 of campaign-funded money to help get mailers out. (Now imprisoned) former Florida Representative Corrine Brown set up a phony charity to grift money from donors under the guise of helping the poor, money which she paid to herself to support a lavish lifestyle.

These egregious examples of self-enrichment are Democrats, but such activities are certainly not unknown on the other side of the political aisle. It’s been going on for decades, allowed by politicians who were/are either too green to know how the game works, are involved and complicit themselves, or have learned to look the other way rather than blow a whistle, lest their political careers come to a screeching halt by those in power above them who control the (campaign) purse strings and (committee assignment) keys to purgatory.

Since forever, The Club has been cutting deals and running scams for themselves and their families through which they end up filthy rich, incredibly powerful, travel the world at no personal expense, and eat quail on crackers—all not only behind their constituents’ backs, but with those constituents’ dollars.

In Trump there’s finally someone at the helm who is not a part of the cabal, not a part of The Club, who has his own money, whose children don't need shady, foreign board of directors’ side deals. And, he's a threat to blow the whole thing up. He's shining lights into corners that they prefer remain dark. They must get rid of him; they can't allow this outsider and his flashlight to run roughshod inside the clubhouse. Dark corners must remain dark, no candles allowed. So for three straight years, they’ve looked for something, anything to get his wick snuffed out.

That's what's really going on.