On Fox News Channel’s special coverage of the House impeachment hearings on Monday, “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace argued what President Donald Trump is accused of is more serious than what President Bill Clinton was charged with in his 1999 impeachment.
Wallace said he wanted to “push back” on former independent counsel Ken Starr’s “characterization of this process and what we heard today… he said that the presentation against the president is narrow, prosecutors look through the world through dirty windows, it’s slanted.”
He continued, “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 — 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 for 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 Republicans than to impeach him. And in addition, you said earlier today that well, there is no prospect that this is ever 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 Clinton was going to be removed. And in fact, you talked about the political buy-in. Bill Clinton, in 1998 at the height of the whole impeachment thing, scored a victory. Democrats actually picked up seats.”
He added, “I’m simply saying 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 a different issue. But it seems to be an issue about foreign policy, national security, the security of our elections. It’s a much bigger issue than whether or not Bill Clinton lied about sex.”
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