The GOP's top excuses for Trump's behavior are all BS: Conservative commentator

In a column for the Daily Beast, conservative Matt Lewis ripped into Republicans and conservatives alike for their "bullsh*t" defenses of Donald Trump as he faces impeachment.

On the day after the GOP argued and disrupted the House Judiciary Committee -- dragging it out to 14-hours -- Lewis expressed his disgust at their tactics and called out five of what he called their most "pernicious" lies.

"Let’s take, for example, the idea that you can’t impeach a president if the economy is good," he began. "This narrative skirts the merits of impeachment, and instead attempts to change the subject to something more favorable. There’s also the implicitly cynical assertion here as well which suggests that voters, given superficial appeasement, don’t really care about being governed by a corrupt leader (and, in fact, will punish someone for holding him accountable)."

"Another counter-impeachment narrative that I’m hearing a lot lately is this: 'It’ll tear the nation apart!' This one also has the benefit of skipping over the merits of impeachment, while imploring us to put the country first," he wrote, identifying the second bogus narrative -- or as he called it "BS." 

"For one thing, it is brought to you by the same people who were happy to 'burn it all down' and vote for Trump, because, after all, America was doomed, and this was the 'Flight 93 election.' Today, for some reason, these same radicals are super-worried about preserving comity and stability. I don’t buy it," he wrote. "The 'It’ll tear this nation apart!' argument, which was even advanced by Tulsi Gabbard, fails to grapple with the fact that our political world is already crazy, and that impeachment hasn’t been much more exciting (or dangerous) than a normal day in Trump’s America."

 Lewis also took shots at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) who -- along with other Republicans -- have bought into pushing Trump's conspiracy theories, writing, Cruz is "parroting a line that came from the Trump White House and Rudy Giuliani, that publishing a few op-ed columns is the equivalent of foreign election 'interference," adding, "If that's the case, then Giuliani and others working with Ukrainian fringe characters are soliciting such interference in 2020—by their own standards."

Knocking down the complaint from Republicans that impeachment is unfair with an election around the corner, Lewis wrote, "In America, there is (thankfully) always an election coming soon. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing in the Constitution that says you can’t impeach during an election year (just as there’s nothing saying you can’t nominate or confirm a Supreme Court justice in an election year).

Lastly, Lewis hammered conservatives for their "Trump is too dumb to know he was committing crimes" defense.

"My personal favorite, is the notion that Trump is too inept or incompetent to shake down Ukraine. This one has the benefit of allowing the person advocating the theory to ding Trump, while still making an exculpatory case. One purveyor of this theory is Ben Shapiro, who argued that Trump was incapable of forming and sticking to a sinister plan, referring to his alternate view of the president as 'Thought Vomit Trump," he wrote. "Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.

Why so many counter-narratives? Republicans can’t really defend Donald Trump on the merits, but they can engage in distractions and sophistry."

 "It matters little if their arguments are mutually exclusive (it was a 'perfect call!' hardly jibes with 'It was bad, but not impeachable'); what matters is that cult members have options from which to choose," he concluded.

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