Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio's daily program "The Dean Obeidallah Show" and a columnist for The Daily Beast. Follow him @DeanObeidallah . The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.

(CNN) Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants you to know that impeachment, like a diamond, as the saying goes, is forever. Last Sunday, she stated as much to ABC's George Stephanopoulos, saying , "This President is impeached for life," and adding that "there is nothing the Senate can do to ever erase that."

And Friday night, while appearing on Bill Maher's HBO show, she not only repeated that message, but made it clear she hoped President Trump heard it, stating , "If I knew that the President is listening, I would want him to know that he is impeached forever." She again added, "No matter what the Senate does, it can never be erased."

There's little doubt Trump gets that. He is a master of branding and marketing and has long strived to make the name "Trump" synonymous with success, glamour and glitz, from his hotels to clothing lines. But the Trump name is now forever tarnished by his impeachment, regardless of whether he's convicted in the Senate.

If you have any doubt that impeachment tarnishes a president's legacy, let me ask what you think of when you hear the name Bill Clinton. Is it that under Clinton our nation saw the greatest job growth of any modern-day president with more than 22 million jobs created ? (Under Trump, to date, only about 7 million jobs have been created.) Or that under Clinton, the stock market saw stunning growth, with the S&P climbing a whopping 210% in his eight years in office (compared to 38% in Trump's first three years)?

Or is it any of the other notable achievements of Clinton, such as appointing the first female attorney general or increasing the percentage of American schools connected to the internet from 35% in 1994 to 95% in 1999?

Probably not. The first thought for most when you say "Bill Clinton" is of him being impeached in connection with his affair with Monica Lewinsky. And more permanently, this fact is now memorialized in the official US government archives , school textbooks, history books, in every media discussion about Trump's impeachment, etc.

That's the same fate Trump is facing. Even if the Senate trial goes as expected and Trump is not convicted, he will forever be part of a very exclusive and very infamous club of presidents who have been impeached. Trump will always be associated with the names of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. And going forward, history classes will invoke the name Trump when discussion turns to impeachment, with students likely learning about the actions that led to his impeachment -- namely that he "solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 United States presidential election ... in pursuit of personal political benefit."

This helps explain Trump's angry tweets in the run-up to the formal vote to impeach him such as, "How can they...impeach a very successful (Economy Plus) President of the United States, who has done nothing wrong? These people are Crazy!" to his all caps tweet Thursday, "I JUST GOT IMPEACHED FOR MAKING A PERFECT PHONE CALL!" (Technically, Trump was impeached on December 18, but clearly it still stings.) And as CNN reported Saturday, a clearly unnerved Trump has been asking people this weekend at Mar-a-Lago about impeachment, "Why are they doing this to me?"

Of course, if the Senate does not convict him, we can expect Trump to claim on Twitter, to the media and at campaign rallies that he has been fully exonerated. And given that Trump is not constrained by the truth or facts, he may even start claiming that he was in fact never formally impeached -- akin to the way he has denied mocking a disabled reporter despite us seeing with our own eyes him doing just that in the 2016 campaign.

Just last week, Trump appeared to be laying the groundwork for such an argument and that the impeachment was unconstitutional with his tweet that the "phony Impeachment Hoax should not even be allowed to proceed" because it was "Just a partisan vote. Zero Republicans. Never happened before!"

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Over time, history may come to view the impeachment of Trump as being fueled by overly partisan goals, as many now view Clinton's. But the facts are starkly different between the two, with one concerning lies to cover up an affair and the other with alleged attempts to seek foreign interference in our election, and with polling from the run-up to their respective Senate trials overwhelmingly in favor of not removing Clinton but in favor of removing Trump.

Trump can desperately peddle any baseless argument he wants that his impeachment is invalid -- even one that some of his base will support -- but the reality is Trump will forever be defined by the stain of being only the third president in United States history to be formally impeached. And Trump knows it.