Sure, Trump is full of flaws. But this has all gotten rather silly, hasn’t it?

Impeachment is not a coup. That is a ridiculously silly talking point. If there is a coup, the people conducting it are thoroughly incompetent because Donald Trump is still the president. Impeachment is a political process.

Concurrently, the president mean tweeting as our former ambassador to Ukraine testified to Congress on Friday is not witness tampering. Words mean things and everyone in Washington seems all out of words except four letter ones. It is why impeachment has become ridiculous.

Had this situation happened sooner, I would be more inclined to treat impeachment seriously. But we are less than one year from the 2020 general election. Democrats will begin their formal nomination process for the presidency in two months. A Senate trial could last up to eight weeks, which would cause the six senators running for president to miss major contests including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Additionally, the odds of a Senate conviction are negligible.

Over the last three years, we have watched most journalists in America come unhinged over President Trump. They have cried wolf on looming disaster for his tenure since his inauguration. Firing James Comey would end him. Bob Mueller would end him. The Cabinet would deploy the 25th Amendment. The GOP would stand up to him. Joe Walsh would beat him. The constantly overblown hype from the press about pending turning points has made the public deaf to the present situation.

Democrat holdovers from the Obama administration have ruthlessly leaked to try to undermine the president’s agenda. The Supreme Court has continually had to stop Obama appointed federal judges overstepping their authority to undermine the president’s agenda. Democrats have convinced themselves Russia stole the election, the president is illegitimate, therefore anything to stop him is fair game. The press and Democrats seem intent on finding something to stick.

The various members of the diplomatic corps who have testified publicly have all expressed their disappointment in President Trump’s policies. It does appear Trump relied on advice from Rudy Giuliani who himself relied on a bunch of corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs and con men intent on preserving their power. It appears an ambassador got fired based on a conspiracy theory deployed by geriatric pundits on Fox News. But that is not impeachable.

The president has been his own worst enemy. He did inappropriately ask about Joe Biden. He did try to withhold funds from Ukraine. But he ultimately released them. Ukraine investigated nothing. Bill Clinton got impeached for actually trying to obstruct justice through lying under oath. This was a single phone call that amounted to nothing. Democrats were complaining about quid pro quos until a focus group made them realize no one understands it. So now they have changed to calling what the president did bribery. Congress appropriated the money and the president gave Ukraine the money, so it is hard to call a lawful appropriation a bribe. What the president did is, if the Democrats are right, extortion, not bribery.

The president has behaved ridiculously. He has done so because anonymous bureaucrats in The New York Times, career diplomats, and Obama administration holdovers have all worked to undermine his agenda. They have bragged about it in the press. They have leaked. So the president relied on cranks like Giuliani to conduct foreign policy around the American civil service. He should not have, but it is understandable why he did.

Instead of Congress dragging this out, we are less than a year from the election and the voters themselves should settle it.

Erick Erickson hosts “The Erick Erickson Show,“ which is broadcast across Georgia.