The Democrats' toughest impeachment task: Persuasion

Swing voters in the Senate and the electorate will decide Trump's fate

Trump supporters and protesters.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Andrew Spear/Getty Images, BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images, Juksy/iStock)

If you thought the transcript of President Donald Trump's July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would resolve anything, think again. Consider these two disparate reactions posted on the president's favorite social media platform.

"It amounts to a smoking gun against the president," tweeted CNN's Chris Cillizza. "Period." The Federalist's Sean Davis looked at the same set of words and concluded: "Democrats want to impeach Trump because he asked Ukraine's president to cooperate with a DOJ investigation of the role of Ukraine and Crowdstrike in foreign meddling in our 2016 elections."

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.