But Trump was impeached based on clear and damning sets of actually existing facts. He dangled U.S. military aid to strongarm Ukraine into helping smear Biden, and he corruptly subverted the peaceful transfer of power, inciting a mob to try to finish the job. While Trump is presumed innocent of the criminal charges against him, the indictments were handed up by grand juries of citizens who listened to extensive factual evidence obtained and presented in keeping with judicial oversight and the rule of law.
By contrast, Trump is straightforwardly declaring that Biden should be impeached and then prosecuted regardless of what the facts say—that is, because of what’s happening to Trump. The deeper underlying idea here is that impeachments and prosecutions are nothing more than tit for tat; they are inevitably political all the way down; the winner of the election gets to prosecute, and the loser gets prosecuted. That’s the only way things can ever work.
That, I think, is why stories like this one about the informant are powerful: They punch through that haze of nihilism. Again, we don’t know that the allegations against the informant will be borne out. But they do remind us that facts really can matter, that proceedings like impeachments and prosecutions really can have a legitimate basis — or an illegitimate one.