Appearing Thursday on Hill.TV’s Rising, 2020 White House candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for delaying the submission of articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate.
A partial transcript is as follows:
SAAGAR ENJETI: Congresswoman, I also want to get your reaction to this. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has said that they may not even transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate if they don’t think that this process is fair. Does that make it just a blatantly political from the very beginning? If they don’t end up transmitting that, what message does that send about this entire process?
REP. TULSI GABBARD: I was surprised to hear that. You can’t kind of just shift and change and make up the rules as you go along. If you’re going to pursue this process, you’ve got to let it play out the whole way through. Again, I think the hyper-partisan nature that we’ve seen throughout this whole thing — and again — this is not just on the part of the Democrats. You see it with those who are defending Donald Trump. You see blind loyalties to their party’s leader, who are proclaiming, “Yes, of course what Trump did was ‘perfect, nothing wrong.”” They’re not exercising their responsibility to the American people in providing legitimate oversight.
On the Democratic side, you see such extreme language being used, basically accusing the president of treason without actually saying the word and tainting, therefore, any possibility of a truly impartial fact-finding inquiry. This is where, I think, the vast majority of American people are seeing right through this and are deeply frustrated that so much time and energy is being consumed on this when the challenges, issues, concerns, hopes, and dreams they have in their everyday lives are going unheard.