The Silly Hunt for an Impeachment Smoking Gun.
New York Daily News, Dec 18, 2019: The hunt is on for the definitive proof of President Donald Trump’s election meddling by way of strong-arming Ukraine.
The former White House Counsel John Dean declared that “we’ve already seen the smoking gun” in the “perfect” conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinsky.
The news has saturated with the fabled search. A whistleblower’s memorandum. An ambassador’s phone call loudly overheard. The mysterious calls Rudolph Giuliani and Rep. Devin Nunes made to the White House. It has become a trail of smoldering conversations.
Only more, "the president admitted to his wrongdoing and corrupt intent on national television,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal chimed in last night from the House Judiciary Committee. As Jayapal deduced, “the president is the smoking gun[!]"
And yet after a cascade of discharged metaphors, each smoking gun has proven not enough to fell Trump, not enough to convince his Republican allies that the game is up. Each piece of evidence seems sufficient. And yet each has proved not quite the smoking gun.
For, in truth, the smoking gun is an object of fancy, a talisman promising that once seen, all will be persuaded. It is a fiction. It is an insidious but enduring myth based on a tale ill-told…