Article IV: Charge of the Right Brigade

My principle is never to attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

The power of stupidity as a political motivator was demonstrated by the twenty-four members of the Trump Loyalist wing of the Republican House—a.k.a. the Intellectually Lite Brigade—who charged into the normally hushed secure rooms of the House Intelligence Committee where impeachment investigators were conducting private interviews, wildly brandishing cell phones (normally verboten), chanting “Let Us In . . . Let Us In” when they were already in.

POTUS had been innocently sending out marching orders of the day all morning on the official Twitter feed, calling the House inquiry a scam, a witch hunt, a scandal, a star chamber, a kangaroo court, being conducted by “scum,” as he referred to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Shifty Schiff, all triggered by the famous phone call.

That was the so-called “perfect” phone call demanding the president of the Ukraine dig up dirt on Trump’s allegedly corrupt potential opponent in the 2020 election, or else he wouldn’t get the anti-tank weapons Congress had appropriated. “No quo pro quid,” he trumpeted proudly.

Latin was not the president’s bag. To others it sounded like extortion, a shakedown, with all the class of a Jersey mobster reminding the owner of a mom-and-pop bodega in Bayonne that if an “insurance premium” remained overdue much longer, consequences might occur.

The hearings being conducted behind closed doors, ipso facto, to the troops breaking in represented fraud of the most nefarious kind.

How stupid could these two dozen members of Team Trump be? Had they no respect for their forefathers, who in these very hallowed rooms conducted the famous closed door hearings by the United States House Select Committee into Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack on Benghazi, better known in history by the immortal words: Benghazi Benghazi Benghazi.

For more than two years (September 11, 2014, to December 12, 2016) the nation was enthralled by the closed-door attempt to nail Crooked Hillary. Actually, it was the last of six investigations pursued behind closed doors by Republican-controlled House committees (Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, Oversight and Government Reform).

To be fair, Team Trump must have been under the influence of Trump the Stupid. From his foxhole in the Oval Office, the dumbo in chief had been firing off tweets, whining about how his party was not coming to his defense. Nobody was standing up for him against these traitors who were following the Constitution behind closed doors.

All twenty-four of the Let Us In . . . Let Us In Brigade are now in line for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which according to the rule book, can be awarded by the POTUS to any person who in his opinion has made an especially meritorious contribution to American life through work in national security, world peace, cultural, or other significant public or private endeavors.

My nominee for the bauble would be Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican who stupidly said as he went into the basement battle: “This is a Soviet-Style process. It should not be allowed in the United States of America. Every member of Congress ought to be allowed in that room. The press ought to be allowed in that room.” 

Adding insult to injury, the Lite Brigade chargers ordered pizza for all in the hearing room during the protest. Pizza, mamma mia! What an unintentional slap in the face to their beleaguered commander in chief! Had they not noticed presidential cuisine preferences with cabinet conference table lunches littered by McDonald’s hamburger wrappers?