Joining me now, Charlie Hurt, opinion editor for The Washington
Times and Ari Fleischer,
former White House Press Secretary,
the both Fox News contributors.
Ari, we're going to get to the Ukraine haranguing in
a moment,
but I want your reaction to the House vote
just successfully impeaching the DHS Secretary,
Alejandro Mayorkas.
Well, it's actually tied to the questions you were just
asking because it just shows the urgency the House Republicans
attached to securing the border.
And that's why he was impeached,
because he didn't secure the border.
He's failed to exercise the authority he has under the
law.
And and and he has,
it works for a president who's even worse.
And that's why we have an insecure border.
So it's not a surprise that they were able to
come back.
And I guess it proves the old adage if at
first you don't succeed,
try, try again. Now, Steve Scalise,
who's undergoing cancer treatment, made his way back to Washington
to cast his vote.
Obviously that that helped put them over the threshold that
they needed.
But Charlie, when when you look at this and you
think back on what Mayorkas said
when he was asked before Congress,
is that do you consider this a crisis?
And I mean, I guess it's not official perjury because
it's kind of an opinion,
but it was pretty close.
It was a crisis within a few months of what
was happening at our border.
A few months, not three years later.
And. And there's no doubt that not just that,
but there's plenty of other evidence that you could build
proving that he perjured himself in testimony before Congress trying
to cover up what was going on here.
Obviously, this vote, it's a great day for America.
What's kind of frustrating about it,
of course, is the fact that even though you have
a very closely divided House Republicans just barely eked through.
It. Looked from, I couldn't see
perfectly clearly, but it looked like 3 Republicans had voted
against this.
This is a abrogation of their responsibilities.
And I know a lot of people say,
well, you know, Republicans only have a bare bare majority
in the House.
Well Republicans have the most important power in Washington and
that's the power of the purse and and all taxation.
All legislation dealing with taxation or spending begins in the
House,
giving Republicans in the House the most powerful ability to
shut the government down if the administration refuses to enforce
our border.
And you know, this should have happened
as soon as Republicans took control of the House.
I'm glad it's happening now.
But they should pursue this.
This is and and this is something that the American
they can win this fight with the American people because
Americans,
whether they're Democrats, are with Republicans outraged with this.
I have a message. I have a message to what
you just alluded to and I want to Orion on
this.
We had three GOP congressmen vote no.
Tom Mcclintock, obviously he's always in a tough reelection campaign
in California.
Republican coalition in California is always kind of playing playing
it safe here.
Ken Buck, Republican from the purple state of Colorado,
actually pretty liberal state. Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin.
Ari, I've got to say,
even in those states that are kind of,
you know, usually obviously Democrat leaning,
this is a pretty easy vote in the end,
is it not? Yes. Well,
I think there's two ways to look at it.
One is on the substance of the vote and the
failures of the Biden administration on the border.
The other is what does impeachment mean?
And I do think there is a purist view that
according to the Constitution is for high crimes and misdemeanors
and they can ask themselves has a high crime or
misdemeanor been taking place. But look,
the person to blame here is Nancy Pelosi.
When they impeached Donald Trump twice under the Democratic House,
they turned the impeachment, high crime and misdemeanor into a
vote of no confidence.
That's where this started. And so it shouldn't surprise anybody,
especially the Democrats, if now Republicans who hold power start
to impeach Biden administration officials for a lack of confidence.
So if you want to say who started to violate
the norms and change the rules in Washington,
I'll go right to those two impeachment votes because that
started to break the patterns.
And that's what you saw happen today with only three
lone Republican holdouts for that procedural ground that it wasn't
a high crime or misdemeanor.
Well, every time he would come before Congress,
he was very smug in the face of an overwhelming
human economic and national security emergency.
And he was kind of like,
well, they're kind of annoyed by the whole process and
and fairly flip in his responses.
And I don't believe Ari,
even the the biggest, you know,
Trump critics thought that was very smart
and thought that was the right approach given what we
knew was happening at the border and now into the
interior part of the country.
Yeah. And I think it shows the American people who
was fighting to close this border,
who was fighting to make sure that if you come
to this country,
you come here legally. If you come here illegally,
there's really only one party left that is going to
do anything about it.
There's a so-called bipartisan deal that was reached in the
Senate was the most loophole laden amnesty filled
provision I've ever seen. It wasn't a compromise.
It, it was giving up
on the border. And so I think it's a good
thing House Republicans are there to fight for the future
and to fight to keep that border so it is
secure and only people come who are supposed to.
Yeah. And Charlie, the last time a
impeachment of a Cabinet official occurred was
1876. It was the secretary of war.
And so this is not something that is taken lightly
or
you know, happens casually. But I would say if you
know purists,
I know what purists think about,
you know, high crimes and misdemeanors,
and I understand that. But boy,
it's it's hard to imagine our founders,
if they could envision what America would be,
that this is what America would be with a border
that is ultimately meaningless
and you know, a lot of other things that have
happened.
But with that one fact to me that's
that's pretty close to an impeachable,
if not slam dunk impeachable offense.
Well, I agree with you completely and and and I
do appreciate what what Ari is saying.
You know, I don't like the idea of turning,
you know, impeachment into this political cudgel that you just
sort of
go back and forth over nonsense.
But this is not nonsense.
And and I, I know that you're not saying that,
Ari, but but you know,
I can't think of any example of
this is aiding and abetting an invasion of our country.
This is surrendering our borders completely giving in to enemies
we don't even know and allowing them into our country
to take over our country and to to
to surrender the border to the to the worst human
smuggling,
slave drivers, the drug cartels every all of the worst
elements of humanity and surrendering it all.
And so in in that particular case I can't think
of a higher
a a a more urgent reason to impeach somebody.
And quite frankly I I would have I wish they
had done this at the beginning and gone after Joe
Biden himself over this because he is he is allowing
an invasion at the border.
This is the most. This is as close to treason
as I can think.
I don't. I don't know what else there is.
If you're not going to enforce,
enforce your own borders and allow people who are killing
Americans to come into the country and and completely disregard
all of our rules and our laws.
I don't know what, I don't know what impeachment is
for if it's not for this.
Ari and Charlie, stay with me on this joining.