Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) warned on the House floor on Wednesday that if the House of Representatives does not vote to impeach President Trump, then the country will be a "dictatorship."
Cicilline was participating in the planned 6-hour long debate in the House before members take the vote on impeachment.
"President Trump abused the enormous powers of his office when he solicited foreign interference for the purpose of helping him in his re-election campaign in 2020. The president betrayed our national security and undermined the security of our elections when he put his own personal political interests ahead of the interests of our country," Cicilline said.
"He tried to cheat to win re-election. And this wasn’t an attack on Vice President Biden, this was an attack on our democracy, and if we do not hold the president accountable today we will no longer live in a democracy. We will live in a dictatorship where any future president will be free to abuse their office in order to get re-elected," he continued.
Cicilline then implored Republicans to vote for the articles of impeachment because "this is about holding a lawless president accountable in the way our framers intended. This is a time to put our country over your political party."
The vote on the two articles against Trump, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, is expected to take place around 8:00 PM ET. The articles are expected to pass, which would make Trump the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blasted Democrats in both the House and Senate for doing "sloppy" impeachment inquiry work.
"So now the Senate Democratic leader would apparently like our chamber to do House Democrats’ homework for them," McConnell stated on Tuesday. "He [Sen. Schumer] wants to volunteer the Senate’s time and energy on a fishing expedition to see whether his own ideas could make Chairman Schiff’s sloppy work more persuasive than Chairman Schiff himself bothered to make it."