Is it too much to ask that we wait first to find out exactly what was said in a private phone call in July between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before we start throwing about words such as “treason” and “impeachment” and even discussing an execution?

The answer is: yes. Yes, it is too much to ask.

Democrats and journalists have found a new favorite story that they say could spell the end for the Trump administration. The allegation is this: Trump tried to pressure Zelensky, with the promise of U.S. aid, into investigating Democratic front-runner Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, with the explicit intention of interfering in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. There is no hard evidence this happened, but that is the story anyway. Just ignore the part where we have gone down this exact road before with over-hyped allegations against the White House, badly misled by partisan lawmakers and sloppy journalists all too eager to see the Trump-era brought to an early conclusion.

"It is a betrayal of the office at the scale of which I haven’t seen in my lifetime,” declared 2020 Democratic primary candidate New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. “I’d have to go back to, God, I don’t think Watergate even compares to what this is.”

He added, “[Trump] needs to answer for this should the facts bear out. ... This is a deep potential violation of our Constitution, of our values. And it is an impeachable offense."

“It’s treason, pure and simple," 2020 GOP primary candidate Bill Weld said elsewhere this week, "and the penalty for treason under the U.S. code is death. That’s the only penalty,”

Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reportedly talking privately about bringing articles of impeachment against the president.

The Washington Post reports:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been quietly sounding out top allies and lawmakers about whether the time has come to impeach President Trump, a major development as several moderate House Democrats resistant to impeachment suddenly endorsed the extraordinary step of trying to oust the president.



Pelosi, according to multiple senior House Democrats and congressional aides, has been gauging the mood of her caucus members about whether they believe that allegations that Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate a political foe are a tipping point. She was making calls as late as Monday night, and many leadership aides who once thought Trump’s impeachment was unlikely now say they think it’s almost inevitable.

For the record, no one outside the White House or the Ukrainian government knows what was said in that phone call. All we have right now is a “whistleblower” who claims to have heard from another source (he did not hear it himself) that the president pressed Ukraine’s leader to investigate the 2020 Democratic front-runner and Trump admitting he discussed the Bidens with Zelensky. Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy also claims Zelensky told him privately that he was concerned U.S. aid “was being cut off” by Trump as a “consequence” of the Ukrainian government’s reluctance to investigate the Bidens. Then again, the New York Times also reported this week that “Trump did not discuss the delay in the military assistance on the July 25 call with Mr. Zelensky.”

This may be a scandal for the White House or the Bidens or both. Then again, it may be nothing. We cannot know until we have more information. We need, for example, the "whistleblower's" complaint. At a bare minimum, we need to know what was said in the July phone call.

The boxes on CNN's screen make it clear: This is not a normal news day pic.twitter.com/EESKhOXm0D — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 24, 2019

Until then, the best we can do is speculate. Like this:



“If the Ukraine allegations are true, there are criminal consequences,” reads the headline to a Sept. 23 Washington Post op-ed.

op-ed. Post columnist Jennifer Rubin also writes, without even a hint of self-awareness, that “we do not know whether … any Trump ‘promise’ was part of a quid pro quo,” which is exactly why “we need the whistleblower’s complaint released to Congress, a lightning-fast investigation and then, if supported by the facts, a call for Trump to resign or be impeached.” Something tells me the final step in her list is the real focus of her attention.

columnist Jennifer Rubin also writes, without even a hint of self-awareness, that “we do not know whether … any Trump ‘promise’ was part of a quid pro quo,” which is exactly why “we need the whistleblower’s complaint released to Congress, a lightning-fast investigation and then, if supported by the facts, a call for Trump to resign or be impeached.” Something tells me the final step in her list is the real focus of her attention. “If This Isn’t Impeachable, Nothing Is,” declares the headline to an Atlantic op-ed authored by self-described “expert” Tom Nichols.

op-ed authored by self-described “expert” Tom Nichols. Seven Democratic representatives penned an op-ed wherein they declared, “If these allegations are true, we believe these actions represent an impeachable offense.”

“US Rep. Elissa Slotkin: If true, new allegations 'constitute an impeachable offense,’” reads the headline to an op-ed published by the Detroit Free Press .

. Axios published a headline this week that reads, “Schiff: Impeachment may be the only remedy if Trump pressured Ukraine on Biden.”

The “if” and “if true” qualifiers in these headlines and op-eds better be careful. They might break their backs doing all that heavy lifting.