Former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders took a jab at congressional Democrats, saying their public impeachment hearings have fallen flat with voters.
“I was going to say, if this is a TV show, it should be canceled,” Sanders said on Fox News less than an hour before the third day of public testimony was to resume on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. “No one cares; no one is paying attention because it is such a waste of time.”
Approximately 13.1 million viewers watched the first day of testimony in the impeachment hearings, the Washington Examiner reported. That fell to 12.7 million people on the second day. After watching the first two days of sworn testimony from career diplomats who Democrats say have some knowledge of President Trump’s misconduct in office, Sanders said she was underwhelmed.
“They know at the end of the day this is going nowhere,” she said of American voters. “So far, their big star witnesses didn’t witness anything. Most of them have never even met the president. The idea that they somehow know the inner workings of what was taking place is absurd.”
Republicans have suggested that instead of dragging the country through a formal impeachment process, Democrats should attempt to defeat Trump at the ballot box in the 2020 election. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday called that strategy “dangerous.”
“That position only adds to the urgency of our action, because the President is jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections,” Pelosi said in a statement.
Sanders, however, fired back, “If anybody’s jeopardizing the election and the integrity of the process, it’s the people who refuse to accept the results [of the 2016 election].”
Last week, U.S. diplomats William Taylor, George Kent, and Marie Yovanovitch painted part of a picture depicting relations between the U.S. government and Ukraine in the days and weeks ahead of a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. After the call, a whistleblower alleged that Trump pressured Zelensky to investigate his political rival Joe Biden and used valuable military aid as a bargaining chip.
This “shakedown,” Democrats say, amounts to an abuse of power and merits impeachment. The president, on the other hand, has described the phone call as “perfect” and released a transcript of the conversation between the two leaders soon after the allegations of misconduct came to light. His Republican allies have accused Democrats of trying to undo the 2016 election with their impeachment process.
Sanders, who spent time in front of the White House press corps defending Trump from questions about former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, echoed that sentiment.
“This whole thing is about the Democrats refusing to accept that the president won in 2016,” Sanders said. “Every time they try to pin something on this president and make up some ridiculous scandal, we saw it — the two years wasted on Mueller. We’re watching it unfold again.”
Soon after leaving Trump’s White House, Sanders signed a deal with Fox News as a contributor and often uses its airwaves to defend the president and attack Democrats and members of the media.
