The publicly known facts about President Trump’s interactions with Ukraine support a case for impeachment based on abuse of presidential power. Abuse of power has been a constant theme in the Trump administration, the Ukraine bribery scandal is only the latest and most blatant example.

The transcripts released from key firsthand witnesses in the impeachment inquiry support a case for impeachment based on abuse of presidential power. The summary of the phone conversation between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky clearly depicts a quid pro quo: Ukraine would receive military aid in exchange for investigating Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

This week the public phase of the impeachment hearings begin, and the electorate will hear from William Taylor the top diplomat in Ukraine, George Kent the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs and Marie Yovanovitch the former U.S ambassador to Ukraine. These three witnesses have already testified behind closed doors that Trump’s surrogates withheld military aid to Ukraine, that had been approved by Congress and vetted by the Department of Defense, until Ukraine agreed to investigate the Bidens and the ludicrous conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine and not Russia that interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

In a sane world facts would prevail and the impeachment hearings in the House would conclude with an overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans voting to impeach Trump based on presidential abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

But we don’t live in a sane world, and facts don’t matter, and the right-wing ecosystem of talk radio, Fox News and conservative web sites will create false narratives to protect Trump. They will create alternative facts and promulgate conspiracy theories that depict Trump as a patriotic and powerful president who is the victim of a witch hunt by socialist Democrats.

Truth will not prevail, at least not in the short term and although Trump will be impeached by the House he won’t be removed from office by the Republican-controlled Senate.

But we mustn’t become pessimistic and fatalistic, Republican senators don’t have the courage and integrity to remove Trump from office, but we the American public must kick him to the curb on November 2020.