WASHINGTON, DC — Democrats began trying to impeach U.S. President Donald Trump “minutes” after his inauguration in 2017 and so far have made a total of seven attempts to remove him from office for things such as being impolite to the mainstream media and professional athletes, the Republican Senate majority leader noted on Tuesday.
Opening the Senate floor to the second round of speeches by lawmakers explaining their vote to acquit or convict Trump on the two articles of impeachment approved by House Democrats along party lines, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged:
The articles of impeachment before us were not even the first ones House Democrats introduced. This was go-around number seven. Those previously-alleged ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors’ included things like being impolite to the press and to professional athletes.
It insults the intelligence of the American people to pretend this was a solemn process reluctantly begun because of withheld foreign aid. No, Washington Democrats’ position on this president has been clear for years.
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Here’s their real position: Washington Democrats think President Donald Trump committed a ‘High Crime or Misdemeanor’ the moment he defeated Secretary [Hillary] Clinton in the 2016 election.
That is the original sin of this presidency: That he won and they lost.
The first six attempts failed, but the seventh one finally succeeded, with House Democrats voting to impeach the president and charge him with two articles of impeachment on December 18 — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
“[Democrats’] slapdash process has concluded in the first purely partisan presidential impeachment since the wake of the Civil War,” McConnell noted the day after the House majority impeached Trump without a single Republican vote, echoing his recent comment.
Citing previous impeachment efforts in the House that fell short of authorizing inquiries, McConnell pointed out that Democrats had “tried to impeach President Trump for being impolite to the press, for being mean to professional athletes, [and] for changing President [Barack] Obama’s policy on transgender people in the military.”
“All of these things were high crimes and misdemeanors according to the Democrats,” he added.
Highlighting earlier pledges from Democrats to impeach Trump as proof, McConnell also said that the December 18 vote “was not some neutral judgment that Democrats came to with great reluctance.”
“It was the predetermined end of a partisan crusade that began before President Trump was even nominated, let alone sworn in,” he proclaimed.
On Wednesday, there is little doubt the Republican-controlled Senate will vote to acquit Trump, now the third impeached president in American history.
McConnell noted on the Senate floor:
The drive to impeach President Trump did not begin with the allegations before us.
Here was reporting in April of 2016: ‘Donald Trump isn’t even the Republican nominee yet… [but] ‘Impeachment’ is already on the lips of pundits, newspaper editorials, constitutional scholars, and even a few members of Congress.’
Here was the Washington Post headline minutes after President Trump’s inauguration: ‘The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.’
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[Democrats’] position was obvious when they openly rooted for the [Robert] Mueller [Russian collusion hoax] investigation to tear our country apart and were disappointed when the facts proved otherwise. It was obvious when they sought to impeach this president over and over.
Unlike the House vote to impeach Trump, the motion to acquit the president may garner bipartisan support.
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