Marsha Blackburn: Democrats Risk Alienating Americans With Trump Impeachment Inquiry

 

U.S. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said Thursday that Democrats risk angering a lot of Americans if they move forward with an impeachment inquiry into U.S. Republican President Donald Trump.

Blackburn said as much during a scheduled phone call with reporters from around the state.

“This announcement (of the impeachment inquiry) was really the culmination of what has been a three-year push for them, and I think if you look at all the polling if they move forward with it they are going to do this at their own risk of alienating a lot of Americans,” Blackburn said.

“Based on the transcript that was released yesterday it seems that the House Democrats might have jumped the gun on this one. The bottom line is if we see a big impeachment investigation starting in the House and it gets to the Senate (then) the Democrats are not going to have the votes from Republicans to do a conviction. We’re going to continue to watch this as it plays out.”

During the call, Blackburn cited a December 2016 Vanity Fair article, published before Trump took office, that portrayed Democrats as eager to impeach the new president.

The title of the Vanity Fair article — “Democrats Are Paving the Way to Impeach Donald Trump.”

The article described Democrats’ push to impeach Trump and how they wanted to review his business interests so they might find conflicts of interests with his role as president.

“They have tried this through time. They tried it in 2017 to get an impeachment vote on the floor. That failed. They tried it again in 2018. That failed. They tried it earlier this year. It failed,” Blackburn said.

“They thought the Mueller Report would give them something to hang their hats on. It did not. Now they are trying this. There is nothing in the report that is an impeachable offense in the transcript of that phone call, and we put the transcript out yesterday morning on social media because we knew Tennesseans would want to read it for themselves and have the facts and make up their own mind.”

As The Tennessee Star reported this week, members of Tennessee’s Congressional delegation were quick to opine on Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment inquiry.

Democrats endorsed the impeachment inquiry, while Republicans vowed to support the president.

Scott DesJarlais, a Republican representing Tennessee’s Fourth Congressional District, sent out a press release saying this is not what the American people want.

Jim Cooper, a Democrat representing Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional District, said on his Twitter page that he favors the impeachment inquiry.

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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].