Republicans

GOP Vows to Impeach Biden, Will Get Back to Us When It Figures Out What to Impeach Him For

Has Joe Biden committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” since becoming president? No, but that’s not going to stop Republicans from trying to remove him from office anyway.
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SCRANTON, PA - OCTOBER 23: Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden lays out his economic policy plan to help rebuild the middle class during a campaign stop at the Scranton Cultural Center on October 23, 2019 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Biden has been a frontrunner for the candidacy but Elizabeth Warren has been gaining in recent polls. (Photo by Rick Loomis/Getty Images)Rick Loomis/Getty Images

Ask any member of the Republican Party what they think the Democrats’ most unforgivable action was while Donald Trump was in office, and they’ll all likely tell you the same thing: impeaching the GOP’s lord and savior on not one but two occasions. (The close seconds obviously being the Dems acting mean to Brett Kavanaugh and their neglecting to pass a resolution formally making Ivanka Trump a princess.) There were, of course, very good reasons why the 45th president of the United States was impeached, first in December 2019 and later in January 2021. However, if you or a conservative you know can’t quite recall what those reasons were, here’s a reminder: Trump tried to extort Ukraine for his own political gain and incited a violent insurrection that left multiple people dead, both of which quite obviously fall under the “high crimes and misdemeanors” the Constitution mentions when it refers to impeaching and removing a president from office.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, has not committed such acts. But Republicans are not going to let that stop them when it comes to attempting to boot him from the White House!

Over the weekend, GOP representative Nancy Mace told Meet the Press host Chuck Todd that “there’s a lot of pressure on Republicans” to vote to impeach Biden. Asked how she personally would come down on the issue, Mace said she would “follow the Constitution,” explaining that she would not “vote for impeachment of any president if I feel that due process has been stripped away for anyone.” In 2021, despite criticizing Trump for the events that transpired on January 6, she chose not to impeach him over the attack on the Capitol and attempt to burn democracy to the ground.

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On Monday, Rep. Matt Gaetz declared that if Republicans retake the House in November, their number one priority should be to “engage in impeachment inquiries to get the documents and the testimony and the information we need,” saying that if his party doesn’t go after Biden, “voters will feel betrayed.” Speaking to ex-Trump administration official Steve Bannon, Gaetz insisted that investigating the president should take precedence over “policy [and] bill making,” and lamented that some members of the GOP want to do dumb things like “work with the Democrats so that we don’t have to go through the pains of any government shutdowns.”

“We are in a battle,” the Florida congressman added. “And we have to open up every vector of attack on a corrupt administration that is punishing the American people out of these virtue signals to wokeism.”

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Mace’s and Gaetz’s comments follow similar remarks from their colleagues about the prospect of Republicans spending the next two to six years devoting every waking moment to trying to remove Biden from office. Rep. Adam Kinzinger—one of the few anti-Trump elected officials in the House, who is retiring at the end of his term—warned last week that a House controlled by the GOP would attempt to impeach Biden “every week.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has made impeaching the 46th president an official plank of her own personal platform, introduced articles of impeachment against Biden the day after he was inaugurated. GOP nominee Joe Kent has promised, on several occasions, to “drop impeachment papers” on Biden (and Kamala Harris) “on day one.”

While some Republicans have thrown out vague reasons like “the border” and “Hunter Biden” to support impeaching the president, for the most part, their plan appears to be: “Impeach first, ask questions—like, ‘do we actually have a valid reason for this?’—later.” In January, Ted Cruz said on his podcast that Republicans would impeach Biden “whether it’s justified or not,” adding: “That’s not how impeachment is meant to work, but I think the Democrats crossed that line. I think there’ll be enormous pressure on a Republican House to begin impeachment proceedings.” As The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake noted on Monday, it was probably Senator Joni Ernst who best summed up the party’s position when she said: “I think this door of impeachable whatever has been opened.”

“Whatever,” indeed!