Donald Trump, now relegated to a far-right streaming video website as larger right-wing outlets like Fox News distance themselves from him, is now calling for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to be impeached.
A Real America’s Voice host interviewing the former president, who is under several civil and criminal investigations, said, “Democrats are scheming, probably with some of the RINOs, in order to blow the debt ceiling up.”
“RINOs” is a right-wing derogatory term for “Republican in Name Only.”
The host was likely referring to a call to eliminate the debt ceiling, meaning the House and Senate would no longer have to vote to approve a debt limit increase.
“Um, what is your position on that?” the host asked.
“It’s crazy, what’s happening with this debt ceiling,” Trump responded.
“Mitch McConnell keeps allowing them to have it,” the former president said in a manner that appears to exhibit his lack of understanding.
The debt ceiling, or debt limit, as the Treasury Dept. explains, “is the total amount of money that the United States government is authorized to borrow to meet its existing legal obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, interest on the national debt, tax refunds, and other payments.”
Most importantly, it “does not authorize new spending commitments. It simply allows the government to finance existing legal obligations that Congresses and presidents of both parties have made in the past.”
In other words, it’s not an authorization to spend more, it’s an authorization to pay the nation’s existing bills.
“Failing to increase the debt limit would have catastrophic economic consequences,” Treasury adds. “It would cause the government to default on its legal obligations – an unprecedented event in American history. That would precipitate another financial crisis and threaten the jobs and savings of everyday Americans – putting the United States right back in a deep economic hole, just as the country is recovering from the recent recession.”
Trump’s claim that “Mitch McConnell keeps allowing them to have it,” in actuality means that McConnell generally supports not shutting down the federal government by allowing his caucus to vote to increase the debt limit.
“I mean, they ought to impeach Mitch McConnell, if he allows that,” the 45th President said, again displaying his basic ignorance of government.
They can be reprimanded, censured, or even expelled, but not impeached.
Also, Trump signed several debt limit increases into law. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget in January of 2020 reported Trump “signed into law $4.2 trillion of debt over a comparable budget window and $4.7 trillion from 2017 through 2029.”
“Frankly, Mitch McConnell, something has to be, they have something on him,” Trump insisted, not identifying who “they” are, or what they might “have” on him. “How he approves this thing is incredible.”
Watch below or at this link.