President Donald Trump has House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic establishment trapped… and Pelosi knows it.

But there’s nothing she can do to stop the inevitable.

Trump sent a clear message to Pelosi and the Democratic Party on Wednesday: His re-election campaign will be centered on condemning overzealous investigations. And he’s dropping the pretenses until Democrats either stop their needless investigations… or they impeach him.

Trump knows that any impeachment proceedings won’t get past the Republican-controlled Senate. And more importantly, they won’t be tolerated by the American voter.

Poll after poll shows that independent voters are clear that they do not want Democrats to try and impeach Trump. These voters are the critical swing that will decide the 2020 presidential election.

Trump knows it. And Trump knows that Pelosi knows it, too. So Trump has dropped the curtain on the Democrats political theater during their meeting Wednesday, and it’s forced Democrats into a no-win situation.

If Pelosi loses control of the far-left, Democrats in the House of Representatives will vote to impeach Trump… a move that even liberal pollsters admit will anger millions of American voters.

That would all but guarantee Trump and the Republicans a sweeping victory in the 2020 election.

Or, Pelosi can finally give up and stop the needless investigations. That will let Trump move forward with his popular domestic policies that have led to an unprecedented economic boom.

…which would all but guarantee him and the Republicans a sweeping victory in the 2020 election.

Both sides were on a collision course long before Wednesday’s confrontation in the Cabinet Room. Now, it’s clear that Trump is betting the future of his presidency on trying to goad Democrats into impeaching him.

Trump’s declaration that he would end any attempt at bipartisan cooperation until Democrats drop their probes of his administration was eagerly retold by representatives of both parties. The two sides echoed long drawn rhetorical battle lines in the hours that followed.

However, the media missed one critical fact: This clever plan by Trump traces back more than six months, to when White House aides strategized over how to handle to an anticipated Democratic takeover of the House.

Trump first delivered the warning publicly the day after Nancy Pelosi secured her return to the speakership last November, when she said her party would not choose between investigations and compromise. “You can’t do them simultaneously,” Trump countered. Promising GOP-led investigations and political attacks of his own if Democrats tried it, Trump predicted, “I could see it being extremely good politically, because I think I’m better at that game than they are, actually.”

Now Trump is putting the plan into motion.

“You can go down the investigation track,” Trump said Wednesday, “or the track of ‘Let’s get things done for the American people.’” Expecting Democrats to stick with the former, Trump added: “Let them play their games. We’re going to go down one track at a time.”

As the politically-motivated subpoenas have flown in recent weeks, White House officials have adopted a quasi-official policy of trying to goad Democrats into impeachment. Trump has ordered his administration to stop complying with House Democrats’ probes, stonewalling efforts across the board while challenging the legislative body’s basic constitutional role of oversight. His intransigence has animated more and more Democrats to talk impeachment, even if just to begin proceedings in order to get further access to documents and testimony.

White House aides believe that Pelosi cannot withstand the clamor from her rank-and-file to impeach Trump, and believe that when Democrats take that step, it will assure Trump’s re-election.

Even Democrats acknowledge that Trump has long excelled at the game: As a candidate and president, he has railed against the “rigged” electoral system and the Deep State that he claims is trying to block him. The narrative of an overreaching Democratic Congress persecuting a president who has not been found guilty of any crime plays nicely into that, the Trump team believes.

And there’s little Pelosi can do to stop him now.

 

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The Associated Press contributed to this article