It's "a joke" for Reps. Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan to try to bring articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and designed as a "pure stunt" to reinforce President Donald Trump's narrative of corruption, Weekly Standard editor-at-large Bill Kristol said Thursday.
"They couldn't get 30 or 40 political votes for it, so its a pure stunt to feed into Trump's narrative that the Justice Department is corrupt and the [Robert] Mueller investigation is tainted," Kristol told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program.
"It's deeply irresponsible."
However, it would be good for Republicans to bring the matter to a vote, as there would be a "huge majority" against the call for impeachment, said Kristol, adding that it would show that Republicans don't believe in pure demagoguery.
He said he does wonder what Meadows, R-N.C., and Jordan, R-Ohio, get out of their move, announced Wednesday night, beyond protecting their own jobs.
"I guess they believe it somehow," Kristol said, admitting there might come a time to impeach a cabinet official or subofficial for "genuine misdeeds, and to remove someone who has clearly violated legal norms and legal procedures."
However, that is "obviously" not the case with Rosenstein, he stressed.
Filing articles of impeachment against Rosenstein also lowers the bar for such procedures, said Kristol.
"If we impeach him, why don't they try to impeach the 20 cabinet officials and subcabinet officials they like least?" he said. "You cannot run a government that way."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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