Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper on the State of the Union program on December 15, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he was concerned that the Democratic effort to impeach President Trump would “dumb down and destroy the country.” (See interview below.)
Paul said during the interview with Tapper:
You know, we’ve seen the evidence. We’re going to hear the evidence repeated, but we won’t see any new evidence so I think all of America has seen this. We’ve found this is a very partisan exercise. There is not any Republican in the House [who will vote for impeachment], in fact, a handful of Democrats that will vote against impeachment in the House. In the Senate, I think all Republicans will vote against the House, and I think two Democrats have a good chance of voting against impeachment also. So I think what we’ve seen is it is just a very partisan thing. This is a disagreement. The people on the Democrats side they don’t like Trump and his demeanor, so they have decided to criminalize politics.
Paul did not name the two Democratic senators he thought might vote against convicting Trump in a Senate trial, but political analysts believe that Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia are still on the fence.
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Paul added, during the interview: “I don’t think it’s a good day for the country. I think it’s a sad day because I hope it doesn’t devolve into that every president like in different parts of Latin America where we either impeach or throw presidents in jail because we don’t like their politics. I think that will really dumb down and destroy the country.”
A 169-page staff report, filed to the House Rules Committee just after midnight on the morning of December 16, alleges that President Trump directed a months-long scheme to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election, an allegation upon which two articles of impeachment were based — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The articles were approved by the Judiciary Committee last week. Democrats have claimed that proving a criminal violation is not required to justify impeachment.
In an 18-page dissent that accompanied the report, Judiciary Committee Republicans, led by Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), criticized Democrats’ evidence as “paltry” and an “affront to the constitutional process of impeachment.”
“If President Nixon’s impeachment proceedings are the ‘gold standard’ for presidential impeachment inquiries, these proceedings, in stark contrast, will go down in history as the quintessential example of how such proceedings should not be conducted,” Collins wrote. (Emphasis in original.)
The articles of impeachment will move to the House Rules Committee on December 17 and a full House vote is expected the following day.
During his interview when Tapper asked Paul if he could carry out “impartial justice” in the Senate, as required in the impeachment oath, Paul said, “I would say that my oath is to the Constitution.”
“This is a disagreement over policy and this is sort of an extension of politics, but this isn’t about the Constitution or the president breaking the Constitution,” Paul added.
Image: Screenshot of Rand Paul interview on CNN.com
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Warren Mass has served The New American since its launch in 1985 in several capacities, including marketing, editing, and writing. Since retiring from the staff several years ago, he has been a regular contributor to the magazine. Warren writes from Texas and can be reached at [email protected].
