Trump defense narrative unfolds as conservative supporters gird for impeachment

President Trump’s supporters in Western Pennsylvania seeking solace from the unfolding impeachment inquiry got a harsh dose of reality and strategy from political commentator Dinesh D’Souza.

While Senate Republicans condemned the process and a group of House Republicans stormed a hearing room where impeachment witnesses were testifying, D’Souza joined a growing chorus of conservative commentators preparing Trump supporters for what many now consider inevitable.

“There’s a good chance Trump will be impeached,” D’Souza told a group of about a 150 staunch conservatives who paid at least $200 a head to hear him speak Thursday at a North Huntingdon event sponsored by 1776 Freedom’s Calling, a Smithton-based political action committee that is seeking nonprofit status as an educational group.

But D’Souza, a native of India who was a policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan, admonished the group not to lose heart. He encouraged them to embrace Trump’s increasingly vitriolic tweets and attacks on his opponents and gird themselves for battle.

“Winning is not just surviving the lethal shots fired at you. Winning is when you’re firing the lethal shots at them. That’s when you win,” D’Souza said, waving the microphone while moving constantly around the podium.

The fiery commentator often referred to as a political provocateur won a presidential pardon from Trump last year. With the stroke of a pen, Trump erased a felony conviction that resulted from D’Souza’s guilty plea to violating campaign finance laws by using a straw donor to contribute to the failed U.S. Senate campaign of Wendy Long of New York.

D’Souza, who maintains the Obama administration singled him out in retaliation for his movie “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” said the left has a single goal. They want to “discredit, humiliate and destroy” their opponents, he said.

He is part of a growing faction of conservative firebrands who say liberals may succeed in impeaching Trump.

Former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon also positioned himself among that group with a new podcast, where he stressed the need for a coordinated push-back strategy against the unfolding impeachment inquiry.

The New York Times said Bannon, who was ousted from his White House post in August 2017, vowed to be on the air every day for the next two months — or “until the day after the acquittal of Donald J. Trump.”

It’s a message whose time has come, said Alison Dagnes, a political scientist at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania who follows the conversation closely.

“They are absolutely right that impeachment is coming and that it is different from removal from office. They’re saying, ‘Get ready for it; brace yourself.’ But it’s also a message along the lines of, ‘They are categorically unfair. They are doing something that is wrong. And they are our enemies,’ ” Dagnes said.

Historical reversal

Bannon’s comments reflect the sentiment that upcoming articles of impeachment, drafted by the House, will ultimately fail to win a conviction in the Senate.

That happened two decades ago when a Republican-led House impeached President Bill Clinton for lying under oath and obstruction of justice. The Democratic Senate then acquitted him.

In 1998, then-Congressman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, was a manager for the Clinton impeachment proceedings in the House. He also was one of the most-ardent supporters of that impeachment.

Today, Graham is a U.S. senator and one of the harshest critics of the Democratic House-led impeachment inquiry. He has referred to it as “political revenge” and introduced a Senate resolution condemning the process.

“It doesn’t take a piece of tape to see that Lindsey Graham was foaming at the mouth to impeach Bill Clinton and now he’s defending Donald Trump, but he’s not defending Donald Trump,” Dagnes said. “The defense that this impeachment is a sham bothers me. I can’t imagine a process that has been done more by the book than this one.”

While attacking the process, Graham continues to rise to Trump’s every defense.

When Trump triggered a wave of outrage about racist imagery when he characterized the impeachment inquiry as a lynching, Graham was quick to rise to his defense. Taking to Twitter, Graham called it “a lynching in every sense.”

So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here - a lynching. But we will WIN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2019

In yet another example of turnabout, the same term came back to haunt former Vice President Joe Biden. The Democratic presidential candidate was forced to apologize for condemning Trump when a video clip surfaced of comments he made in 1998 referring to Clinton’s impeachment as a “partisan lynching.”

This wasn’t the right word to use and I’m sorry about that. Trump on the other hand chose his words deliberately today in his use of the word lynching and continues to stoke racial divides in this country daily. https://t.co/mHfFC8HluZ

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 23, 2019

‘Fate of the battle’

Back in Westmoreland County on Thursday night, D’Souza complained that Democrats often are allowed to slide for such lapses and praised Trump’s performance on Twitter.

“The key to his Twitter is he knows how to set the talking points for the whole world at 3 a.m.,” D’Souza said, reminding Trump supporters that their votes will be critical in 2020.

“The fate of the battle depends not on them, but on us,” D’Souza said.

For Trump supporters like 1776 Freedom’s Calling founder Kala Mologne of Smithton narratives such as D’Souza’s call to action are encouraging.

“It gives me hope. I think he’s very factual and correct. We’ve been the polite ones. We have to change,” she said.

Dagnes, on the other hand, worries about the long-term implications of battle narratives between “two warring factions.”

“When this is done, because sowing distrust is the tactic, what we will be left with is an American public who will not trust the political system in which they operate,” she said. “And when that happens, it is not who is going to win, but every single person is going to lose.”