Twenty years ago, Sen. Rick Santorum was among the 45 Republicans who voted to remove President Bill Clinton from office. Today, as a CNN contributor, he is one of President Donald Trump’s staunchest defenders.
As the House voted to impeach Trump on two counts Wednesday night, Santorum declared it a “tragic day” in America.
“Donald Trump is going to be be judged, his presidency will be judged by the fact he was impeached,” he said. “But the people who voted to impeach him will be judged, too. I don’t think this is going to reflect well on them any more than it reflected on the radical Republicans who tried to get rid of Andrew Johnson.” Santorum then had to admit that Johnson is “not thought well of” by history, “but neither were the people that tried to impeach him,” he added.
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Then he turned to his own impeachment experience with Clinton. “If Bill Clinton had done what he did today, there isn’t one #MeToo person that wouldn’t want him out of office. There was a different time that he got away with ‘just sex’ that today he wouldn’t get away with. It was a different standard.”
“Looking back on that, I think Republicans actually look pretty good as being pretty woke at the time of this going on,” Santorum added. But with Trump, he said he agrees with the current Republicans who have characterized impeachment as a “constant attempt by Democrats to go after this president” and nothing more. “I think it’s going to reflect badly,” he predicted. “And this next election will probably be that first element of how that’s going to be judged.”
