CNN hosts John King and Dana Bash made specious argument on Friday that if Democrats hadn’t been trumpeting impeachment for the past two years, Republicans might be more on board with the effort.
What, wait?
During a Friday segment on CNN’s “Inside Politics,” a panel of political correspondents discussed the lack of strategy from the White House in the midst of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry and theorized how Republicans would be more on board with the idea of President Donald Trump’s impeachment.
“The Republicans on the Hill are walking down this line that, ‘This is wrong, this is appalling. This is not something I would do.’ But a lot of them quickly add, ‘it’s not impeachable,'” Wall Street Journal White House reporter Michael Bender said.
King agreed and said that Bender made “a great point.” He added that Democrats spent the last two-and-a-half years talking about impeaching Trump — and perhaps jumped the gun.
“If they had talked about how they didn’t like his behavior, they had aggressive oversight — but they had themselves repeatedly used the impeachment word,” King said. “Would Republicans be more open-minded?”
Bash said that she believed that would be the case.
“I think yes, because some of the Republicans who are quiet are also saying that what they hear from their constituents back home is: ugh, enough already,” Bash said. “That it’s the Russia hangover and that they think it’s just more of this.”
Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party has been absolute, and there’s no evidence that GOP lawmakers would break from the President to support an impeachment inquiry under any circumstances. When Paul Ryan was speaker of the House, he bent over backward to avoid commenting on Trump’s controversial tweets. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), once a fierce critic of Trump, has fully joined the President in his corner.
If Republicans were inclined to impeach anyone, it would be Trump’s 2016 opponent.
In the week leading up to the 2016 presidential election, senior Republican lawmakers openly discussed the prospect of a Hillary Clinton impeachment if she won the election. Even shortly after Trump’s inauguration, former GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz posted on Instagram that despite how he thanked Clinton for her service, “the investigation continues.”
Watch the CNN panel below:
CNN hosts discuss how the GOP would be more onboard with impeachment pic.twitter.com/aSrEAMU7FK
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) October 4, 2019
