Here comes Donald Trump’s big impeachment bluff

| 7:15 pm EST December 19, 2019
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Palmer Report spent all month explaining why Nancy Pelosi was holding all the cards on impeachment, and Mitch McConnell was holding none. Sure enough, last night Pelosi reminded us all of precisely this. The Senate impeachment trial will only take place when and if she gets enough concessions about the trial’s fairness. In response, McConnell is finally admitting he doesn’t even want to hold a trial, because it’s a live grenade for him. The trouble for McConnell is that Donald Trump very much does want a trial.

Donald Trump very much wants to be acquitted in the Senate, because he still has faint hope that an acquittal might somehow boost his terrible poll numbers enough to put him into contention in the 2020 race. So Trump is leaking to the New York Times that his “lawyers are looking at various options for proceeding” if Pelosi doesn’t send the articles of impeachment to the Senate in a timely manner. What does this even mean?

Well, it means nothing. There are no “options” for Trump here. Mitch McConnell isn’t stupid enough to go along with some hilariously self-defeating stunt like holding a Senate impeachment “trial” with no House impeachment managers there to present a case. Nor can Trump get any court to order Pelosi to turn over the articles of impeachment to the Senate, because nothing magically works that way.

Donald Trump is purposely being vague here about what he might do to try to magically force Nancy Pelosi to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, because there are no specifics available to him. Instead he’s trying to scare the Resistance into believing that some unspecified very bad thing is going to happen if Pelosi doesn’t cave to him. She’s obviously not going to fall for Trump’s bluff. You shouldn’t either.