Republican Sen. Rand Paul, of Kentucky, suggested on Friday that if former president Donald Trump is impeached for inciting the deadly riot on the U.S. Capitol, they should also impeach Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for “initiating” the man who shot Rep. Steve Scalise in 2017.
On June 14, 2017, a lone gunman who was said to be distraught over President Trump’s election opened fire on members of the Republican congressional baseball team at a practice field in this Washington suburb, using a rifle to shower the field with bullets that struck four people, including Steve Scalise, the majority whip of the House of Representatives.
Paul argued that Sen. Bernie Sanders should be impeached for the attack because the man voted for Sanders in the Democratic primaries. Sanders lost to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
During the interview, Paul also urged people to contact Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the leader of the Republican caucus in the U.S. Senate, and voice their opposition to impeachment proceedings.
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Asked by Hannity to comment on the looming impeachment trial, paul said:
“Well, here’s the real question about impeachment. If they’re going to impeach people who incite violence, I have a question, are they going to impeach Bernie Sanders? You remember the guy who shot Steve Scalise? Steve Scalise almost died,” Paul said. “I was there at the ball field when he was shot.”
He added: “The guy was a rabid Bernie Sanders supporter. And you remember what Democrats were saying at the time? They were saying Republicans health care plan is you get sick and then you die. That sounds like an incitement. If you’re telling people that the Republican Party is going to kill you, why wouldn’t you then react violently and say we must kill them before they kill us?”
He then tried to walk back his comments: “Now, I don’t propose, I’m not serious about this. I don’t think Bernie Sanders should be impeached,” he said.
Paul went onto say that Chief Justice Joh Roberts will not preside over the impeachment trial.
“This is an illegitimate procedure and even the chief justice of the Supreme Court who’s not a rabid Trump person, who’s actually if anything sort of in the middle, he is now saying this is illegitimate because I’m not getting in the middle of this, and I’m not coming over for this,” Paul claimed.
“So, that should tell people a lot of things, the chief justice of the Supreme Court is not coming over because it’s not an impeachment of the president which is what the Constitution says.”
We must note that Justice Roberts has not made any public statement about the impeachment.
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