Barbra Streisand: The Founders Envisioned Impeachment to Stop Aspiring Despots Like Trump
Left-wing Grammy-winning singer Barbra Streisand attempted to channel the Founding Fathers in a tweet on Monday, claiming that they envisioned the impeachment process as a way to counter the threat of aspiring despots such as, she suggests, President Trump.
The Meet the Fockers star on Monday shared a link to a New York Times op-ed titled “Trump Is the Founders’ Worst Nightmare,” touted the false narrative that the president engaged in a quid pro quo scheme, and likened him to an aspiring tyrant.
“From his blatant attempt to extort Ukraine using taxpayer money for a fake investigation of his political rival, there is question that Trump aspires to be a despot, and impeachment is the sober process envisioned by the Founders to counter such a threat,” Streisand said:
From his blatant attempt to extort Ukraine using taxpayer money for a fake investigation of his political rival, there is question that Trump aspires to be a despot, and impeachment is the sober process envisioned by the Founders to counter such a threat.https://t.co/DAVnaPMoUx
— Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) December 2, 2019
The article Barbra Streisand refers to uses similar language, suggesting that Trump is the despot Founders feared. It adds that the president “has made full use of the demagogic playbook,” citing his MAGA and KAG rallies and accusing Trump of using them to “spread these falsehoods and attacks the credibility, motives and even patriotism of witnesses” in the partisan impeachment inquiry.
The founders feared the demagogue, who figures prominently in the Federalist Papers as the politician who, possessing “perverted ambition,” pursues relentless self-aggrandizement “by the confusions of their country.” The last of the papers, Federalist No. 85, linked demagogy to its threat to the constitutional order — to the “despotism” that may be expected from the “victorious demagogue.” This “despotism” is achieved through systematic lying to the public, vilification of the opposition and, as James Fenimore Cooper wrote in an essay on demagogues, a claimed right to disregard “the Constitution and the laws” in pursuing what the demagogue judges to be the “interests of the people.”
“When this is all over, we will not hear warm bipartisan praise for how ‘the system worked.’ The lesson will be that, in the politics of the time, a demagogue who gets into the Oval Office is hard to get out,” the article ultimately concludes.
This is far from the first time Streisand has spoken out on the impeachment battle. In October, she shared a gruesome depiction of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — who eventually succumbed to her far-left colleagues’ demands for impeachment – skewering Trump with the heel of her shoe:
— Barbra Streisand (@BarbraStreisand) October 19, 2019
The impeachment inquiry goes to the House Judiciary Committee in a hearing slated for Wednesday, although the White House has indicated that it will not participate in the “baseless and highly partisan” event. Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) called the decision “unfortunate” and asserted that the president should “provide any exculpatory information that refutes the overwhelming evidence of his abuse of power.”