Mitch McConnell is openly plotting a sham impeachment trial. Why is the press insisting Pelosi is the one under pressure?

Mitch McConnell has publicly said, multiple times, that he will not have a fair impeachment trial in the Senate, that he is in lockstep with the White House and Donald Trump's lawyers and that he will consult and coordinate with the defendant and his counsel. But the headline at The Hill, from reporter Cristina Marcos' story reads: "Pelosi faces decision on articles of impeachment."

The problem, Marcos writes, is "the upper chamber remains in a stalemate over how to conduct a trial," and that "Both sides have dug in." Marcos writes that "Pelosi withheld the articles to gain leverage in the debate over the trial’s rules, but there’s little sign the maneuver is putting any pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell." Gee, I wonder why. Maybe that's partly because of how the media reports this stuff?

Marcos even writes about Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer holding "multiple press conferences from New York to call for testimony from key witnesses and production of documents from the Trump administration" to pressure McConnell, but the thrust of the article is still about the pressure Pelosi is facing over when and whether to send the articles to the Senate. "The effort appears to be an attempt to put pressure on McConnell, and to set up the argument that Republicans are organizing a sham trial in the Senate," she writes.

What about the fact that McConnell has flat-out admitted he's going to set up a sham trial? How about a straight news article pointing that out? How about articles about Moscow Mitch facing decisions over doing his goddamned constitutional duty? What about the fact that every week offers more revelations on how Trump did indeed do this and even bigger impeachable criming?

We're in this shitty shape as a country largely because Republicans in general and McConnell in particular have not been held responsible for years of willful destruction of our government by the traditional media. By the general acceptance of Republicans acting like wrecking balls and Democrats somehow being the only ones responsible for it happening. When Democrats do act to counter it—just like with the impeachment articles—it's the Democrats being divisive and under pressure.

Apparently the traditional media is just going to keep letting McConnell get away with this. The most effective solution to end it, since it's clear the traditional political media is not going to fix itself, is to end McConnell's power.