Hours after the GOP-led House formally handed articles of impeachment against Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate, Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto told a top Senate Republican that the endeavor seems to be “political theater.”
On Tuesday afernoon’s Your World, Cavuto spoke with the Republican Senate Conference chair, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), indicating he was skeptical of having a full trial over the matter, as most Republicans desire.
“If the president likes his homeland secretary, [who] serves at the pleasure of the president—the president isn’t going to do anything about him,” Cavuto began. “You’re not going to get these votes in the Senate. You don’t even have all of your Republican colleagues going along. Six didn’t even want to be any part of this. So, this seems more political theater than anything else. Disavow me of that notion.”
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Barrasso didn’t agree.
“The House of Representatives has impeached a member of the Cabinet for the first time in 140-some years,” he began, before Cavuto interrupted, noting that all those voting in favor were Republicans.
The House impeached Mayorkas in February, alleging that he “refused to comply” with immigration law and that he “breached the public trust” through his management of immigration at the southern border. The effort succeeded by a single vote, 214-213, with three Republicans joining Democrats in voting against it.
Barrasso maintained that there is “strong evidence to be presented to the United States people and yet Chuck Schumer refuses to do it.”
“Every time there has been an impeachment, Neil, in the entire history of the United States —and there have been less than two dozen others—there has always been a trial unless the person has resigned,” he said, before accusing Schumer of “rewriting the laws for impeachment so that if you get a future president impeached and a member of his own party is in the majority in the Senate, it means that there is unlikely to be an impeachment trial there.”
Cavuto followed up by asking about Republicans like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) who have expressed reservations about the substance of the two articles of impeachment. “Are they just out to lunch, or what?”
“People are not supposed to make a decision until after the trial has been completed,” Barrasso replied. Democrats, he then claimed, oppose a trial so that they can benefit politically.
