December 19, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The Democrat-controlled House of Representatives’ 230-197 vote Wednesday to impeach Donald Trump was met with jubilation from many in the mainstream media, who dropped their pretense of impartiality to register their personal contempt for the president.
The impeachment push was sparked in September by Trump’s requests that the Ukrainian government help investigate foreign interference in the 2016 presidential election, as well as former Vice President Joe Biden’s role in the ouster of a prosecutor who had been investigating his son Hunter’s business dealings in the country.
Trump’s defenders argue it’s legitimate for world leaders to request assistance in rooting out a previous administration’s potential corruption; his opponents claim it was at the very least inappropriate given Trump and Biden’s political rivalry, and a serious abuse of power if Trump made congressionally-authorized foreign aid a condition of compliance.
Specifically, the articles of impeachment accuse the president of “abuse of power” in his requests to Ukraine, and “obstruction of Congress” for the administration’s non-compliance with House subpoenas.
Following the vote, Washington Post reporter and CNN analyst Rachel Bade tweeted a photo of herself at dinner with Post and CNN colleagues Paul Kane, Mike DeBonis, Seung Min Kim, Karoun Demirjian, with the message “Merry Impeachmas from the WaPo team!”
Over 2,000 replies to this tweet from a WaPo reporter celebrating impeachment.
She has now deleted the tweet. pic.twitter.com/YR2hS1UF0z
— Caleb Hull ������ (@CalebJHull) December 19, 2019
Bade later deleted the tweet, claiming it had been “misinterpreted” as an endorsement and was actually meant simply to celebrate a break from impeachment coverage (an explanation few people in her replies accepted as plausible).
I’m deleting a tweeting tonight that is being misinterpreted by some as an endorsement of some kind. To be absolutely clear, we at the Post are merely glad we are getting a break for the holidays after a long 3 months. I will retweet the group photo w/ a better caption !
— Rachael Bade (@rachaelmbade) December 19, 2019
On CNN, Inside Politics host John King declared that “Democrats have the facts on their side about what the president did … this is history. This is an indelible stain on the record, the legacy of Donald Trump.” Several of his panel agreed, with presidential historian Tim Naftail calling it a “very important moment for the country” because it reminds America “how our system was supposed to work.”
Some, however, expressed notable distress – not from the vote itself, but from its failure to impact the electorate. NBC political director Chuck Todd lamented that the network’s own polling indicates the public remains evenly divided on impeachment. “It is bizarre to me that this heavy momentous thing that's happening in our country, a part of the Constitution that's rarely used, it’s being used,” he said, yet voters see it as “just another day, or it's just another battle in the political war (…) the President is holding a rally right now. He's been impeached!”
The House vote is largely a foregone conclusion given the chamber’s Democrat majority, as is the expectation that the Republican-controlled Senate will vote against removing Trump from office.
Despite the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now says she won’t commit to sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate, claiming the “next thing for us will be when we see the process that is set forth in the Senate.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responded by speculating that “House Democrats may be too afraid … to even transmit their shoddy work product to the Senate.”