What I'm increasingly realizing about this absurd line of attack is it doesn't benefit Trump. Anyone who adopts the theory that Pelosi must send a courier to the Senate to perfect the impeachment also thinks Pelosi is in control of when or whether Trump gets an impeachment trial.
1/ So it's like, "Congratulations! You're a radical Trumpist who thinks Trump 'isn't impeached' because Pelosi hasn't yet done something she can do whenever she wants—which something, being undone, means Mitch can't hold a trial and Pelosi is the most powerful person in America."
2/ It's a real sign of desperation that—in an effort to appease Trump by making him feel for just a few more days that he isn't an impeached president—the GOP wants to adopt a theory of the situation that 100% ensures they'll lose the current argument over the Senate trial rules.
3/ I agree with the reader who said that this "he's not impeached" theory—derived from some bizarre reasoning by Noah Feldman—is really intended to do no more than give Trump supporters a means to feel like they can "own the libs" over the holidays, even if they've actually lost.
4/ So my advice is, if a friend or relative confronts you with this nonsense over the holidays, thank them profusely for making a point you'd never considered—which point means Pelosi can hold up a Senate trial indefinitely and thus "wins" this scenario in *every possible sense*.
5/ That is, if Trump is not impeached and Pelosi controls the moment of his impeachment, the House can keep investigating, litigating for more testimony/documents, bring new articles of impeachment whenever it likes, wait for a Democratic Senate to try him if it likes, and so on.
6/ Indeed, it'd mean Democrats can wait until the moment the GOP loses all argument for not having witnesses in the Senate—with so many new smoking guns having emerged that Trump really might lose a lot of GOP votes at a Senate trial—to suddenly say, "OK, *now* you're impeached."
7/ Most importantly, the fact that *any* Republican would make this wildly self-defeating argument underscores that the GOP being nothing more then a cult of Trump worship is prompting its cultists to make moronic claims that briefly please him but damage his—and their—interests.
8/ The better question is why more in the media haven't both noted that this theory is historically and legally unsound and *also* that it would, if universally adopted, *instantly* end any debate about whether Pelosi has leverage because it *presumes* she has *all* the leverage.
