Khanna Says Trump Impeachment About “Setting a Standard” of Accountability

On Sunday, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (California) pushed back against calls from other Democrats to focus on economic issues ahead of the midterm elections rather than on holding President Donald Trump accountable, saying that lawmakers should do both.

In an interview with NBC News’s Kristen Welker on the network’s “Meet the Press” program, Khanna was asked to respond to Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s (D-Illinois) suggestion last week that Democrats shift their focus from impeaching Trump.

“What I would encourage my colleagues to not do is…don’t be impeaching anybody. Let’s just get back to work, and maybe we can come back to compromises,” including restoring funding to parts of the government that the Trump administration drastically cut, Duckworth said.

Asked by Welker whether openly expressing a desire to impeach Trump a third time would be a mistake for Democrats, Khanna flatly rejected the premise.

“No, it’s not,” he said, “because [impeachment is] not about Donald Trump. He’s going to be a lame duck, and in my view, largely increasingly irrelevant.”

Impeaching Trump is not just about holding the president to account, but about ensuring that future presidents didn’t view his actions as precedent, the lawmaker said.

“The point is to stand up for the Constitution,” Khanna insisted. “Impeachment says that you can’t get into an illegal war in Iran without constitutional approval. Impeachment says that you can’t just start firing federal employees when — in defiance of what Congress says. Impeachment says you can’t do deals with foreign governments to allegedly enrich your own family. It’s about setting a standard.”

Khanna added:

The Democrats can impeach to uphold constitutional values, and at the same time, have a first-hundred-day agenda that deals with the cost of living, to have child care. … We can do both.

Khanna’s comments came days after his colleague, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee), introduced 26 articles of impeachment against Trump. Cohen accuses the president of illegal military aggression in Iran and Venezuela, defying court orders in order to carry out his mass deportation campaign, attacking the free press, and using his government position to financially enrich himself and his family.

“Trump is clearly the most impeachable President our country has ever endured. His continued presence in office is a danger to our democracy,” Cohen said in a statement announcing the articles of impeachment.

Many establishment Democrats, however, are less stoked about impeaching Trump, perhaps fearing that such an agenda could alienate voters, impacting their chances of winning the midterms. In June, for example, House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) claimed that members of the party weren’t considering impeachment “at this moment.”

In more recent weeks, however, as members have expressed opposing views, Jeffries has said that Democrats are open to the possibility.

“We haven’t ruled anything in, and we haven’t ruled anything out in terms of impeachment,” he said earlier in September.

While some Democrats may be worried that impeachment talk could hurt their chances in the midterms, the polls tell a different story. A Strength in Numbers/Verasight survey in April, for example, found that 55 percent of Americans backed impeaching Trump, while only 37 percent were opposed to the idea.

Notably, that poll was conducted just a few weeks after Trump launched his war on Iran. Since then, Trump’s approval rating has continued to dip, dropping from a net -20 point approval number in mid-April to a -27 point rating as of Monday, according to an average of polling data collected by FiftyPlusOne.