With every day, it becomes more and more obvious that the Senate isn’t going to give in to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s demands. The California Democrat has spent nearly two weeks holding onto the House’s articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, insisting that she wants to be sure the Senate will conduct a fair trial before moving forward — but it seems she’s hit a brick wall in that regard; Senate Republicans aren’t budging.
The latest to take a stand against Pelosi was Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who urged Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Friday not to allow Pelosi any influence over the Senate’s trial.
“I hope that Mitch McConnell sticks to his guns and she has no influence in the Senate,” Scott said of Pelosi, according to Fox News. “We should keep it that way.”
A “wacky” process in the House
The senator’s comments came during an appearance Friday on Fox’s The Ingraham Angle with host Jason Chaffetz. There, Scott slammed Democrats’ “wacky” impeachment process, which has curiously failed to move forward since the highly-partisan Dec. 18 vote.
“The wacky House process is just a joke. And unfortunately, for one of the most important and consequential decisions the House could have made, to impeach the president, you would expect an expeditious process for the Senate to start the process,” Scott said, according to Fox. “But it’s not happened.”
He went on: “That’s not happened because Pelosi is not taking this seriously, and, frankly, she is now concerned that the terrible process in the House will be invalidated by the Senate.”
And she has reason to be concerned, Scott says. “Without any question, having watched that process, it’s hard to understand why we [are] even in the impeachment process at all,” he told Chaffetz. And Mitch McConnell seems to agree.
Don’t give in, Mitch!
Speaking with reporters earlier this month, McConnell said any leverage Pelosi thinks she is gaining with this move is imaginary.
“It’s beyond me how the speaker and Democratic leaders in the Senate think withholding the articles of impeachment and not sending them over gives them leverage,” McConnell said, according to The Hill.
He added: “Frankly, I’m not anxious to have the trial. If she thinks her case is so weak she doesn’t want to send it over, throw me into that briar patch.”
In the meantime, Scott says, Republicans and Trump will continue to make progress on their goals for the country.
“We will just continue putting more judges on benches throughout this country and working on what is a really good economy,” the senator said Friday.
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