At least two things are keeping Sen. Al Franken from pushing for impeachment of President Trump: the possibility of an international incident, say a thermo-nuclear war with North Korea, and the idea of giving Vice President Mike Pence a promotion. Seriously.
But while it’s not obvious which outcome the Minnesota Democrat fears more, it’s clear that Franken really, really loathes Pence.
Franken explained his impeachment calculus to the International Business Times recently while plugging his new book, a move widely interpreted as a necessary prerequisite for a potential 2020 run for president. And though he’s adamant there was collusion between Trump and Russia, Franken isn’t sure what to do next.
“If you’re talking about how we handle North Korea or something like that, I’d probably be more comfortable with Pence ultimately making those decisions than Trump,” Franken said, citing Trump’s flippant character. But he urges caution, lest impeachment talk trigger the president.
“I think that [Trump] is so outside the norm in his behavior that that actually does concern me,” Franken continued in the next breath, “and it concerns me that I don’t know what he will do if he looks like he’s going to be impeached and he wants to deflect. I don’t know what he’s capable of, and that really does concern me.”
Put more clearly, Franken is hinting that Trump would rather start an international incident than lose his job. And if that means meddling with North Korea, as Franken seems to allude to here, then it would entail some sort of armed conflict with the communist nation.
That’s not the only thing troubling Franken. On top of the possibility of a bitter Trump going rogue on the international stage, he dislikes impeachment because it’d mean elevating Pence to the presidency.
“Pence ran the transition and some of the very worst nominees, I felt — Pruitt, DeVos, Price, Mulvaney — were Pence selections, clearly, I think,” Franken told IBT. “He’s ideological, I consider him a zealot, and I think that in terms of a lot of domestic policy certainly would be worse than Trump.”
In other words, he’s stuck between mutually assured destruction and a social conservative. Obviously, the former is preposterous and the latter scenario laughable.
So far Pence hasn’t lived up to the expectation of liberals. Though cast as a moral boogeyman, the vice president has done a poor job playing the part. When it comes to social issues, Pence has abandoned the culture war to the states. And six months into Trump’s presidency, both Roe v. Wade and gay marriage remain the law of the land.
Somehow those facts get in the way of Franken’s narrative. No worries though. So long as Republicans remain in control of the Senate, impeachment doesn’t seem possible, and neither do Franken’s doomsday political projections.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
