Ah, the benefits of getting news from Late Night talk shows.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump decided to skip the Twitter tread all together — but that doesn't mean he forgot to troll us! Instead, Trump published a verbose, six-page letter addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling the impeachment proceedings a declaration of “open war on American Democracy.”
The hyperbolic letter, which contains a myriad of Trumpisms, goes so far as to claim that women at the Salem witch trials received more due process than him. SAD! Trump may have skipped fact-checking, but that gave on late night host, Stephen Colbert, all the more reason to offer commentary of his own. And Colbert delivered: he dragged Trump to the point of evisceration.
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Since the letter became public, many people have tried to decipher its ramblings. Pelosi herself called the letter “sick,” the New York Times attempted to methodically make sense of it, but Colbert took the letter to its inevitable end: comedy.
“It’s impeachment eve, it’s a magical time!” Colbert begins. The television host describes the letter as a “six-page shriek.” Offering up direct quotes for translation, Colbert imbues subtext to Trump’s rant. “Your spiteful actions display unfettered contempt for America’s founding and your egregious conduct threatens to destroy that which our Founders pledged their very lives to build,” the letter reads.
Colbert translates in full Trump voice adding, “Yes, a nation built on the belief that powerful white men face no consequences whatsoever.” He went piece by piece through the letter carefully dissecting the highlights and pointing out the readily apparent absurdity of Trump’s statements.
Giving himself no word limit, Trump’s letter ignores the extensive evidence brought forward by the House Intelligence Committee in the two-month impeachment inquiry. Some of its most compelling evidence came from members of Trump’s own administration supporting the allegations that Trump carried out a corrupt plan to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political opponents for his own gain in the 2020 election in exchange for releasing $400 million in much-needed military assistance. Further, the charges against Trump include his effort to conceal those actions through his lack of cooperation with the congressional investigations.
The democratic-majority House is holding the official impeachment vote today, which is expected to pass provided voting remains along party lines. Should the final tally be in favor of impeachment, Trump will be put on trial in the Senate which has the power to remove him from office. While impeachment is believed to be likely, removal from office is a higher hurdle as the Senate is majority Republican.
If voting goes as believed, Trump will become the third president in history to be impeached. If we thought that a six-page letter is long, we dread seeing his Twitter feed should this happen.