Divided Democrats and the politics of impeachment
Democrats debate next steps after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election; reaction and analysis from the 'Special Report' All-Stars.
As a handful of top Democrats have called for the impeachment of President Trump, Fox News digital politics editor Chris Stirewalt noted Monday that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report may not sway the American people as the president's opponents might expect.
“And, the question here is, would the American people countenance an impeachment. And, the answer is probably no, because there's nothing that anyone who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 could have read in the Mueller report, scuzzy as much of it was, unsettling as much of it was, that wasn't already baked into their consideration of Donald Trump,” Stirewalt said on “Special Report with Bret Baier.”
Stirewalt was discussing the most important question to ask for those considering impeachment of President Trump, saying pursuing that route was a “nonstarter.”
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“He didn't exactly run as Pope Francis in 2016, right, people knew a lot of this kind of stuff about his character before he ran, that's why I think it is a nonstarter,” Stirewalt told Bret Baier.
House Democrats backed off the idea of immediately launching impeachment proceedings against Trump in a conference call Monday evening, amid a growing rift among the party's rank-and-file members, presidential contenders and committee chairs on the issue.
Two senior sources told Fox News that on the conference call, House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters, D-Calif., told her fellow Democrats that while she personally favored going forward with impeachment proceedings, she was not pushing for other members to join her.
Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York also noted that the timing of impeachment would make the political climate “crazy.”
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“One last thing that the leadership is aware of, the timing of this will be crazy. If the Democrats start now, it will take a while to rev up the impeachment machine, and when they get going, we will be smack in the middle of a presidential election campaign where the impeachee is running for reelection,” York said Monday.
“Doing this in the middle of a campaign would put the whole process on steroids. It's crazy enough to begin with. The leadership is very worried about just the unpredictable aspect of that.”
Fox News' Bret Baier, Mike Emanuel and Gregg Re contributed to this report.
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