Is Nancy Pelosi ready to ITMFA? Stay tuned.
Is Nancy Pelosi ready to ITMFA? Stay tuned. CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY


UPDATE: Pelosi will reportedly be announcing a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump on Tuesday afternoon. It's happening.

Is it really happening?? After 2 years, 247 days, and 41 minutes, is our long national nightmare finally coming to an end?? ARE WE IMPEACHING THE MOTHERFUCKER ALREADY??

Well, no. It's still too early to pick out what you'll be wearing to the impeachment party, but we do seem to be getting closer. On Tuesday, Nancy Pelosi, the one woman standing between Donald Trump and a pack of House Dems with ITMFA thongs under their suits, is expected to make an announcement on starting impeachment proceeding in the House.

Now, this could go either way—Pelosi is no fool, and she's been resistant to impeach for very good reasons, namely, the fact that Republicans control the Senate. It's absolutely possible (maybe even likely) that no matter what the House does, the Senate would decline to impeach and then Trump will be able to spin this as some kind of exoneration. And right in time for the election! (Impeachment, by the way, does not mean removal from office—Bill Clinton was impeached; Richard Nixon was not—and so even if Trump were impeached by the Senate, that's no guarantee he would actually slink back to Trump Tower in the first place.)

Still, the tide does seem to be turning. Over the weekend, Trump admitted that he brought up Joe Biden in a July phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky (fun fact: before running for office, Zelensky was a literal comic with less executive experience that our own clown-in-chief). According to a whistleblower, Trump, along with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, pressured Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, a lawyer and lobbyist who served on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company from 2014 to earlier this year. And, yes, Hunter's appointment does look kinda shady. In 2014, while his dad was Vice President, he was kicked out of the Navy Reserve for testing positive for cocaine use, and then, two months later, was appointed to the board of Burisma Holdings to the tune of $50,000 per month. The New York Times Editorial Board criticized his decision to join the company, although there is no evidence that he used his position to influence the Obama administration's foreign policy at this point. Still, whatever Hunter did or did not do, that doesn't mean the President of the United States can asking foreign leaders to investigate his enemy's child.

First, Trump denied the allegations against him, but on Monday, he changed his tactic, arguing that he did do it, but that it's no big deal.

"Everybody does it," he told reporters, sounding remarkably like a teenager caught sending unsolicited dick pics.

Okay! It actually is a big deal to pressure foreign leaders to investigate your political opponents and their children, and it's made an even bigger deal by the fact that not long before this phone call, the Trump admin revoked American military aid for Ukraine, which was essential for the country's ongoing conflict with Russia. It looks, in other words, like some strongman Atlantic City mob shit, with Trump playing the role of the slightly dumb mob boss. "You want that aid money back? Well, what can you do for me first?"

But will impeachment, if we ever get there, help him or hurt him? It's a toss-up. Best case scenario: An investigation uncovers all the ways Trump used his power for evil, but Biden, also implicated in the investigation, drops out to "spend more time with this family," and in January 2020, we're welcoming our first woman President, Elizabeth Warren.

Worst case scenario: The House votes to impeach, the Senate doesn't do jack shit, Trump claims victory, his base is so mobilized by what they see as an unfair attack on their man that they show in mass numbers on election day, while Democrats, so disgusted that neoliberal shill Joe Biden won the nomination, register their fuck-you vote by staying home.

At this point, either of those scenarios seems equally likely, but if Nancy Pelosi does announce impeachment proceedings, at least we can say the Democrats finally, actually, did something.