In politics, sometimes the obvious isn’t stated — not because it goes without saying, but because everybody’s lying.
But on Monday, huge impeachment fan Al Green admitted what many have believed but few have ‘fessed up to: Democrats were set to impeach the President before he was ever elected.
While speaking with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, the two discussed, well, being full of crap.
Chris proposed:
“You just mentioned political expediency and insincerity. Those are two charges that have been leveled against Democrats during this entire affair, particularly since September when the formal impeachment inquiry started — and you play a starring role in those charges.”
He does indeed. Al called for impeachment from the House floor in October — of 2017.
It was his fourth time that year.
Chris is well aware:
“I mean, the argument goes like this of House Republicans and Trump and his allies: Basically, the Democrats wanted to impeach Donald Trump from day one. They cast about looking for a set of facts that they could plausibly use to do it, and all of it was pretextual and reverse-engineered to get to this point, and Exhibit One: Congressman Al Green, who [has] been calling for the man’s impeachment for two years now,” Hayes said. “What’s your response to that charge?”
I give you Honest Al. Here’s a quote to hold on to…
Finally — someone actually says it:
“Well, the genesis of impeachment, to be very candid with you, was when the President was running for office.”
Wow.
Tolerance is a no-go:
“With those things in mind and with the President’s behavior before us — firing Mr. Comey who was investigating the intrusion of Russia into his campaign, our election — that was something that was not to be tolerated.”
And how about a little obstruction:
“And the President has continued to try to thwart the efforts of Congress to investigate with Mr. Mueller. The President, by and through his White House counsel, tried to get this done again to deal with Mr. Mueller, to extricate him, to remove him from the process.”
To Al, it’s all about doing his duty.
He had to keep that rascal Trump from claiming exoneration:
“More specifically, I said that the President would claim that he was exonerated if there were impeachable actions that he performed and we did not move to perform our duty to impeach him. He has distorted the truth. He has twisted it and tried to crush it to earth.”
Now here’s a quiz for ya. If you had to guess, what would you think Al Green has planned once impeachment is over?
Green has already suggested that he has no interest in trying to work with the administration to achieve anything for the American people because he is already thinking about impeaching Trump again in the future if Trump wins re-election.
Good government in action.
Green laid it out for C-SPAN almost a month ago:
Democrat Rep. Al Green: "no limit to the number of times" Democrats will try to impeachpic.twitter.com/lEy2FginbZ
— Tommy Pigott (@TCPigott) December 5, 2019
Why have a Congress if this is what it’s about?
How’d we end up with representatives whose open, expressed goal is to stymie the government from working?
More from C-SPAN:
“There is no limit on the number of times the Senate can vote to convict or not a President, no limit to the number of times the House can vote to impeach or not a president. So, my belief is that the speaker will probably say we’re going to move forward with what we have now, but we’re not going to end investigations and that there may be possible opportunities to do other things at a later time.”
As I covered previously, Al offered up a whole new reason for impeachment recently.
While speaking to MSNBC in December, the congressman claimed we need impeachment to address slavery:
Democrat Rep. Al Green says the impeachment of @realDonaldTrump is needed “to deal with slavery.”
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) December 7, 2019
MSNBC’s Alex Witt “mmhhhmms” throughout the clip in agreement.pic.twitter.com/KbbQ5RPbbn
“I do believe, ma’am, that we have to deal with the original sin. We have to deal with slavery. Slavery was the thing that put all of what President Trump has done lately into motion. It’s insidious…racism. The President has played on racism, and he’s used that as a weapon to galvanize a base of support to mobilize people.”
Is this the way it’s gonna be for half a decade more? Will the voters allow it? Or, in an election yet to come, will America express its disapproval?
For now, Al Green will do his part to help us find out.