Brady is 2nd Texan to liken impeachment probe to coup
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, a Houston-area Republican, on Monday likened House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry to a coup — a comment that comes as Republicans in Congress have ratcheted up their rhetoric around the impeachment push, which President Donald Trump over the weekend said in a tweet could incite a civil war.
Brady wrote that Democrats “are hellbent on a rush to impeach” in a tweet that he ended with “#coup.” Brady is at least the second Texas Republican to characterize the impeachment inquiry as such, after U.S. Rep. Lance Gooden, a Dallas-area Republican, last week called it an “attempted coup against a dulyelected, sitting president.”
Republicans have gone on the offensive as Democrats move forward with the impeachment inquiry, publicly questioning the credibility of the whistleblower complaint at the heart of it, and arguing that Democrats are acting without evidence against the president.
The Republicans largely haven’t changed their tone even as some polling indicates Americans are increasingly supportive of the impeachment inquiry. A new Quinnipiac University poll released Monday showed an even split, with 47 percent of Americans saying they support the impeachment move and 47 percent opposing it. It was a big shift from a poll just five days earlier that found 57 percent of voters said that the president should not be impeached and removed from office, while 37 percent were in support.
The Quinnipiac poll follows a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll from last week that also found an even split on impeachment, and a CBS News poll released on Monday that showed 55 percent of Americans support impeachment.
Trump over the weekend tweeted that “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal,” quoting the Rev. Robert Jeffress, a Fox News contributor.
U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the top Republican in the House, said in an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday that “there’s not something that you have to defend here.”
The whistleblower complaint alleges the president was using his office “to solicit interference from a foreign country” to boost his re-election prospects in a call with the Ukrainian president, and that senior White House officials had intervened to “lock down” all records of the call, a summary of which was released to the public this week.
Sen. John Cornyn on Monday tweeted a screenshot of the website of the law firm representing the whistleblower, which includes a link to donate.
“Now the complainant, with no personal knowledge and who IG said exhibits political bias, is raising money off of the impeachment controversy,” Cornyn wrote.
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat, pointed out that even if Trump were to be removed from office, Republicans would still hold the White House.
“Sometimes I wonder whether Congressional Republicans realize that even if Donald Trump resigns or gets impeached they’d still have a Republican President (Mike Pence),” Castro tweeted. “It’s not like doing the right thing w/r/t Trump would install a Democrat as President.”