House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), whose endorsement of Joe Biden last year saved his foundering candidacy and put him on the path to the presidency, called outgoing President Donald Trump a ‘cancerous growth…a bad malignancy we had to get rid of’ in comments made the morning of Biden’s inauguration.
Clyburn made the remarks in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC:
Rep. James Clyburn to @GStephanopoulos on claims that impeachment effort might aggravate country's divisions: "There's a cancerous growth on this country, and you do not get rid of a cancerous growth unless you cut it out…And that's what we were doing." https://t.co/SDWXgVYVWw pic.twitter.com/w4PkhMu8rt
— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) January 20, 2021
Asked by Stephanopoulos about Republican concerns that the Democrats’ impeachment of Trump last week will “create more division” in the country, Clyburn said:
“My answer to that is very simple if I might use a metaphor again. There’s a cancerous growth in this country. And you do not get rid of a cancerous growth unless you cut it out. You gotta get it out of us and that’s what we are doing. We’re trying to cleanse this system. Nobody in his or her right mind will come to any other conclusion except that Donald Trump was just a bad malignancy on this country that we had to get rid of. So we have impeached him and I hope that the Senate will convict him. And I hope they will then take the vote not to ever allow him to hold office again. That is the cleansing that the country needs. We can’t allow this country to collapse because of the craziness of one person. And I do call it that because I think that is what we have been, we’ve been on a crazy downward spiral for four years and it’s time for us to get rid of that one person so the rest of this country can continue its journey toward perfection.”
Transcribed by TGP.