RUTHFULLY YOURS

Democrats are excited that a tape has emerged in which Trump can be heard saying that he wants to have Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch fired, for they see it as more impeachment fodder. The tape, however, as is the case with so many things that excite Democrats, is actually nothing special.

It’s not clear how someone recorded a tape of a private dinner party on April 30, 2018, at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. That itself ought to be a scandal. It’s also not clear how ABC got a copy of the tape, another scandal.

Among the attendees were Trump, Giuliani, Lev Parnas, and Igor Fruman. Trump has disclaimed knowing Parnas, describing him as a groupie. Assuming that Trump is speaking the truth about Parnas (who now accuses Trump of all sorts of heinous behavior), he means that he was aware of Parnas, but that Parnas was such a meaningless, peripheral individual he made no impression on a man who routinely sees, speaks with, and even dines with thousands of people a year.

At the dinner, Trump apparently learned for the first time that Amb. Marie Yovanovitch, an Obama holdover, had been bad-mouthing him to the Ukrainians:

Parnas appears to say: “The biggest problem there, I think where we need to start is we gotta get rid of the ambassador. She’s still left over from the Clinton administration,” Parnas can be heard telling Trump. “She’s basically walking around telling everybody ‘Wait, he’s gonna get impeached, just wait.” (Yovanovitch actually had served in the State Department since the Reagan administration.)

Trump, as is his wont, flew off the handle:

“Get rid of her!” is what the voice that appears to be Trump’s is heard saying. “Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it.”

That was just bluster, of course. Trump waited a year before firing Yovanovitch – something that was his right to do:

The Trump administration seemed to downplay the significance of the tape.

“Every president in our history has had the right to place people who support his agenda and his policies within his administration,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement to Fox News on Friday.

Asked about the report, Trump told “The Ingraham Angle’s” Raymond Arroyo that he was not relying on Parnas to get rid of Yovanovitch while acknowledging: “I am not a fan of that ambassador.”

“I want ambassadors that are chosen by me. I have a right to hire and fire ambassadors,” Trump said.

Vice President Pence also weighed in, saying that he has not heard the tape but that “all of the ambassadors who serve, serve at the pleasure of the U.S.”

While the Trump administration is correct that there’s nothing wrong with a president being angered upon learning that an American ambassador is working against him in a foreign country and then later, after a year’s deliberation, firing her, the Democrat’s elation about the tape is another sign of something deeply aberrant in the Democrat party’s response to President Trump.

In a way never seen before in American politics, the Democrats are seeking to destroy a president because they do not like the way he handles his presidential prerogatives. Under the Constitution, as America’s chief executive officer, the president has the right to hire and fire upper-level management, including ambassadors. As the person in charge of America’s foreign policy, he has the right to conduct confidential telephone conversations with foreign leaders and, more significantly, he gets to make foreign policy decisions.

Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, in his 1833 work Commentaries on the Constitution, said that a president cannot be impeached for doing what other presidents have done before (emphasis added):

The latter [leaving discretion about impeachment to Congress, rather than common law] is so incompatible with the genius of our institutions, that no lawyer or statesman would be inclined to countenance so absolute a despotism of opinion and practice, which might make that a crime at one time, or in one person, which would be deemed innocent at another time, or in another person.

At every turn, the Democrats are working to transform ordinary presidential powers into impeachable offenses and they are doing so because they are ferociously angered and frightened that the American people elected someone who promised to use his legitimate constitutional powers to end stale, crony-driven, corrupt, internationalist policies in favor of open, honest, streamlined, pro-American governance – and then proceeded to keep those promises.

Americans are right to tune out the current pointless and unconstitutional impeachment proceedings. However, they should not allow the Democrats to go unpunished – after all, that’s what elections are for.