New House Armed Services Chair Says Impeachment ‘Unbelievably Serious’ but Tlaib’s Constituents Have ‘Every Right to be Angry’
New chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) appeared on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, and host George Stephanopoulos asked him about impeachment talk, as presented by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-WI) in her widely reported “impeach the mother f***r” comment last week.
Not to mention, and more importantly, whether he thinks there will be an impeachment.
The topic of Tlaib’s comments came up several times on the Sunday shows, including notably when CNN’s Jake Tapper showed White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney a montage of clips of Donald Trump using the same language in various public venues. Mulvaney dismissed Trump’s use of curse words while also praising Democrats who “distanced themselves” from “that type of language.”
On This Week, it was a bit of the reverse.
“A couple of your Democratic colleagues have already filed articles of impeachment in the House,” said Stephanopoulos to introduce the topic. “we also saw your new colleague, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan say this.”
The clip that played was not the original curse, but Tlaib’s defense of her original cursing. “I stand by impeaching the president of the United States. I ran on that. It’s probably exactly how my grandmother, if she was alive, would say it,” she said in the clip.
“That’s the cleaned up version of what she said to — to MoveOn,” Stephanopoulos followed up. “What was your reaction to that, and are you concerned that Democrats may be pushing this too far too fast?”
“I don’t think we’re pushing it too far too fast,” said Rep. Smith. “The congresswoman represents a constituency that has every — every right to be angry at President Trump.”
He also said what about Republicans and others who have used this type of language in the past.
“And many politicians throughout the history — in fact, I think Vice President Cheney very famously used a similar word to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate,” he said, referencing Cheney just moments before the former Vice President’s daughter Liz Cheney was to appear after him on the same show. “People get passionate about their politics, so I don’t think it makes a great deal of difference exactly how she said it.”
On Fox News Channel’s MediaBuzz on Sunday, on the same topic, the back and forth among politicians over Tlaib’s comments was characterized as “whataboutism” over instances like Smith citing Cheney here.
“I wouldn’t have said it that way,” Smith added, “but the most important point here is impeachment is an unbelievably serious undertaking.” He spoke then about the historically difficult process of impeachment and removal from office.
“If the president has committed the crimes that we’ve seen considerable evidence that he has committed, we need to take that seriously,” he told Stephanopoulos before they moved on. “But it’s something that – we’re going to have to wait for Mueller’s report and do it in a serious way.”
Watch the clip above, courtesy of ABC News.
[Featured image via screengrab]
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