Welcome to the commentary magazine podcast today is Thursday, May 21, 2021.

On the 23rd, 2019, I am John Puthhorz, the editor of Commentary Magazine, the 70-odd year old monthly of intellectual analysis, political property, and cultural criticism from a conservative perspective.

We invite you to join us at commentarymagazine.com where we give you a few free reads and then ask you to subscribe 1995 for a digital subscription,

2995 for an all-exas subscription, including our beautiful monthly magazine in your mailbox 11 times a year with me as always, senior editor, a Greenwald Hyade,

Hyjon, associate editor, and a Rothman, Hynoa, and in Washington senior writer, Christine Rosen, Hy Christine.

So I didn't see it, so I'm going to turn to Christine to describe yesterday's presidential fit of peak in the, was it the Rose Garden?

In the Rose Garden? Yes.

Christine. So there was supposed to be an infrastructure meeting among congressional leaders and Trump, but what had happened earlier in the morning is

that Nancy Pelosi had met with Herkakis and had publicly said that the president was engaged in a cover-up, this obviously triggered Trump.

And instead of having a meeting, he, according to various reports, marched into the room, refused to sit down and berated the Democrats at the table for their claims.

He then marched outside where there was a podium set up and there's some discussion about whether or not this was all staged because he did already have a little placard up about the Mueller investigation.

Some people say that staffers had made that just to have it at the ready for a future press conference, others say the whole thing was staged, including his tantrum.

And in a case, he angrily said that he cannot do infrastructure unless the Democrats stop with their charges against him and he says he doesn't do cover-ups.

So what this means, of course, is that Nancy Pelosi had, in a way, had her bluff called by the president, not intelligent on his part, but nevertheless she's trying to persuade her progressive wing that she hears them on their demands for impeachment at the same time that she doesn't want impeachment.

And that's an impeachment because politically that would not be smart for her right now. So that's kind of where things stand.

Well, I was on MSNBC on Monday when a representative Sicilyne of Rhode Island came on the show I was on Meet the Press and said that the failure of Don McGann to appear the following morning, the former White House Council,

meant that the Democrats should open an impeachment inquiry. Sicilyne is not, I don't think, a member, or considered a member of the very progressive wing of the party.

So this was more the, you know, their stonewalling us, they're not letting us find out what we need to find out as a matter of general oversight.

So I'm not sure that this line of that impeachment is simply a stop to the left in their caucus.

It may well be that the logic of the fight that Donald Trump is now engaged in to prevent Congress from getting any documents not only from the White House, but from elsewhere in the administration has radicalized the debate a little bit.

Inside the Democratic caucus in which they're saying, well, if he's going to act as though Congress has no oversight authority, we cannot allow this to continue like we are going to have to say that we're going to have to open impeachment.

But impeachment, an inquiry into impeachment, as no, as no would say, there is no constitutional crisis that is triggered by the president saying no to Congress.

...