WHILE WATCHING “JEOPARDY” the other night, I had a fantasy. Suppose Alex Trebek had a Final Jeopardy category called The Ultimate Impeachment Hypocrite.

Here’s how I thought it might go.

“We go first to Joe who is in third place and he wrote ‘Who is Bill Clinton?’ ” states Trebek.

“No, that’s wrong, but a good guess. Clinton did say about the House impeachment of President Donald Trump ‘Congress is doing its job.’ How much did you wager? All of it and you are left with nothing like the Democrats with their trumped-up (pun intended) articles of impeachment.

“Next, we go to Mary and she wrote ‘Who is Rep. Eliot Engel?’

“Another good guess, but also wrong, even though the Democratic congressman from New York opposed Clinton’s impeachment, but favors the impeachment of Trump. How much did you wager? Oh, everything; so you are left with nothing, again, like the Democrats who pushed Russian collusion, racism and other subjects for which they had no evidence.

“We go to our champion, Judy and she wrote ‘Who is Sen. Chuck Schumer?’

“You are correct, Judy. It was Schumer who said in 1998, while a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the same committee that voted articles of impeachment against Trump ‘Impeachment was designed to be used rarely and only in times of national crisis.’

“Schumer, at the time, warned of profound consequences for the country and presidency if Clinton were to be impeached.”

It gets better or worse, depending on your perspective. Schumer went on, as he usually does, “Several weeks ago, the notion that we would be on the verge of actually using the hammer of impeachment to remove the president for just the third time in 200 years was unthinkable. Now, we are only one day from possibly passing a resolution to remove a duly-elected president from office.”

Always on his high horse while taking the low road, Schumer added “The actions that we take far transcend the conduct of Clinton and will have profound consequences on the future of the country. If we vote articles of impeachment, I fear that we will be setting a precedent that could seriously weaken the office of the presidency, whether the president is removed from office or not.

“In my judgment, we will be substantially lowering the bar for removing a sitting president so that we will be in danger of all too frequently investigating presidents and seeking to remove them from office; this, as we enter a century which demands a strong and focused president of the United States.”

Never mind. That was then and this is now, when impeaching Trump serves the purposes of the Democrats, who appear all-in no matter the amount of contradictory evidence and Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report that revealed that while the FBI opened the Russia investigation for a legitimate reason and was not motivated by partisan bias when it did so, at least 17 incidents of sloppiness occurred, as well as major errors and omissions in applications the FBI submitted to eavesdrop on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

In an interview last week on “Fox News Sunday,” James Comey, the former FBI director fired by Trump, admitted he was wrong, but who cares? The damage was done and like former Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said when he promoted the fiction that Mitt Romney didn’t pay his taxes “It worked, didn’t it?”

See how easy it is for Democrats to play this game? They are helped by their ideological soul mates in the major media, who cover up past statements like those of Schumer.

Democrats have placed themselves in a position that may cause them to lose their House majority and expand Republican numbers in the Senate. There are no champions in this game.

Back to you, Alex.



This year marks Cal Thomas’ 35th year as a syndicated columnist. Look for his new book “America’s Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers and the Future of the United States,” from HarperCollins/Zondervan. Readers may email Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.