Ahead of a House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing this week and the White House declining to participate, a Republican member of the committee used a Star Wars analogy to roundly dismiss the impeachment inquiry while seemingly comparing President Trump to the space opera’s central hero.
Fox News anchor Sandra Smith asked Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA) on Monday morning about the “big difference in the look and feel of the hearing happening on Wednesday compared to the 31 hours we saw before the Intel Committee. Chairman Jerry Nadler has a very different style than Adam Schiff, chairman of the Intel committee. What do you expect from him and how he will lead this hearing on Wednesday?”
Pointing to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference, Cline claimed we need to look at this the same way as the sci-fi franchise.
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“We had Star Wars—the Empire got destroyed just like the Mueller report got destroyed,” the Republican lawmaker declared. “The sequel is here. It’s The Empire Strikes Back, or as we like to say, ‘The Intelligence Committee strikes back, Adam Schiff strikes back.’ We all know how the story ends.”
The conservative congressman insisted that the Trump administration are the heroes, i.e., the Rebel Alliance, of this real-life saga, thus implying that the president would be Luke Skywalker—a commander of Rebel forces—in this analogy.
“The rebels win,” Cline concluded. “Ultimately the president will be exonerated and we don’t anticipate any reason to go forward with these hearings.”
The president, it would appear, was watching and was a big fan of Cline’s remarks. Shortly after the Virginia lawmaker’s Fox News hit, Trump took to Twitter to praise him.
“Thank you to Congressman Ben @Cline4Virginia for the Great remarks this morning on the illegitimate Impeachment Hoax,” the president wrote. “He understands the Do Nothing Democrats very well.”
Correction: This article originally named the congressman as Ron Cline, but his name is Ben Cline. We regret the error.
