One of the worst arguments floating around against impeaching the president is that it is somehow worse for Democrats than for him. The argument is a favorite of white nationalist and Fox News host Tucker Carlson, and he’s not alone. Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has also made a version of this argument.
Watch: Donald Trump in 2014 enthusiastically called for impeaching Obama
Trump: “Do you think Obama seriously wants to be impeached? ... He would be a mess.”
Written by John Whitehouse
Published
Fortunately, someone has already debunked this argument, and that person is Donald Trump. Watch Trump really lean in during a November 24, 2014, appearance on Fox & Friends, saying that Republicans should impeach then-President Barack Obama and claiming that once impeached, the president would be “a mess” and unable to focus on anything else.
The unquestionable highlight is this quote (though don't sleep on the Giuliani cameo): “Do you think Obama seriously wants to be impeached and go through what Bill Clinton did? He would be a mess. He would be thinking about nothing but. It would be a horror show for him. It would be an absolute embarrassment. It would go down on his record permanently.”
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From the November 24, 2014, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
ELISABETH HASSELBECK (CO-HOST): Mr. Trump, great to have you here this morning. What do you think the Republicans’ next move should be? Is it shutting the government down, is it refusing nominations? Where can they go very wrong and where can they go quite right?
DONALD TRUMP: Elisabeth, I've been watching the Democrats play poker for the last four years, actually, and I’d say, let's give them the benefit of the first two, but for the last four years, and listening to them say, “Oh, he'd love to be impeached, he'd love to be impeached, he'd love to see the government shut down." You know, whenever it comes to something like the catastrophe that just happened with executive action -- “He'd love to see --" all the Democrats -- and I mean, they must be coached, they must go to school for this.
“He'd love to be impeached. Please impeach him, it would be so good for the Democrats. Please shut down the government, it would be so good for Obama. That's what they want, shut down the government."
What a lot of crap.
STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): [Chuckles]
TRUMP: Because all of -- all that they're doing, they're actually talking Republicans into not doing it.
Do you think Obama seriously wants to be impeached --
DOOCY: No. No.
TRUMP: -- and go through what Bill Clinton did? He would be a mess. He would be thinking about nothing but. It would be a horror show for him. It would be an absolute embarrassment. It would go down on his record permanently.
But they're saying, “Oh, he’d love to be impeached, that would be so good." And the Republicans are all saying, “Oh, we’d never impeach him, never impeach him because he'd like that."
PETER JOHNSON JR (CO-HOST): Well --
TRUMP: And the Republicans -- and I'm a Republican -- and the Republicans are saying, on the other hand, about, you know, about the other -- shutting down the government. Look, they supposedly did a weak effort to shut down the government, and the Republicans just had one of the greatest triumphs they’ve ever had last week. So that tells us --
JOHNSON JR.: Well, Donald, has the president done something worthy of impeachment and should he be impeached?
TRUMP: Well, he certainly did something that was unconstitutional. Now, depends on [Supreme Court] Justice [John] Roberts, if he wants to just curry favor in the Beltway like he did with Obamacare, because that's the only reason he did it, because he knows he was wrong. But it certainly depends on what happens. I mean, I think certainly he could be impeached and certainly they could shut down the government. Remember, Peter, they said if you shut down the government -- well, they did a very, very weak job of shutting down the government. But if it would shut down, it wouldn't be shut down for long. What he did is unbelievable, what he was able to do.
...
DOOCY: Rudy's up next.
To be clear, however one views Trump's argument, it is separate and independent from any legal questions about impeachment or factual questions about what happened. Trump was talking in the context of Obama’s executive action on immigration -- one of many calls from the right to impeach Obama.