Pelosi
© J. Scott Applewhite/Associated PressSpeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
For Americans still confused why exactly Democrats want to impeach President Donald Trump - something about Ukraine, maybe? - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has helpfully clarified that it's all about Russia and always has been.

Briefing reporters on the impeachment inquiry on Thursday, Pelosi (D-California) made sure to point out that "this isn't about Ukraine, this is about Russia."
"Russia. It's about Russia. Russia invading eastern Ukraine ...all roads lead to Putin. Understand that."
That may come as a surprise given the Democrats' recent line of argument that Trump must be impeached because he tried to force new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open a corruption investigation into the gas company that had Joe Biden's son Hunter on its board - a "quid pro quo" that qualified as bribery and election interference, somehow.

However, as Pelosi explained, it was Russia that somehow "benefited" from Trump withholding US military assistance to Kiev - though she did not say how, since the aid was actually delivered on time. Curiously, she didn't mention the fact that it was actually the Trump administration which approved military aid to Ukraine in the first place, while the Obama administration refused to, worrying about a worse flare-up in violence.

Perhaps fearing that the case for impeachment on the basis of the alleged "quid pro quo" isn't quite stacking up the way Democrats wanted it to, Pelosi seems to have reverted to an easier tactic of just shouting "Russia!" and hoping it sticks.

"Sometimes people say I don't know about Ukraine, I don't know that much about Ukraine — well, our adversary in this is Russia," Pelosi continued.

Got that? Never mind that the original story about "collusion" between Trump and Russia crashed and burned after a two-year investigation by Robert Mueller, who couldn't find any. Never mind that the details about Ukraine's place in the whole alleged scandal don't quite add up, or that Zelensky himself denied ever being pressured, or that the facts of the story don't seem as clear-cut as Democrats and the media claim. None of that matters, really, because... Russia.