Calls to impeach President Trump from some congressional Democrats should not be taken “very seriously,” according to one of the president’s most voluble critics.
“I don’t think very many people take that very seriously,” Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., told reporters Wednesday.
A report that Trump asked former FBI Director James Comey to abandon an investigation into the president’s former national security adviser rocked Capitol Hill Tuesday evening. Congressional Republicans asked Comey for the memos in which he reportedly summarized Trump’s request following one of their meetings, while some Democrats targeted Trump more aggressively.
Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, called for Trump’s impeachment in a Wednesday floor speech. “This is where I stand,” Green said. “I will not be moved. The president must be impeached.”
That’s not “rational,” according to McCain, even though he compared the latest allegations to the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon on Tuesday evening. “All I can do is judge the situation as it is,” he said. “Every day, we are all surprised by some other twist and turn of this issue so I can only respond now and now I do not think that is a rational approach.”
Even some Democratic leaders are taking a more cautious approach. “All of us ought to talk about just what a wrenching experience [an impeachment] would be for the country,” Calif. Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN. “That’s not something that we should be rushing into or rushing to suggest … [there are] some profound questions I think we need to answer before we get too far down the path of what are the consequences if the proof turns out to be there.”
