Howie Kurtz: Americans probably getting sick of impeachment 'theater'
Fox News media analyst Howie Kurtz on whether Americans are tuning out the Democrats' impeachment hearings.
Americans are getting sick of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry "theater," "MediaBuzz" host Howard Kurtz said Thursday.
In an interview on Fox News Radio's "Brian Kilmeade Show," Kurtz said that while there is absolutely no question that the Justice Department and Inspector General Michael Horowitz found "really serious stuff" during their investigation of the Russia probe, at the same time "this gets into sort of the parallel universe problem."
"The other top headline out of that report is, despite what President Trump and Lindsey Graham and various allies have been saying, in Horowitz's opinion -- and he's a widely-respected career prosecutor -- political bias, such as it was, did not affect the decision to launch the investigation of the Trump campaign and Russia," he said.
DEMS PLOW AHEAD WITH IMPEACHMENT ARTICLES, IN HEATED ALL-DAY SESSION
"And so, it was not tainted and lots of people had predicted it would be otherwise. So there was stuff for both sides to cherrypick," Kurtz told Kilmeade.
During his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Horowitz ripped the FBI for a 'failure' by the entire “chain of command” involved in the FBI’s initial Trump-Russia investigation and called out “basic and fundamental errors” at the bureau while stressing that his newly released report on the probe does not "vindicate" anyone.
Simultaneously, the House Judiciary Committee began day two of its impeachment markup and, after members debate and vote on proposed amendments to the articles, is expected to send them to the House floor for a debate and vote next week.
To convict the president and remove him from office, two-thirds of the Senate's vote is required.
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"It's not a debate. It's so repetitive at this point," said Kurtz. "But, I mean, I can tell you now what [House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga.] is going to say. I can tell you what [House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)] is going to say...they have recycled their own talking points."
"I do this for a living and I'm fascinated by politics and media and impeachment is a rare thing -- probably getting less rare in American politics -- and I'm sick of it!" he exclaimed. "So, I can imagine that a lot of the public is simply tuned out of this particularly Beltway political theater."
Fox News' Brooke Singman, Gregg Re, Chad Pergram, and Mike Emanuel contributed to this report.
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