Impeachment 2.0 offers one last taste of Trump before the big plunge

Those in the media business already nostalgic for Donald Trump get a post-presidential sequel this week in the form of “Impeachment: The Sequel,” live from Capitol Hill.

Wall-to-wall coverage will dominate national news networks. Ratings will rise from the previous week, albeit not by much. Because here’s the thing: Trump will be there in name only, after his lawyers rejected performance art calls for him to testify, as if he were Col. Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) flying up to Washington, D.C. and confessing under oath after a grilling from Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) (Tom Cruise) that he did, in fact, order the Code Red.

So, without unhinged Trump soundbites or tweets thanks to a social media ban that appears to be in perpetuity, and without one more contrived confrontation between the former president and (insert correspondent here), will this week really be must-see-TV? After all, this is just a replay of Impeachment 1.0 from 2020, with the outcome already determined. There won’t be anything close to the 17 votes on the Republican side to convict, which under normal circumstances would result in removing a president from office. Trump did that himself more than two weeks ago before moving back to Mar-a-Lago.

So, without any tangible result, we’re back to the aforementioned performance art. The speeches will be soaring and passionate — and utterly predictable. 

As noted in this space before, any reasonable person can agree that what happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was one of the most shocking and darkest moments our country has witnessed. A police officer was killed, along with four others, including one person who was trampled to death. More than a dozen other officers were injured.

But impeachment of a (toxic) president without any chance of conviction is the kind of cheap theater so many Americans have come to loathe, especially when there are far more pressing matters in the country to address amid a pandemic, skyrocketing crime in major American cities and an opioid crisis that deserves far, far more attention than it’s getting.  

Meanwhile, if we’re truly interested in accountability across the entire political spectrum, can the Capitol Police explain why they haven’t held one press conference about the horrific events of Jan. 6th and the utter breakdown of security that occurred? Lawmakers in Congress – in some patently thick irony – don’t seem terribly interested in pressing that issue by asking publicly why leaders at the Capitol Police are refusing to take questions. 

Censuring Trump was the answer here. Democrats and Republicans would have agreed on that. It would have meant holding the 45th president accountable and on the record for all the stolen election rhetoric, and particularly the lie that somehow Vice President Pence could have helped overturn the certification of the election.

Most importantly, it would have given the country back a week it will lose in turning all the focus to the trial with an ending already written.

But for the usual suspects in the political media, Impeachment 2.0 provides a chance to dust off the soapboxes for another #LookAtMeToo viral moment at a time when the public is starting to pay less attention to politics.

Per “Variety”:

“Variety Intelligence Platform’s analysis of the viewership data across two key metrics—the target news demographic for people ages 25-54, and the total audience watching—shows that CNN ended the final week of January with ratings dropping roughly 44% for total audience versus the prior week across all three hours of primetime.”  

That’s nearly half an audience gone from the previous week, which included the ratings-inflating inauguration. Of course, we won’t get a true sense of where overwhelmingly anti-Trump networks will land until the weeks after the impeachment sequel, but viewership will probably be down.

Left-leaning cable news without Trump is like “The Sopranos” without Tony, “Happy Days” without The Fonz, “Dallas” without J.R. or “The Office” without Steve Carell. 

That’s what impeachment will look like this week: a major show without a central character. 

It’s also what political broadcast news will look like for the next two years until the 2024 presidential race begins in earnest. 

Hopefully this means more substantive reporting on issues that affect the lives of Americans directly, but don’t count on it. 

Because a business model built on outrage and fear is a permanent thing now, which will only further divide an already deeply divided country. 

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist for The Hill.