Well I just want to push back a bit, respectfully but that’s what we do here at Fox, on Ken
Starr on Andy McCarthy but particularly on Ken Starr on his characterization of this
process and what we heard today.
When he was speaking just a couple of moments ago, he said that the presentation of the
case against the president is narrow, prosecutors looked at the world through dirty windows,
it’s slanted.
And you know, it just seems to me and Ken, I see you there on the screen so I’ll be
talking directly to you.
You know, when you compare this to the Clinton impeachment, which was basically about whether
or not the president had lied under oath about sex, I’m not talking about whether or not
this story is true or not, but the allegation that president Trump conditioned support on
a key foreign policy ally on political benefit to him strikes me as not narrow but far broader
than the Clinton impeachment and the effort that was made by you and then Republicans
to impeach him.
And in addition, you said earlier today that there’s no prospect that there’s no way
this is going to go anywhere in the Senate, as if that should somehow affect the way the
House proceeds.
Well there was certainly never any prospect that Bill Clinton was going to be removed
and in fact you talk about the political buy in, Bill Clinton in 1998, right in the height
of the whole impeachment thing, scored a victory.
Democrats actually picked up seats which is very unusual for the party of the president
in the midterm election, but the House and you, to some degree, participated in impeaching
him.
I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with that.
But I’m simply saying it seems that there’s a very different standard in how the Clinton
impeachment went and how this impeachment is being judged.
This seems to be about a much bigger issue, whether or not you believe the president did
it is different issue, but it seems to me this is about an issue of foreign policy,
national security, the security of our elections.
It’s a much bigger issue than whether or not Bill Clinton lied about sex.
Here’s my response.
One, there is no bipartisan support of this impeachment inquiry, so that’s a very important
background fact.
In the Clinton matter, when the referral came to Congress, what Congress had to do was to
say is this serious enough to perhaps remove a president of the United States when he has
committed federal crimes.
What we have not seen here is the suggestion—or at least we have not seen proof, that a crime
has been committed and that seems to me to be a very relevant fact.
When some president has committed actual federal felonies, then that puts, it seems to me,
the impeachment inquiry in a very different context.
Now, what we’ve heard today is this, again, I believe a very one-sided, which is what
Mr. Goldman was charged with doing, slanted view of the evidence.
Let’s look though at the broader context.
Now there’s no question even though Ambassador Sondland is not a good witness for the president,
there’s no question, there is no question that this president hated the idea of foreign
aid to corrupt entities.
There’s no question.
So there’s mixed motive here.
And so my question is is this something that is going to in fact persuade reasonable people
in the middle who just said what are the facts, that there is – and this is their bottom
line, the Democrats’ bottom line, the president is a clear and present danger to the national
security of the United States, and I view that as an extravagant claim.
This is Fox News’ Chris Wallace calling out Ken Starr, the independent counsel who
led the investigation surrounding Bill Clinton’s impeachment, for the glaring false equivalency
between the Clinton impeachment and the Trump impeachment.
Ken Starr claims that there’s no bipartisan support for this impeachment, but first of
all, there is nothing in the Constitution that says that impeachment needs to be bipartisan.
In fact, impeachment is inherently a partisan process.
It was partisan when Clinton was impeached.
It was partisan when Nixon’s articles of impeachment were being drafted.
To claim that this process is somehow not valid because it’s not bipartisan is just
completely baseless.
And second of all, acknowledging that it’s not bipartisan isn’t a knock on Democrats,
it’s a knock on Republicans.
Admitting that your entire caucus is too collectively spineless to hold Trump accountable for blatant
criminal behavior doesn’t absolve him, it just makes the caucus seem completely impotent.
And by the way, there WAS a Republican, Justin Amash, who supported impeachment, who was
effectively excommunicated from the party and forced to re-register as an Independent
after the haranguing he received from his colleagues.
So let’s just be honest here-- the Republican Party isn’t united behind Trump because
he’s innocent, they’re united behind him because they’re too scared to speak up for
what’s right and risk being on the receiving end of a mean tweet.
Glad to see they’re taking their oath of office seriously.
But that claim pales in comparison to the utter ridiculousness that was his next claim,
that the difference between Clinton’s impeachment and Trump’s impeachment was that there was
proof that Clinton committed a crime whereas we just can’t manage to find any shred of
evidence of Trump’s crimes.
Nope.
Not withholding congressionally allocated military assistance as a bribe until he could
exact political concessions from the leader of a foreign country.
Not trying to hide the summary of the call that would’ve incriminated him in a secure
server despite it containing no sensitive national security information.
Not blocking administration officials from testifying in response to legally binding
subpoenas.
Nope, no crimes here.
These are all, in the words of Trump himself, “very legal and very cool.”
Starr tries to run cover for Trump by claiming that this is all born out of the idea that
Trump doesn’t like foreign aid.
But here’s the thing – just because you don’t like foreign aid doesn’t mean you
get to use it as an extortion tool.
That’s not how this works.
First of all, it was allocated by Congress, so Trump doesn’t have the right to withhold
it in the first place.
But even then, it’s still not license to commit a crime with it.
And in case there’s any doubt, leveraging it for the promise of an announcement of a
probe into your top political opponent – which is unequivocally a thing of value from a foreign
entity – is a crime.
Finally, Starr tries to present the concept that the president is a clear and present
danger to the national security of the United States as doubtful.
But his actions absolutely constitute a national security threat.
They invite other countries to interfere in our elections so long as Trump can exact some
personal benefit.
They tell our allies that our alliances don’t mean anything beyond money and political favors.
They put out Constitution and laws in jeopardy, in that there’s little reason to follow
them if they’re not going to be enforced across the board.
They show that Trump is willing to strengthen Russia’s hands and weaken ours and NATO’s
if it means he could stay in power longer.
And it sends a message loud and clear to the rest of the world that the United States will
not fight for democracy and, in fact, defer to authoritarians and dictators.
Trump is not only a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States,
he’s the GREATEST national security threat that this nation has ever encountered.
The fact is, if this isn’t impeachable, what is?
Are we really pretending that lying about oral sex is more impeachable than using $391
million in taxpayer funded military assistance for a country at war – at war, mind you,
with the SAME COUNTRY that JUST attacked us – as a bribe for dirt on a political opponent?
The same people who had nothing but righteous indignation when Bill Clinton told a lie suddenly
have quite a bit of leeway now that their president has decided to run a taxpayer funded
international extortion racket.
All that this process has shown is that the GOP has no moral fiber or longstanding convictions,
they just want to be in power.
That’s it.
They will lie and cheat and steal and distort and obfuscate to get their way, even if it
means trashing the Constitution that they’ve always been so quick to hide behind.