Trump and Republicans call the impeachment process unfair -- but are clueless to explain why: columnist

Within the GOP ranks, the emerging narrative is that the impeachment process against President Trump is unfair, but according to Steve Benen in an op-ed for MSNBC.com, Republicans are having trouble articulating exactly what's so unfair about it.

Republicans originally claimed that it was unfair because there was no formal vote on the House floor to authorize the impeachment inquiry into Trump -- until the House did hold a vote. Then Republicans complained that there were no public impeachment committee hearings -- until the House did hold hearings. The next complaint was that Trump wasn't allowed to present a defense -- until the House invited Trump to testify, which he refused to do. That's when Republicans ran out of talking points, Benen writes.

Benen then referenced the following tweet from Trump, which read:

"Wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that Republicans in the Senate should handle the Impeachment Hoax in the exact same manner as Democrats in the House handled their recent partisan scam? Why would it be different for Republicans than it was for the Radical Left Democrats?"

According to Benen, Trump is right here; the Senate really should follow the House's lead on impeachment.

"The House held weeks of hearings, offered ample time to the majority and minority, spoke directly to several leading White House and Trump administration officials, examined documentary evidence (emails, text messages, contemporaneous notes, etc.), set aside many hours for debate and deliberations, and published lengthy and well-researched reports on the core allegations, all of which was disclosed to the public," Benen writes.

Read his full piece over at MSNBC.com.