Not long after the Senate’s impeachment trial got underway in Washington, D.C. last week, a curious thing happened.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) appeared on an MSNBC news segment to talk about the trial and how she thought things would go for the House’s Democratic impeachment managers going forward.
Her responses and commentary were standard fare with one exception: As Hirono answered the questions, she asserted that it was “some kind of weird conspiracy theory” coming from Republicans to suggest Democrats have been out to oust President Trump since day one of his presidency.
“Do you really believe this stuff? I find that incredible,” she stated, seemingly perplexed as to why any Republican would make that claim.
After watching the video clip, my first thoughts were that there were two possibilities here: Either Hirono has been hiding under a rock for the entirety of Trump’s presidency, or she knows the real truth but instead chooses to feign ignorance for those watching at home — because she knows admitting the truth would be a really bad look.
Option two was what I went with, for a few reasons. Hirono is not only well-schooled in the art of Democratic spin what with having served six years in the U.S. House, but she’s also into her second term in the U.S. Senate, meaning she’s been around since the start of the campaign to oust Trump either by impeachment or forcing him to resign from office.
She’s also been an active participant in the effort.
But some of her more outspoken Democratic colleagues in the House just happened to be more vocal and open about their campaign to undo the results of the 2016 election. Trump’s inauguration was barely over before his opponents got started.
On Feb. 3, 2017, career Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) tweeted, “Today, I told Cheddar [News] that my greatest desire was to lead Donald Trump right into impeachment.” When asked to later to explain her remarks, she said, “We have to find out more about him and some of that leads to the possibility of impeachment.”
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) formally called for Trump’s impeachment on the House floor in May 2017. “I will not be moved. The president must be impeached,” the longtime congressman declared.
A month later, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who has served in Congress since 1997, joined his efforts. The next month, both of them introduced an article of impeachment against President Trump.
Rep. Waters herself has bragged about being among the first to call for Trump’s ouster. “I started a long time ago, right after the president was inaugurated, talking about impeachment and saying that he was dishonorable, he was a conman, we could not trust him. And of course, I was way ahead of all this and nobody really took me seriously,” Waters boasted last September.
Rep. Green was even blunter in explaining his rationale for pushing to impeach President Trump from day one. “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get reelected,” he admitted during a May 2019 interview.
That pretty much says it all.
There are many other examples of Democrats going on record expressing their desire to impeach Trump during the early days of his presidency, as well as explainers they gave months and years later noting they wanted to see it done so he didn’t get the chance to get reelected in 2020.
It’s an insult to the intelligence of the American people for Democrats like Hirono to suggest the Republican claim that Democrats were out to get Trump from the beginning of his presidency is nothing more than a bogus conspiracy theory.
They admitted it from the start. In their own words and on camera for the whole country to see.
Stacey Matthews is a veteran blogger who has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a regular contributor to Red State and Legal Insurrection.
