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Matt Gaetz critical of GOP's move to impeach Biden [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2023-10-06  

It’s emerging that Rep. Matt Gaetz really does not think highly of House Republicans’ drive to impeach President Joe Biden. This seems like the kind of thing Gaetz would be very excited about, but—like many observers—he can see that his fellow Republicans are not doing a very good job of it. That came out during the floor fight to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker. Gaetz rebuffed House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan’s defense of McCarthy’s leadership by saying, “It's hard to make the argument that oversight is the reason to continue when it sort of looks like failure theater.” As it turns out, Gaetz had aired similar complaints days earlier at an online fundraiser with Rep. Matt Rosendale and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

“I don’t believe that we are endeavoring upon a legitimate impeachment of Joe Biden,” Gaetz said in the Bannon-moderated discussion. “They’re trying to engage in a, like, ‘forever war’ of impeachment,” he added. “And like many of our forever wars, it will drag on forever and end in a bloody draw.”

That’s not all. Gaetz also said, “I just don’t get the sense that it’s for the sake of impeachment. I think it’s for the sake of having another bad thing to say about Joe Biden.”

At the fundraiser, Gaetz claimed he wasn’t criticizing Jordan or House Oversight Chair James Comer, and when NBC News asked him about his comments at the fundraiser, he responded, “Kevin wasn’t serious. Jim Jordan is.” Apparently, the whole “failure theater” thing was not an accusation against the people conducting the failure theater; it was somehow McCarthy’s fault. That’s very convenient for Gaetz as he tries to move forward while many of his fellow Republicans are furious at him. He says Jordan is serious, but he obviously doesn’t think much of the overall effort—so how is he going to reframe his view of it going forward?

Now, this is Matt Gaetz. It’s not that he doesn’t want to attack the Bidens. His favored way that Jordan and Comer could show they were serious and not just engaged in “failure theater” would be to subpoena Hunter Biden, something he brought up both at the fundraiser and on the House floor. How would bringing Hunter Biden in to deny that his father had been involved in his business dealings move things along when several witnesses have testified that the president was not involved in his son’s business? It’s unclear. It kind of sounds like Gaetz just wants to torment the younger Biden in person.

If Gaetz thought Republicans had anything, he’d doubtless be sprinting in front of the cameras to loudly call for an impeachment vote. But right now, he’s not seeing it. He can talk all he wants about how McCarthy wasn’t serious and Jordan is, but Jordan and Comer have been leading the investigations that look like an illegitimate impeachment, failure theater, a forever war of impeachment. And he’s absolutely right in every one of those descriptions.

Sign the petition: No to MAGA impeachment. Focus on what matters.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/6/2197756/-Gaetz-does-not-think-highly-of-Republican-effort-to-impeach-Biden?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=top_news_slot_3&pm_medium=web

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