Look Before You Leap

One can only imagine some of the last words heard by George Armstrong Custer as he rode to his fate at the Little Big Horn on June 25, 1876: Uh, Colonel, it looks like there are more of ’em than we were expecting. More Lakota and Cheyenne, that is. Uh oh. On the battlefield, situational awareness is a life-and-death thing.

Today, 143 years later, as they ride onto a political battlefield—The Battle of Impeachment—perhaps the Democrats are now wishing they had started their mission with more situational awareness. Because right now, their battle plan doesn’t look promising. In fact, the numbers from a November 5 Monmouth University poll are hitting on the Democrats like the fusillade of Sioux arrows and bullets aimed at Custer and his men.

According to the poll, just 44 percent of Americans agree that Trump should be impeached and removed from the presidency, while 51 percent disagree. We should keep in mind that impeachment in the House requires a simple majority, while conviction (removal) in the Senate takes a two-thirds vote. So how far are the Democrats going to get on the basis of just 44 percent of the public?

Moreover, the “internals” in the Monmouth poll—that is, the deeper numbers that drive the top-line numbers—suggest more trouble ahead for the Democrats, because the data show deep skepticism about the basic fairness of the impeachment process.

In the polite phrasing of the Monmouth pollsters, “The public is not very confident with the process to date.” Yes, the internals show that—and then some. Just 24 percent of those polled say they have “a lot of trust” in the House impeachment inquiry, while 29 percent have “little trust,” and 44 percent have “no trust at all.” To put it another way, 73 percent of Americans—almost three-quarters—have little or no trust in what Pelosi, Schiff, & Co. are doing.

And we might ask: As the impeachment process plods along, are people likely to become more trusting, or less trusting? For instance, there’s the ongoing question of “The Whistleblower,” who was introduced to the world by the Washington Post on September 18. Immediately, of course, people were curious to hear from the Whistleblower, whoever he or she was, as to the allegations about Trump and Ukraine. That seems fair, right?

Indeed, September 25, just a week after that first report, CNN told us that the Whistleblower was willing to testify. That was encouraging, in terms of letting the sunshine in, and yet as the weeks went by and…nothing.

Then, on October 25, the Whistleblower’s attorneys announced that there was no need for testimony, after all. And why not? Because, the lawyers said, his/her testimony “is no longer relevant.”

Does that strike you as fair? Virgil neither. And we can further ask: Since when does one party get to decide a question such as this—to testify, or not to testify? Shouldn’t the accused, and the defenders of the accused, get the chance to cross-examine the accuser? That’s a fundamental pillar of American jurisprudence.

Yes, it sure seemed that the Whistleblower has been trying to have it both ways; that is, make the accusation against Trump, and yet never have to own up personally to the accusation. Did the Whistleblower have, maybe, something to hide? And how about the House Democrats who seem to have been working with the Whistleblower—do they, too, have something to hide? Some off-line collusion, perhaps? Such unanswered questions, of course, further undermine public confidence in the process. (In the meantime, we have learned, to our non-surprise, that the Whistleblower’s lawyers have been strongly anti-Trump for years.)

In fact, the Whistleblower has almost certainly been identified, and here at Breitbart News, too. So now a lot of inquiring minds are trying to tie together the loose threads about this fellow. For instance, on November 5, Mike Huckabee, a pro-Trump stalwart, put in print an interesting theory: that the Whistleblower and Anonymous are the same person.

You remember Anonymous. That’s the individual who wrote the op-ed in the New York Times on September 5, 2018, in which he/she/they claimed to be a “senior official” working as part of the anti-Trump #Resistance. At the time, some thought that Anonymous must be a cabinet official or some equally big cheese—while others, of course, thought that the whole thing was a hoax.

Yet now, maybe we are about to discover that Anonymous is just a thirty-something junior staffer at the CIA. If so, then the Times, which printed the op-ed with the assurance that it was written by a top dog, was, in fact, hoaxing its readers. That is, if this is all the handiwork of a junior CIA careerist, then that underling cannot fairly be called a “senior official.” Of course, it’s the Times, so what would we expect?

Indeed, a pattern is starting to emerge; as Virgil has been writing since December 2016, the Deep State has been targeting the Trump administration, and so maybe Anonymous and the Whistleblower are just different heads of the same hydra.

More recently, of course, we’ve learned that Anonymous will soon be publishing a book, on November 18, to be exact–with a first run of a half-million copies. In fact, early excerpts from the book are already out, and they are, of course, not flattering to Trump.

Still, we must ask ourselves: Amidst all the hype, what do we know to be true about this author, and this book? What can be verified? Answer: not much, or, really, nothing.

For all we know, the Anonymous book is just a bunch of b.s., even as, of course, it’s given credibility—if that’s the right word—because the Democrats and the MSM say so. As cynical wits say, In Washington, if an assertion is repeated three times, it’s true.

So could it be that the real story of the last three is that Anonymous, the Whistleblower, the Deep State, and leading elements of the MSM have been working together all along, as a sort of hive-mind, out to destroy Trump? Or is what we are seeing just a really sneaky marketing plan to sell books, and soon, too, maybe snag a movie deal? After all, Watergate proved to be a pretty good gig for Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, and many others–they’ve been dining out on it ever since.

Amidst these mounting suspicions, the Whistleblower’s lawyers now say that their client is willing to answer written questions, as long as they aren’t too inquisitive; you know what that means. Maybe Anonymous, in conjunction with a Deep Statist or two, will be answering the questions.

Fortunately, Republicans, in the White House and on Capitol Hill, have rejected all this stubborn cloaking—labeling it for what it is: a cover-up.

The Secret of Republican Success

We can see from the aforementioned Monmouth poll that Republicans are winning the argument. Yes, sure, Democrats will manage to leak, every day, some bit of information that supports their case, but it’s a safe bet that Republicans, every day, will have a response. That is, for every attack on Trump, there will be a defense—and most likely a counter-attack.

The key moment for rallying Republicans came on October 31, when the House voted to proceed toward impeachment. The vote among Democrats was 232:2, and yet among Republicans, it was 0:194. That is, GOPers were unanimous in their opposition. And as they say, unity is power.

The power, that is, to keep a united front against Democrat witch-hunting. As Virgil wrote back on September 28, when the Ukraine story first broke, Republicans could either hang together, or hang separately. As he put it, “There’s more safety, as well as strength, to be found in unity—including the unity of staying on message.”

Happily, that’s what Republicans have done. And by sticking together, they can make sure that the Democrat/MSM narrative is always confronted by a GOP/conservative counter-narrative. That counter-narrative reminds the public that Joe Biden has already admitted to meddling in Ukraine at the time his son was doing business there. Moreover, new grimy details keep dribbling out; we have just learned that Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian associates were actively lobbying the State Department during the Obama-Biden administration. In other words, the Bidens were demonstrably doing what the Democrats have accused Trump of doing. And yet congressional Democrats want to impeach Trump? Shouldn’t they be impeaching Biden first?

And since it’s easier to defend than to attack, Republicans have the easier task. It still takes courage to defend, of course, but it’s more fun to be a Republican, in a defensive trench, than it is to be a Democrat, charging up Impeachment Hill.

Meanwhile, the GOP keeps getting new supplies of political ammo. For instance, a new Harvard/Harris poll finds that 58 percent of Americans think that Hunter Biden showed “bad judgment” in his Ukrainian dealings. In the meantime, an AP-NORC poll finds that just 38 percent think Trump did something illegal, while 59 percent say that his actions, whatever else they might have been, were not illegal.

To be sure, the facts about Ukraine are still emerging–or at least, the something has been emerging. And that something isn’t necessarily favorable to the Democrats’ prosecution. For instance, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), tweeted on November 7 that Marie Yovanovitch, the Obama administration’s ambassador to that country, was not truthful in her answer to a question from the House Intelligence Committee about her contacts with Democrat operatives. Why, some might even dare to speculate that Yovanovitch might have committed perjury.

Indeed, it’s a safe bet that the facts about Ukraine—plus, of course, non-facts and pseudo-facts—will still be emerging, many years from now.

Based on such debatable evidence, it’s darn hard to see how Democrats can win their fight to impeach and convict Trump in late 2019 or early 2020. That’s if, of course, Republicans keep a solid front–as they seem to be doing.

And surely the Democrats won’t want to put themselves in the ridiculous position of letting this issue stretch out, such that they would be trying to remove Trump, even as they are running a presidential candidate to defeat him next November. If so, they would look like fools.

Already, House Republicans have demanded that Schiff & Co. invite Hunter Biden to testify. The Democrats, enjoying their majority power, will, of course, say no–they have their dump Trump plan already written, and they don’t wish to deviate from the script. Yet such a refusal to call an obvious witness is not a good look for the Dems.

Moreover, in the Senate, which must acquit or convict after impeachment, it will be a different story. Republicans, defending Trump, will have the majority, and so they call any witness they wish. So, hello, Hunter, and, while they’re at it, why not invite Joe Biden? He might still be running for president next year–if old age, or Mike Bloomberg, hasn’t gotten to him, but that’s his problem, as well as, of course, a problem for the Democrats.

And who else might get called? John Kerry? After all, he was secretary of state from 2013-2017. Barack Obama? He was president, after all. So what was his policy toward Ukraine? Who else might get called? That’s up to such Machiavellians as Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham.

In other words, the Senate trial would likely be a circus–a circus that would have the reverberation of Brett Kavanaugh hearings, only times 100. It would be a circus, that is, that out-thunders the presidential race. We might ask ourselves, which story would reporters rather cover and shows want to lead with: some candidate making a speech on health care, or, say, Ted Cruz and Kamala Harris going at it on the Senate floor? The media have learned by now that anything with “Trump” in it rates better than anything else. (The president is absolutely right when he says that the media will miss him when he’s gone–he’s the man they love to hate, sure, but most of all, he’s the man they love to cover.)

So how did the Democrats get themselves into this situation? After all, they were certainly warned; Nancy Pelosi, to name one warner, said that impeachment could cost the Democrats, big-time, in 2020—and that’s why she dragged her feet for so long. But the hotheads won, and so here we are, as Impeachment ’20 threatens to crowd out Election ’20.

Indeed, even after the House impeachment vote, friendly voices were advising the Democrats to cool it. We might recall some headlines, just from the last few days: “1 big thing: How an impeached Trump wins”; “CNN’s S.E. Cupp Sees ‘Early Warning Signs’ in Impeachment: ‘Will Impeachment Help Trump?’”; and “Impeachment a winner for Democrats? Don’t bet on it.”

So yeah, Democrats had plenty of warning. Of course, Custer was warned, too—and look what happened to him.