On a frigid evening in
the nation’s capital just days before Christmas, a mean-spirited and ruthless
fibber named Adam Schiff works meticulously on a speech he plans to give on the
floor of the House of Representatives.
Despite the harsh
weather, Schiff refuses to pay for another lump of coal for the fireplace to
warm his office. His cruelty and
bitterness have a chilling effect on his toiling staffers.
Suddenly, Eric Swalwell
bursts into the office offering holiday greetings with an exclamatory, “Happy
Festivus!” The grumpy Schiff responds
with “Bah! Humbug!” refusing to share in his Festivus cheer.
The hour
is quite late, but Schiff follows his same old routine of taking dinner in his
usual Beltway bar and returns home through the dank Washington streets. Just before entering the house, the
doorknocker on his front door, the same one he has passed through every day
catches his attention. A ghostly image
in the curves of the knocker gives the scoundrel a momentary shock. He looks away then refocuses and sees nothing
but a doorknocker.
Slipping
the key into the lock the doorknocker comes to life. It’s the peering face of President
Trump. Unsettled by the vision, Schiff
mutters to himself, “You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a
crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There’s more gravy than of grave about you,
whatever you are!”
He plods
up the wide staircase to his bedroom. He
prepares for bed when the carvings on his mantelpiece suddenly transform into
visions of voters shouting their disgust with him and the role he has played in
the impeachment proceedings. Determined
to dismiss the strange visions, blurts out, “Humbug!”
Moments
later Schiff hears footsteps thumping up the stairs and, in a flash, a ghostly
figure of Jonathan Turley floats through the closed and locked door. He tells him he is there to save him from the
growing contempt Americans have for all Democrats in 2020.
Turley
leads Schiff to an open window and gestures to him to look out. He sees a throng of spirits each of whom is
bound in chains. They wail about their
failure to lead honorable lives and their obsession with impeaching a president
simply because they hate him for winning in an electoral landslide.
Turley
warns that Schiff will be visited by three spirits and quickly leaves him
trembling alone in the dark.
In this
retelling of the classic Dickens tale, the Spirit of Impeachment Past recounts
Schiff’s egregious lies about the FISA warrants, the Russian witch hunt and the
deceitful Articles of Impeachment he and his minions rammed through their
committees.
At the
stroke of one, a second spirit, the Spirit of Impeachment Present, appears
before him. He whisks him away to a
number of Christmas gatherings of Americans who are better off than they were
four years ago and are dismayed with the Democrat Party and their railroading
of a duly elected president. Finally, the
Spirit takes him to the White House where President Trump is hard at work for
the forgotten men and women of this country.
Schiff is bewildered at the sight.
He wonders aloud, “How, in the face of all the forces arrayed against
this man, can he continue to successfully make the country great again?”
As the
clock strikes two, Schiff is visited by a hooded phantom coming toward him. Schiff kneels before him asking if he is the
Spirit of Impeachment Yet To Come.
The
menacing wraith takes Schiff to the New York Stock Exchange where a group of
businessmen discuss the death of the economy; a dingy pawn shop on the
Southside of Chicago where shady characters sell the personal effects from a
dead man; the dinner table of a family who were forced to go back on food
stamps and the husband and wife expressing relief at the death of an
unforgiving man to whom they owed money.
Schiff
struggles to understand the lesson of the silent ghost. In that moment he finds himself in a
churchyard where the Spirit points to a freshly dug grave. Schiff draws nearer and reads the inscription
on the headstone: 2020 General Election.
Schiff
inquires if nothing can be done to change the future. Mockingly, the ghost quotes the Mueller
Report. “No collusion. No obstruction.” The ghost reminds him the Horowitz Report
revealed his own lies about the FISA warrants and his contact with the
whistleblower.
Unlike
Scrooge who faced an imminent moral reckoning, our character is faced with the very
real prospect of a quick death in the Senate of the Democrats’ impeachment
dreams. They do not have the bipartisan
takedown of this president and the public tenaciously resists impeachment over the
Ukraine fantasy.
In the
end Tiny Tim, perched upon President Trump’s shoulders, shouts for all to hear “God
bless us everyone!”
