Rep. Al Green (D-TX) has made no secret over the last two and a half years of his desire to impeach President Donald Trump. In fact, Green made impeachment the centerpiece of his seventh Congressional term. It remains the centerpiece for this term.
He first spoke of it on the House floor on May 17, 2017 and has several times since in various floor speeches, statements, interviews, and on social media.
Green cited character issues and suspicion of wrongdoing rather than any alleged impeachable offenses as his reasons. But this past weekend in an interview on MSNBC, Green finally revealed the real motive behind Democratic impeachment efforts: the possibility that Trump will get re-elected.
Here’s what he said:
MSNBC HOST: You have been calling for starting articles of impeachment since 2017, but a new Quinnipiac poll taken after the release of the redacted Mueller report said 66% say Congress should not start impeachment proceedings, there’s a sharp partisan divide, with only 4% of Republicans favoring impeachment. Are you afraid this talk will help the president’s re-election?REP. AL GREEN: I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected. If we don’t impeach him, he will say he’s been vindicated. He will say the Democrats had an overwhelming majority in the House and didn’t take up impeachment. He will say we have a constitutional duty to do it if it was there and we didn’t. He will say he’s been vindicated.Here’s what I say, we’re confronting a constitutional crisis as I speak to you. As I look at the people of America in the eye, I’m telling you, we have a constitutional crisis. The chief executive office of the president of the United States refuses to comply with subpoenas and says he will order others to do so, this creates a constitutional crisis. But this isn’t the genesis of it. It started when the president decided he would fire Mr. Comey for his failure — pardon me, as a result of his desire not to be investigated. And when he decided to do this and went on national TV at primetime and indicated he was thinking about this Russia thing, that was the genesis of it. We have a constitutional crisis.
Watch the video clip of Green’s interview below:
President Trump responded to news of Green’s remarks in a couple of tweets early Monday morning:
Presumably, the alleged crimes from the “other side” that Trump referred to relate to “Spygate” and allegations the investigations that started in 2016 were part of an orchestrated attempt to try and keep him from winning the election, and to undermine his presidency.
Trump and a number of other high-profile Republicans, including House Oversight Committee member Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), have hinted in recent weeks that Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s upcoming report on allegations of FBI abuse of FISA procedures while investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections will be “blockbuster” in nature. Meadows even stated that it was “highly likely” the report will result in a number of criminal referrals.
The New Yorker notes that calls for impeachment do not just come from Green. The impeachment declarations have become all the rage for the more radically left wing members of the House and for a few Democratic presidential candidates, too:
Even before the [Mueller] report’s release, Representative Rashida Tlaib introduced a resolution to begin investigations into whether Trump committed impeachable offenses. It has six co-sponsors so far, including high-profile freshmen representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley. On the campaign trail, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Julián Castro have backed impeachment.
In addition to the lack of legitimate reasons for impeachment, Democrats have other issues to consider as they weigh their options. As the MSNBC host noted during the Green interview, results from a recent poll found a solid majority of Americans don’t want Trump impeached. And another poll released Sunday shows that Democrats have started to lose independents on the issue of impeachment hearings:
The latest NBC News–Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday found that 45 percent of independents say Congress should not hold impeachment hearings, compared to 19 percent who believe there’s enough evidence to begin impeachment proceedings.Meanwhile, 34 percent say that Congress should keep investigating to see if there’s enough evidence to start impeachment hearings later.The opposition to impeachment comes despite Trump’s low 38 percent approval rating among independents and highlights the political risk for House Democrats in moving toward impeaching the president.
Could Green and other Democrats be ratcheting up their calls for impeachment in an attempt to blunt the blows they think may hit the Democrats once IG Horowitz’s report comes out? Or are they doing it because they despise the president so much and are willing to take the risk in hopes that their efforts don’t ultimately backfire on them come election time?
It could be both, for that matter, but one thing that’s for sure is Green’s Saturday comments gave Republicans plenty of political ammunition to use against Democrats in the coming months, as Ed Morrissey explains:
Green played right into the GOP narrative on impeachment, which is that Democrats are so afraid of running against Trump again that they’ll do anything to avoid it. They know they can’t win, Trump argues, and so they want to rig it so that they can. With two-thirds of Americans opposing impeachment (and 70% of independents), it might well look that way to the electorate as well, who will wonder why we’re still talking about it after Robert Mueller found no collusion.
Contrary to the oft-repeated claim by outspoken Democrats that their political opposition wants them to “shut up,” Democrats like Rep. Green are a gift to Republicans. The more Democrats go on and on about impeachment, the more they defend anti-Semitic members of their party, and the more they voice approval for outside-the-mainstream ideas like the Green New Deal, reparations, and abortion extremism, the more out of touch the left looks and the more sane the right looks in comparison.
The Democratic impeachment circus has gotten out of control, and unless Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi can rein them in, look for their poll numbers on impeachment to continue to crater in the months to come.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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