Say what? Former GOP presidential and Senate contender Carly Fiorina tells CNN’s Poppy Harlow that it is “vital” for the House to impeach Donald Trump over actions that she sees as “destructive to the republic.” Fiorina declares that the need to defend the constitutional structure of co-equal branches is so important that it requires such a move … but not Trump’s removal, and maybe not even his re-election.
Er ….
The former Hewlett-Packard CEO told CNN on “Boss Files with Poppy Harlow” that she sees the President’s conduct as impeachable and “destructive to the republic.”
“I think it is vital that he be impeached,” Fiorina said. But whether Trump should be removed from office, Fiorina said, “this close to an election, I don’t know.” …
Fiorina condemned Trump’s attacks on Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a decorated veteran who is the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert and testified before House impeachment investigators.
“Some of this conduct, like publicly berating a decorated war veteran who shows up in response to a lawfully issued subpoena of Congress, I think that conduct is not just unbecoming, I think it’s destructive to our republic,” Fiorina said.
That’s the impeachment bar — berating someone who’s criticizing your policies in public? Even if Trump was being a jackass about it, if that’s the bar for behavior “destructive to our republic,” it must be a particularly fragile republic. There’s a difference between bad comportment and the need to remove someone from office, or at least there should be.
Even the co-equal branches argument is nonsense. Fiorina is referring to the obstruction charge, but that’s not based on a co-equal argument. The House is claiming that the executive is subordinate to the House in matters of demanding testimony, which is the constitutional flaw in the second article. Adam Schiff could have taken the administration to court (the third co-equal branch) to enforce subpoenas, but chose instead to simply treat House subpoenas as unchallengeable. That’s not a constitutional approach — it’s a Cromwellian approach arguing for parliamentary supremacy over the executive.
If this was really as bad as Fiorina and Democrats claim, it would require removal from office, not just an impeachment that changes nothing. Otherwise, it’s just a form of censure which itself abuses the constitutional power of the House to pursue impeachment, a process which the framers included as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency situation. That’s precisely what Jonathan Turley tried to warn the House Judiciary Committee about last month, both in terms of the subpoenas and the demand to move forward with a historically anemic impeachment case.
But Fiorina goes even farther. Not only does this “destructive to the republic” behavior not warrant removal with an election looming, it might not even argue against Trump’s re-election to office. Fiorina says she might still vote to allow Trump to destroy the republic, or something:
After dropping out of the race for the Republican nomination in 2016, Fiorina said she did vote for Trump in 2016, citing her disapproval of then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, but since then she has been “bitterly disappointed.” But when asked whether she would vote for Trump in next year’s presidential election, Fiorina did not rule out voting for him again.
“It depends who the Democrats put up,” she said.
This is so fundamentally unserious that its silliness cannot possibly be overstated. If Fiorina can still vote for Trump, then she can’t seriously consider him a threat to the republic. If she wants him impeached, then she’s arguing for removal, which is the explicit constitutional purpose of impeachment. If she doesn’t want him removed before the election and might want him to serve a second term, then what the hell is Fiorina talking about?
