REPUBLICANS, TRIGGERED

Three law professors have made a strong case for impeachment in House Judiciary Committee hearings today, but the substance of their testimony threatens to be overshadowed by an orgy of right-wing fauxtrage, in response to this:

An expert witness in Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing riffed on the name of the president’s teen son, Barron....

“Contrary to what President Trump has said, Article 2 [of the Constitution] does not give him the power to do anything he wants,” testified Pamela Karlan, a professor at Stanford Law School. “The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron.”

That's all she said. Nevertheless, the fainting couches are in formation:

A minor child deserves privacy and should be kept out of politics. Pamela Karlan, you should be ashamed of your very angry and obviously biased public pandering, and using a child to do it.

— Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) December 4, 2019

Just when you thought this impeachment hoax couldn’t get anymore ridiculous, the witness invited by Democrats is throwing cheap shots at the 13 year old son of @realDonaldTrump. Gross and shameful! pic.twitter.com/ugVZfVYDR9

— Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) December 4, 2019

Trump campaign spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement, “Only in the minds of crazed liberals is it funny to drag a 13-year-old child into the impeachment nonsense. Pamela Karlan thought she was being clever and going for laughs, but she instead reinforced for all Americans that Democrats have no boundaries when it comes to their hatred of everything related to President Trump. Hunter Biden is supposedly off-limits according to liberals, but a 13-year-old boy is fair game. Disgusting.

“Every Democrat in Congress should immediately repudiate Pamela Karlan and call on her to personally apologize to the president and the first lady for mocking their son on national TV.”

(Karlan did apologize a few minutes ago during the hearings.)

And there was this from Barron's step half-brother:

Remember only children of Liberals (even the 50 year old children) are off limits. That a 13 year old is fair game for partisan hacks on a national platform shows you all you need to know about the new left and who is now running the ship. https://t.co/DQZNh4hLTf

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) December 4, 2019

Which is fascinating, because Junior recently published what's now the most popular right-wing book in America, and it happens to be called Triggered. Its thesis is that people on the left are hypersensitive and attack conservatives for trivial reasons.

In the book, Junior writes:

Today, as it appears on the internet at least, the term “trigger warning” is used to describe something, say a tweet from my dad, that blows up the fragile sensibilities of the liberal Twitterverse. At the very least, it sets their hair on fire and creates a minor news story for a few days. But at the worst, it moves them to real-life outrage and organized violence. And before you ask, the freaking out is wildly disproportionate. While conservatives usually get worked up over important things—such as the killing of babies or the stripping away of our natural rights as human beings—with liberals the “triggers” tend to be much sillier....

With every passing day, the bar for what’s considered “triggering” gets lower and lower.

Yes -- why just today, liberals were freaking out because someone made a play on words about the first name of a politician's kid. Oh, wait -- that was Republicans.