Here’s what today’s impeachment filing against Rod Rosenstein really means

| 9:50 pm EDT July 25, 2018
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After weeks of threatening to do so, Donald Trump’s far right House GOP allies Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows filed impeachment charges against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein today. So what does this mean, and what’s going to come of it? The short answer: nothing at all. This isn’t a step in the direction of anything. It has literally zero chance of succeeding. There is a way that Trump and his allies can get what they’re hoping for out of this – but that depends on you.

To be as clear as possible: there is literally zero chance of Congress removing Rod Rosenstein from office. Not only would that require a majority vote in the House, it would also require a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Unless you think sixteen Democratic Senators are somehow going to vote to remove Rosenstein for Trump’s benefit, it’s easy to see that this has no chance of going anywhere. So why are Jordan and Meadows even doing this?

The short answer is that they want this to serve as a big scary distraction. Jordan and Meadows are hoping that the mainstream media will decide to play up these impeachment filings for ratings by pretending that there’s some chance Rosenstein might actually be removed. Congress removing Rosenstein is an imaginary doomsday scenario, and it’s one that Trump’s allies are hoping we’ll focus on, instead of getting out there and waging real battles against Trump’s various and very real scandals.

Some have floated the idea that Donald Trump’s allies are doing this in order to soften up the ground for Trump to fire Rod Rosenstein. This sounds reasonable, until you put some thought into it. These impeachment filings against Rosenstein won’t change a single mind about him. If Trump doesn’t have the political muscle to fire Rosenstein now, then he still won’t have it once this impeachment effort finishes failing. This doesn’t soften up the ground for anything. The only way Trump and his allies can “win” this is if the Resistance allows itself to be distracted by this nonsense, instead of focusing on fighting Trump for real.