Sen. John Fetterman on Republicans trying to impeach Biden: 'Go ahead, do it. I dare you.'

deconstruct@lemm.ee to politics @lemmy.world – 865 points –
Sen. John Fetterman on Republicans trying to impeach Biden: 'Go ahead, do it. I dare you.'
nbcnews.com

Sen. John Fetterman offered a message Wednesday to House Republicans considering impeaching President Joe Biden: “Go ahead, do it. I dare you.”

Speaking to reporters in his Senate office, the Pennsylvania Democrat suggested that the impeachment push by Republicans on the other side of the Capitol was meant to deflect from the mountain of legal problems facing former President Donald Trump.

"Your man has what, three or four indictments now?" Fetterman said. “Trump has a mug shot and he’s been impeached twice.”

"Sometimes you just gotta call their bullshit," he said.

The first-term senator went on to say that a Biden impeachment "would just be like a big circle jerk on the fringe right,” and "would diminish what impeachment really means."

Note: As pointed out by reddig33 in comments, this is an old photo. Here's a couple examples of his new look.

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He would have had to commit a crime to be impeached. What crime did he commit, Republicans?

He had a son who's a fuckup. Not like Trump, whose children are definitely not fuckups.

Not fuckups at all.

No, a president can actually be impeached for any reason at all. They just won't be removed unless the opposing party has a supermajority.

Strictly speaking, not really true. "high crimes and misdemeanors" I believe is what the constitution says, which unfortunately boils down to "whatever Congress has the desire and political capital to punish" which historically does mean that Fetterman is right. Republicans would likely pay some amount of political price for voting an impeachment with no real or popular basis.

Correct. They also don't need anything other than political capital to launch an impeachment inquiry and just generally be a nuisance.

This is also literally the only reason Trump survived impeachment. Turns out, impeachment means fuck all in a minority-rule-by-design system in which almost nothing is clearly spelled out, and said system is the only check on what passes muster.

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