Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden addressed impeachment during a campaign stop in Iowa on Saturday where he said it was “nothing to celebrate.”
While the former vice president did not weigh in on the impeachment result, he said people celebrating the vote were “counterproductive” as the process is a “sad moment for the country.”
“The fact is there’s nothing to celebrate about impeachment. It’s a sad moment for the country and there’s — don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I think it’s unfair that Donald Trump had been impeached and have to face the charges that have been made. but the idea that it’s worth celebrating, I find — counterproductive because there’s nothing to celebrate,” Biden said per KRON4.
Watch his comments below:
Joe Biden finds celebrating the impeachment of President Donald Trump ‘counterproductive’ pic.twitter.com/JLXUZahiW0
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 22, 2019
On Wednesday, President Trump became the third U.S. president impeached when the House of Representatives officially voted to affirm articles of “abuse of power” and “obstructing Congress.” Each article passed with only Democratic votes making it the most partisan impeachment vote in U.S. history.
Biden is not the only Democratic president candidate countering House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others who are doing a victory lap for voting to impeach Trump.
During the latest Democratic primary debate, businessman Andrew Yang recognized the impeachment effort as divisive and said Democrats were too “obsessed” with the issue.
“It’s clear why Americans can’t agree on impeachment, we’re getting news from different sources, and it’s making it hard for us even to agree on basic facts,” Yang said per the Western Journal.
“Congressional approval rating, last I checked, was something like 17 percent, and Americans don’t trust the media networks to tell them the truth,” he continued. “The media networks didn’t do us any favors by missing a reason why Donald Trump became our president in the first place. If you turn on cable network news today, you would think he’s our president because of some combination of Russia, racism, Facebook, Hillary Clinton and emails all mixed together.”
He added: “The more we act like Donald Trump is the cause of all our problems, the more Americans lose trust that we can actually see what’s going on in our communities and solve those problems.”
And, “What we have to do is we have to stop being obsessed over impeachment, which, unfortunately, strikes many Americans like a ball game where you know what the score is going to be, and start actually digging in and solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place.”
“We have to take every opportunity to present a new positive vision for the country, a new way forward to help beat him in 2020 because, make no mistake, he’ll be there at the ballot box for us to defeat,” Yang concluded.
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard also voted “present”—the only Democrat or member to do so—when the issue was brought before Congress.
“After doing my due diligence in reviewing the 658-page impeachment report, I came to the conclusion that I could not in good conscience vote either yes or no,” she said in a lengthy statement online. “I am standing in the center and have decided to vote ‘present.'”