We’re collapsing ‘into chaos’ because Democrats won’t accept Trump, Tom McClintock says
First the Democrats wouldn’t accept Abraham Lincoln. And now they won’t accept Donald Trump.
That’s how Rep. Tom McClintock characterized the fast-moving House impeachment process Monday, comparing Trump’s agony to that of Lincoln’s as the Civil War was about to erupt.
McClintock, a California Republican, did not ask a witness a question during the House Judiciary Committee hearing Monday. Instead, he used his five minutes to warn about “flimsy evidence,” “a stunning abuse of power” and a democracy in peril because of the Democrats’ bid to impeach Trump.
“In every election one side wins and the other loses. Democracy only works because the losing side always respects the will of the voters,” the congressman said.
“The moment that social compact breaks down democracy collapses into chaos. That’s only happened twice in our nation’s history,” McClintock explained.
The first time, he said, was in 1860 “when the Democrats refused to accept the legitimate election of Abraham Lincoln. It happened again in 2016 when the Democrats refused to accept the legitimate election of Donald Trump.”
It was said, notably among Southern politicians, that Lincoln’s election would lead to the end of slavery. A month before Lincoln took office in March, 1861, several Southern states had seceded and Jefferson Davis was elected president of the new Confederate States of America. The Civil War began in April.
While McClintock didn’t see that sort of schism, he warned “the issues before us today do indeed strike at the heart of our democracy.”
He noted that “the first calls for impeachment began just days after the 2016 election and ever since the Democrats have been searching for a pretext.”
McClintock then reviewed his case, which he has presented before, that Trump is charged with conducting foreign policy.
“Our Constitution vests the executive authority including the enforcement of our laws with the president and it gives him sole authority to conduct our foreign affairs,” McClintock said.
Democrats are moving to impeach Trump over Trump’s efforts to compel Ukraine to announce investigations that would benefit Trump’s re-election campaign.
Trump in a July phone call asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to open inquiries into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son’s appointment to the board of a Ukrainian energy company, and into a theory that Ukranian officials interfered in the 2016 U.S. election to benefit Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Multiple U.S. diplomats have testified that Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani was carrying out an “irregular” diplomacy in Ukraine to help Trump’s re-election, and that Trump’s administration appeared to withhold military assistance and a coveted meeting at the White House for Zelensky as preconditions for opening the investigations.
U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland at a November impeachment hearing said, “Was there a ‘quid pro quo’? . . . With regard to the requested White House call and the White House meeting, the answer is yes.”
McClintock went on to criticize Democratic witnesses as providing no direct evidence that Trump was trying to condition aid to Ukraine on a request to investigate Biden’s son.
The Democratic case, McClintock said, would “turn the Bill of Rights on its head.”
“This is a stunning abuse of power and a shameless travesty of justice that will stain the reputations of those responsible for generations to come,” he said.
This story was originally published December 9, 2019 at 7:18 PM.
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