After impeachment, Trump, Pelosi, Romney and media keep the war going

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President Trump makes remarks following Senate impeachment acquittal

Trump addresses the nation from the East Room of the White House, thanks supporters, blasts dirty cops, leakers and liars.

In this post-impeachment era—one day into it, anyway—I was ready to move on.

I wanted to write about how Joe Biden admitted he suffered a “gut punch” in Iowa—and the press is filled with aides and allies trashing him—as he sharpens his attacks in New Hampshire.

I wanted to write about how Pete Buttigieg shrewdly utilized the media (including Fox) to eke out his miniscule lead over Bernie Sanders, who’s actually ahead in votes cast as opposed to state delegates equivalents and…but it’s all so complicated. Besides, DNC chairman Tom Perez just blew up the thing by calling for a new canvass, so we may never know who really won Iowa.

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But it turns out no one else is moving on.

The tone was set yesterday at the National Prayer Breakfast, where 21 years ago, after his Senate acquittal, Bill Clinton talked about seeking forgiveness.

President Trump was, well, far more combative: “My family, our great country, and your President, have been put through a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people. They have done everything possible to destroy us.”

And he took this not-so-veiled shot at Mitt Romney for voting to convict him: “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.” And at Nancy Pelosi, sitting nearby: “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that’s not so.”

The House speaker fired back at a news conference, where she again called his speech to Congress (which she tore up) a “manifesto of mistruth” and added: “I don't know if the president understands about prayer or people who do pray. But we do pray…And I pray hard for him because he's so off the track of our Constitution, our values.”

The following hour, in a rambling and celebratory speech at the White House, the president called impeachment B.S. (using the full word), returned to the Russia probe and denounced the perpetrators of impeachments:

“It was evil. It was corrupt. It was dirty cops. It was leakers and liars…

“Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person…She may pray, but she prays for the opposite. But I doubt she prays at all.”

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CNN’s fair-and-balanced banner: “TRUMP VINDICTIVE & VULGAR IN IMPEACHMENT ACQUITTAL ‘CELEBRATION.’”

And CNN’s new White House correspondent, John Harwood, hired from CNBC, offered this assessment: “It was dark because he’s made clear that his mind is dark. This is somebody in deep psychological distress right now. Self-pitying, insecure, angry.”

This is where we are. The media, just like the president, his party and the Democrats, aren’t moving on.

This was starkly obvious in the treatment of Mitt Romney.

Back in 2012, when Romney was the GOP nominee, the media tried to bury him under stories depicting him as a greedy, heartless capitalist who enjoyed laying people off, a flip-flopper with no convictions, and a weird guy who once tied a dog to the roof of his car.

Now he is a statesman.

From the left, a Washington Post editorial said Romney “defied the partisanship and political incentives of the moment — and was willing to endure the punishment that is surely on its way — simply because he judged conviction to be the right call… At least one Republican acted with integrity and honor. History will remember the rest very differently.”

Pete Wehner, in the Atlantic, lauded the Utah senator in a piece titled “A Profile in Courage”: “Mitt Romney is doing something nearly unheard of these days: He’s putting his country above his party. He’s voting his conscience when doing so comes at a cost.”

From the right, Lou Dobbs declared that “Romney is going to be associated with Judas, Brutus, Benedict Arnold forever when he is not even a footnote in a footnote otherwise because of his betrayal.”

Laura Ingraham said that if she had to she’d move to Utah in 2024 and run against him. “Mitt, you made your stand, now you should resign. You committed a fraud on the people of Utah on the Republican Party.”

The annals of history will record that the Trump impeachment ended on Wednesday afternoon. But the Trump war may never end, at least not until Election Day and probably beyond. It seems as though it’s in everyone’s self-interest--the president, the opposition party and the press—to keep it going.