Trump keeps taking aim at House impeachment process, to no avail

The ongoing impeachment process against Donald Trump in the U.S. House will, to some extent, reach a milestone today. Nearly a month after members agreed to approve two articles of impeachment against the president, the chamber will approve a resolution to send the dispute to the U.S. Senate for a trial, along with a group of impeachment “managers” to try the case.

But as attention shifts from the south side of the Capitol to the North side, the president isn’t yet done complaining about the process that brought us to this point.

Here, for example, was a tweet from the Republican on Monday:

“‘We demand fairness’ shouts Pelosi and the Do Nothing Democrats, yet the Dems in the House wouldn’t let us have 1 witness, no lawyers or even ask questions. It was the most unfair witch-hunt in the history of Congress!”

Whether the president knows this or not is unclear, but the House Democratic majority invited the White House counsel’s office to participate in the impeachment proceedings. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) explained that his panel explicitly gave the president “a fair opportunity to question witnesses and present his own to address the overwhelming evidence before us.”

So when the president says House Dems “wouldn’t let” Team Trump participate, the opposite is true. And yet, that didn’t stop him from giving it another try last night:

“Cryin’ Chuck Schumer just said, ‘The American people want a fair trial in the Senate.’ True, but why didn’t Nervous Nancy and Corrupt politician Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff give us a fair trial in the House. It was the most lopsided & unfair basement hearing in the history of Congress!”

It’s tweets like these that suggest Trump is struggling to keep up with the basic details of current events surrounding his own presidency.

For one thing, the House doesn’t hold impeachment trials, the Senate does. For another, there were closed-door hearings, for a variety of legitimate reasons, which ultimately gave way to public hearings and the disclosure of transcripts from the private depositions.

Trump’s “basement” talking point is months out of date.

All of which leaves us with a familiar question for which there is no good answer: why, exactly, are we supposed to think the House impeachment process was “unfair”?

As we discussed several weeks ago, Republicans originally argued that the House impeachment process was unfair because there’d been no formal vote on the House floor to authorize the inquiry. After the House did, in fact, hold such a vote, Republicans shifted their focus, complaining that the process was unfair because there’d been no public impeachment committee hearings.

After the House did, in fact, hold extensive public impeachment committee hearings, Republicans shifted again, insisting that the process was unfair because Donald Trump and his team were not given an opportunity to present a defense. The president and his White House attorneys were, in fact, invited to participate in the impeachment inquiry, and Team Trump refused the offer.

This has apparently led Trump to believe it’s time to circle back to discredited arguments that have already been addressed — apparently because he can’t think of anything else.