On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley criticized the “cottage industry” calls for President Trump’s impeachment as a dangerous move that can come back to bite Democrats and one that is odd considering Democrats spent the last eight years increasing the power of the president.
Turley said, “I mean, it’s become a cottage industry of people who are arguing for impeachment. Newsweek said, you know, that the president’s just six votes away from impeachment. you have impeachment meters and people promising that now we’re almost at that point where we can remove him. That’s dangerous. Because what people are really describing is what you have in Great Britain with a no-confidence vote, That is, you can remove a prime minister and his government with a simple vote of no confidence. People don’t have confidence in this president. That standard was rejected by the framers. And I think people need to understand how dangerous this really is. The Democrats spent eight years giving almost unilateral authority and creating this sort of uber presidency, and now many of them want to create a type of temp presidency, that they can remove this president for what one article described as political disagreements.”
Turley also responded to a question on Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) suggesting impeachment over the president not responding to far-right groups appropriately by saying, “[I]f you want a presidency like that, understand this is not going to be the last president, and that standard will be applied to the next one. Maybe there’ll be a Democratic president where the majority doesn’t think that that president has the values that it takes to stay in office.”
He concluded, “I think part of the problem here is that people want this lifeline in the Constitution. They want — how can we sort of rid ourselves of this meddlesome president? The Constitution is designed not to really allow that. Because they don’t want impulse buy removals.”
(h/t Grabien)
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