Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in remarks on Sept. 27 said that the majority of Democrats appear to only care about impeaching President Donald Trump and not do their jobs as elected lawmakers, adding that the latest impeachment inquiry pushed by the Democrat-led House is “becoming a circus.”
“Washington is always a circus, but this is three rings with all the clowns and it’s nuts right now,” Cruz said on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.”
“Congressional Democrats are angry. They’re angry about the 2016 election. Ultimately, they’re angry at the voters. They’re angry that the voters elected President Trump,” he added. “All of this from day one, they had been wanting to get this president out of office.
“And as a result, they’re not doing their jobs. They’re not actually interested in legislating. They’re not interested in working together to produce more jobs and wages and expand opportunity. It’s just about attacking the president,” he said.
Cruz added that the latest impeachment inquiry is “not driven by facts” and that it’s a manifestation of their undying attempts to target Trump for impeachment.
“What we have seen from the Democrats is a consistent and relentless push to impeach regardless of the facts,” he said. “For months and months and months it was all about Mueller. Mueller, Mueller, Mueller, Mueller’s going to prove everything’s wrong. Then the Mueller report came along and it found no collusion, and suddenly all the Democrats who had been screaming ‘Impeach!’—they had nothing to say.
“Now, right now, they’re all screaming ‘Ukraine! Ukraine! Ukraine!’ and oddly enough, it’s the exact same conclusion: Impeach the president. And, by the way, in a month or two, it’s liable to be something else. It’s not driven by facts.”
The situation sparking the latest calls to impeach Trump started last week following reports of an alleged whistleblower who accused Trump of having improperly tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and Biden’s son Hunter Biden during a phone call in July. This was seen by some as new grounds for impeachment.
The transcript of the call was released hours after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced the impeachment inquiry, and the whistleblower complaint was released to the public on the following day, Sept. 26.
The transcript showed that Trump asked Zelensky to look into the firing of a top Ukrainian prosecutor which allegedly occurred under pressure from Joe Biden when he was vice president. The prosecutor was reportedly investigating the company—Burisma—on which Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, served as a board director.
The same transcript showed that Trump did not exert pressure or offer any form of payment when he asked Zelensky to look into Biden and his son, as had been the claim of a widely-cited Washington Post report that triggered the impeachment inquiry.
“Just a few days ago the Democrats were breathlessly on TV saying, ‘You’re gonna see an illegal quid pro quo and it’s gonna prove that.’ Well, you look at the transcript and there’s no illegal quid pro quo in that transcript,” Cruz said on Fox News.
“The president is asking another foreign leader to assist in investigating, number one: election interference into 2016. Now that investigating election interference into 2016 is a perfectly legitimate and appropriate law enforcement priority that—the Democrats have been talking non-stop about Russian interference; I’m not sure why they somehow think Ukrainian interference shouldn’t be examined,” he added.