Despite a mere 10 days ago saying that he saw no reason to support impeachment of the president of the United States because he "did not see a clear quid pro quo" based on a transcript between President Donald J. Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a 67-year-old Ohio area man announced "with great sadness" that he now supports impeachment after hearing Trump's acting chief of staff speak about the issue on Thursday.
"Uh, Ana, this has been a very difficult 24 hours for me," failed 2016 Republican presidential primary candidate John Kasich told CNN with a twinge of sadness in his voice. "The issue of impeachment is really big to me, and when I heard what Mulvaney said, the chief of staff to the president, it pushed me really across the Rubicon."
"I'll tell you why. Withholding military aid, vital military aid to a nation like Ukraine, which has Russian troops inside its territory, that's threatened all the time, that withholding it so that a political operation can take place, 'investigate this thing around the server, we're going to withhold aid until you do that,'" the Ohio governor continued. "To me, it's totally inappropriate. It's an abuse of power. Now, I know that there are presidents that will withhold aid because they have policy differences. But this is not a policy difference."
"And, uhm, so my view is that look, I fought with people on the air about 'is there a quid pro,' and 'does this rise to the level of impeachment'? I now believe that it does. I say it with great sadness. This is not something that I really wanted to do. I mean I voted to impeach Bill Clinton, and that was really hard. This has been excruciatingly hard. But this behavior, in my opinion, cannot be tolerated. And action is going to have to be taken."
Today on CNN, @JohnKasich said if he were a member of the House of Representatives, he would vote yes to impeach @realDonaldTrump. pic.twitter.com/P7vbpwwHBF
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 18, 2019
After a press conference on Thursday, members of the media surmised that Mulvaney admitted to a quid pro quo. He adamantly denied these statements this morning.
via Leah:
He said the media was “misconstruing” his comments to the press “to advance a biased and political witch hunt against President Trump.”
“Let me be clear, there was absolutely no quid pro quo between Ukrainian military aid and any investigation into the 2016 election,” Mulvaney said. “The president never told me to withhold any money until the Ukrainians did anything related to the server.”
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