House Republicans voted to formalize their baseless impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden on Wednesday, the latest in a series of clumsy steps that began literally the day after he was sworn in.
Texas congressman Troy Nehls appeared to give the game away about the inquiry's purpose with a simple statement: “Trump 2024, baby!”
The statement is a good reminder that, aside from the facts themselves, there’s another element that should work in Democrats’ favor as they push back against this circus: chatty Republicans. In particular, Republicans' public statements that have and will help to expose the blatantly political motivations driving the inquiry.
Take Sen. Chuck Grassley, for example, who said Wednesday that he’d seen “no evidence” of wrongdoing by Biden. Or Rep. Don Bacon, who admitted Tuesday that he hasn’t seen evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors by Biden and that the president “probably” hasn’t committed any (a rather stark admission) — yet Bacon still believes the inquiry is needed to extract “information for the [2024] elections.” The examples don’t end there, of course.
In September, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., claimed on various social media platforms that the impeachment push will create bad headlines for Biden and Democrats, causing them to “lose big” in the 2024 elections “no matter which candidate runs for president.”
Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., said flat-out during a House hearing in July that “President Biden has not been implicated or proven” to have engaged in any wrongdoing.
Even Fox News host Peter Doocy has thrown cold water on the charade, saying Republicans haven’t shown where Biden has committed any illegal acts. (Note: This is why Kentucky Rep. James Comer — who’s been mocked repeatedly for his leadership of the baseless push — recently said he’s no longer going to appear on Fox.)
And we can’t forget Donald Trump’s admissions, either. In September, Trump told former Fox host Megyn Kelly that the Biden impeachment could be understood as retribution for the impeachments Trump faced over withholding aid to Ukraine and attempting to overturn the 2020 election. It’s a sentiment he’d expressed prior to that, too.
“THEY DID IT TO US!” Trump claimed in an August post on his struggling Truth Social platform, demanding Republicans impeach Biden or “fade into oblivion.”
Earlier this year, I reported on polling data that show majorities of voters in Republican-held districts that went for Biden in 2020 think the Biden impeachment effort is more about political targeting than fact-finding.
And Republicans, bless their hearts, have done nothing to dispel that notion.