There are more benefits for the United States if President Donald Trump is met with a "thumping defeat" in the 2020 presidential election rather than if he is impeached and removed from office, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said Thursday.
"The impeachment process is based on a constitutional standard and needs to run its course accordingly," Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, told The Boston Globe in an interview just minutes before House members voted along party lines, 232-196, to pass the rules for the next phase of the impeachment process.
'I will say that there would be a lot of benefit to Trump and Trumpism getting a resounding, thumping defeat at the ballot box because I think that is what will be required for congressional Republicans to be reunited with their conscience," Buttigieg added.
Buttigieg has often called for defeating Trump rather than impeaching him, but has also commented that the president "deserves impeachment," reports Reuters.
On Thursday, Buttigieg said that impeachment is "about accountability for an abuse of power," but that it is not about "solving our political problems."
"The most important thing is to set up the next presidency and that is part of the process I actually have a part in," he said.
Buttigieg has also called for an end to the division that is taking place in the United States.
"This hyperpartisanship won't be solved in Washington," he told a recent audience in Derry, New Hampshire, reports The Globe. "It will be solved by you."
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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