Democrats elected to districts carried by President Donald Trump in 2016’s presidential election “walked the plank” of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s “impeachment vote,” said Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN), offering his remarks on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily in an interview with host Alex Marlow.
Democrat representatives in districts won by Trump were forced to choose between party loyalty and the interests of their constituents, determined Kustoff.
“When [Nancy Pelosi] forced this impeachment vote, she put all them on the line. They had to make a decision whether they were going to do what their district probably wanted them to do or what Democratic leadership wanted them to do, and most of them, as we know — not all of them, but most of them — walked that plank.”
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Marlow also invited Kustoff’s comments on the killing of Qasem Soleimani. “[After Soleimani’s death, there were] a lot of warnings of World War III, and now a lot of hand-wringing about whether or not the president must consult with Congress on every military action.”
“This does seem like the first time that we’ve gotten to this level of minutiae that the Congress wants to control the president in this regard,” added Marlow.
Kustoff described Trump’s decision to eliminate Soleimani as a lawful exercise of presidential authority.
“When you look at what the president had to confront, and he met with his intelligence officials, of course, met with members of Congress on Wednesday — just two days ago — met in a classified briefing with the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the director of the CIA, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, the director of national intelligence, when you are the president of the United States, when you’re the executive, and you get information that General Soleimani is an imminent threat to [the] United States’ interests, you don’t have the time to go to Congress and try to tee up a vote and hope that the speaker of the House will schedule a vote.”
Kustoff continued, “You have to make a decision if you’re the chief executive if the evidence that you’re presented shows that — in this case General Soleimani — is an imminent threat.”
Kustoff concluded, “Legally, the president is within his right to do exactly what he did last week, and secondly, coupled with the information that he faces [and] was presented with by our chief intelligence officials, he made the only decision he could make.”
Breitbart News Daily broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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