After House Democrats on Tuesday announced two articles of impeachment against President Trump, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said “it’s not a day that history will be proud of.”
The California Republican said the Democrats’ decision would weaken the nation as he accused party leaders of putting partisan politics ahead of solving America’s problems.
“This is the day the nation is weaker because they surely cannot put their animosity or their fear of losing an election in the future in front of all the other things that the American people want,” McCarthy said.
“Alexander Hamilton warned us that this day would come,” he added. “That a majority would use their political power just for politics, even though we all raise our hands to uphold the Constitution. I just hope no Congress, regardless who is in the majority, will ever take us down this path again, to waste a majority on this is an embarrassment to this Congress.”
“We watched in a hearing, a Democrat constitutional scholar that did not vote for President Trump say this was the weakest, the thinnest, the fastest impeachment in the history of America,” McCarthy said. “He then went to say if there was an abuse it would be abuse on the Democrats to move forward. The speaker must not have listened to that hearing. If the speaker had only waited 48 hours to release the transcript, America would not be put through the nightmare.”
“They don’t even have a budget. We don’t even have a trade agreement that was signed more than a year ago to make this country stronger, for not lowering drug prices,” added McCarthy, referring to the new trade deal for North America.
“We are not rebuilding this nation. Why? Because the timeline that they started from the day they were sworn in, down to the very freshmen announcing what they would do on the night they were sworn in to the selection of the chairs who would oversee the impeachment has come true today. It’s not a day that history will be proud of. It’s not a day I hope America ever repeats.”
McCarthy also said he has a “hard time believing” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s claim that she does not hate Trump.
And he pointed out that freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s (D-MI) called for Trump’s impeachment in January, shortly after she took office.
“I’ll take them at their word what Congresswoman Tlaib said their very first day in Congress of what she referred to the president, which I wouldn’t think anyone would want it referred to them, that she was going to impeach them,” McCarthy told reporters at a press conference.
