What disturbs me is how successful Trump defenders are at claiming the process is illegitimate instead of claiming Trump is innocent. Claiming he's innocent is fine, you'd expect defenders to do that, you want defenders to do that.
You don't want a situation where 99% of the population thinks their corrupt leader is guilty. It means something has gone wrong. The sign of a "healthy" democracy responding to a corrupt leader is where only 70% think the leader is corrupt. So having defenders is healthy.
Conversely, if the leader is clearly innocent, you want 30% of the population believing otherwise, paranoid jerks looking for any evidence of corruption. This is how healthy democracies stay healthy: eternal vigilance.
I mean, the "Obama birth certificate" thing was crazy wackos, but it wasn't illegitimate. Likewise, I don't think it's appropriate to investigate the sex lives of politicians, but while I oppose what the Republicans did, their sex inquiry into Clinton was still legitimate.
Maybe Trump is innocent here. That doesn't mean what the Democrats are doing is illegitimate. Sure, many (most?) Democrats want to impeach Trump for not being a Democrat. That still doesn't mean their investigation is illegitimate.
I think it's fine for the Republicans to claim the Democrats are doing this out of political motivations, wanting to impeach Trump for the crime of not being a Democrat. Indeed, that's how most Democrats on Twitter seem to behave, more offended by tax/climate policies.
But much of the Republican rhetoric is claiming the Democrats are cheating. For example, this issue of trying to out the whistleblower. The whistleblower is irrelevent. It's not their testimony at the root of this case, but the evidence the whistleblower pointed to.
