House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called on Democrats to shut down their impeachment inquisition during his weekly press conference Thursday, arguing that the American people have “had enough.”
McCarthy spoke to reporters as Ex-NSC aide Fiona Hill and U.S. diplomat in Kiev David Holmes testified before the House Intelligence Committee on the fifth day of the Democrats’ public impeachment hearings.
Hill testified that she was concerned that a hold on aid would endanger Ukraine’s security, yet in 2015, she wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post titled “How aiding the Ukrainian military could push Putin into a regional war,” in which she strongly disagreed with the policy.
The British-born foreign affairs specialist also testified that she had no direct knowledge of President Trump’s phone call with the Ukraine president and why the aid was withheld.
McCarthy argued that the two most important things we’ve learned from the impeachment hearings are that U.S. support for Ukraine has gotten notably stronger under President Trump than it was under President Obama, and none of Schiff’s witnesses have been able to demonstrate that there were conditions placed on the military aid to Ukraine.
The GOP leader told reporters that a year ago, the Speaker promised to put politics aside and work on what was best for the nation, but it was clear from the very beginning that the new majority had prioritized impeaching the president over everything else.
“When she took over the gavel, Speaker Pelosi claimed that they would be different. She promised the American public that they would work to get things done, that they would put politics aside for the good of the country,” McCarthy began. “But we even found out at the night of swearing in that the new freshmen came with one goal—to impeach the president.”
Moreover, he noted that as Democrats were running for leadership positions in the House, they campaigned on who would be the best committee chair to impeach the president. Thus, a year after Dems won the majority, popular initiatives like lowering drug prices and passing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) have fallen by the wayside, McCarthy argued.
“We’ve only been allowed to have witnesses that Adam Schiff has auditioned” McCarthy said. “And we’ve found that there is no impeachable offense, that the aid was given with Ukraine doing nothing. So why would you continue to put our country through this nightmare? I know that Adam Schiff’s goal is to try to impeach the president … and he will lie and say whatever it takes to get to this point, but I think we’ve had enough. I think it’s time to shut it down.”