When the House voted on the current impeachment inquiry on October 31st, no Republicans voted for the measure. Republican leaders, including the President himself, pointed to this as a sign of the party being in lock step.
One Democrat, though, says that this wasn’t really a vote of confidence in the President as GOP lawmakers had little choice in the matter. According to Washington congressman Denny Heck, Republicans fear that if they were to vote yes on impeachment, they would be punished by Trump and the party.
Heck made the comments while appearing on CNN’s New Day with John Berman and Alisyn Camerota. He told the hosts, “Any Republican who would vote ‘yes’ on the articles of impeachment, and we all know that there are some who would like to do that, they will privately acknowledge it sometimes, but that if they do, they will be punished. Indeed, by the president they’ll be viciously punished.”
“I can tell you that there are members on the other side of the aisle who are deeply, deeply concerned about the President's behavior. They believe that what he did is wrong,” Democratic @RepDennyHeck tells @JohnBerman. https://t.co/eJkdiGFz3C pic.twitter.com/2n2Jjj3umB
— New Day (@NewDay) December 12, 2019
The Washington congressman continued by saying, “I can tell you that there are members on the other side of the aisle who are deeply, deeply concerned about the President’s behavior. They believe that what he did is wrong.”
Heck recently made news by announcing that he would not seek reelection in 2020. The lawmaker wrote in a statement, “I will never understand how some of my colleagues, in many ways good people, could ignore or deny the president’s unrelenting attack on a free press, his vicious character assassination of anyone who disagreed with him, and his demonstrably very distant relationship with the truth.”