Republicans are looking years beyond Wednesday’s impeachment vote against President Trump to warn Democrats that a president of their party will eventually face the same fate based on raw partisan politics.
“It’s a scam. It’s something that shouldn’t be allowed. And it’s a very bad thing for our country. And you’re trivializing impeachment. And I tell you what: Someday, there will be a Democrat president, and there will be a Republican House, and I suspect they’re going to remember it,” President Trump told reporters last week, claiming that Democrats were using impeachment for “absolutely nothing, other than to try and get political gain.”
Trump, 73, is the third president to face House-passed impeachment articles and a Senate trial after Democrats Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998. In 1974, Republican President Richard Nixon resigned before the House took up impeachment articles for Watergate-related issues.
Democrats say the pair of impeachment charges against Trump are fully justified, pointing to Trump’s refusal to abide by congressional subpoenas.
Congressional Republicans argue the impeachment articles against Trump include not crimes like bribery or extortion but more politically nebulous charges of obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.
“I’m really saddened for my country,” Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, told the Washington Examiner. “I’m really concerned that the irreparable damage that now every president that has a different party in the House in control of the House will have to fight impeachment his whole term. It’s just a very, very dangerous precedent. There will definitely be some people wanting payback.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday impeachment payback is inevitable.
“Anything you do to us, we can do to you,” Graham said. “We have some people on our side just as crazy as people on their side.”
Democrats dismissed Republican warnings about how impeachment could be weaponized against a future president of their own party.
“I say they’re wrong,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “This president has conducted himself in a way that consistently puts our national security at risk, in my view.” Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said Republicans are engaged in willful ignorance by letting Trump off the hook for impeachable behavior.
“If a Democratic president abuses their power and puts the constitutional requirements at risk, then they will be subject to the same action,” Hoyer said. “If a Democratic president did what this president did, I would vote for articles of impeachment.”
Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin told the Washington Examiner that the circumstances of the Trump impeachment charges are uniquely bad, stemming from the president’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky and his pressure on the country to dig up political dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.
“I know Republicans are looking for some historic analogy. When this president declassified his conversation, it speaks for itself in the nature of the charge,” said Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. “I can’t tell you what their motives will be in the future, but I can tell you that this is a serious charge.”
