Republicans who want to avoid criticizing the president are likely to lean on the wiggle room the Constitution gives Congress.
Republicans in Congress have struggled to explain why President Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president is okay. Witness the top House Republican, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), in an interview aired Sunday on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” Reporter Scott Pelley asks McCarthy whether what Trump has done is wrong.
McCarthy doesn’t directly answer the question. “You and I have all the information we need,” he says. “The president did nothing in this phone call that’s impeachable.” The exchange is instructive about how Republicans might move forward in this impeachment inquiry: switch the metric Trump is graded on from what’s wrong to what’s an impeachable offense.
This could be where Republicans’ hat will hang throughout this process: Maybe it was wrong (though McCarthy isn’t allowing that much), but it’s not impeachable.
View the complete September 30 article by Amber Phillips on The Washington Post website here.