Former White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said Thursday that former President Obama would have been impeached in “a nanosecond” if he behaved like President Trump.
Asked by co-host Zerlina Maxwell during an interview on Sirius XM’s “Signal Boost” how quickly Obama would have been impeached in similar circumstances, Jarrett responded “about a nanosecond.”
“I think that the standards have slipped dramatically and there’s no earthly way President Obama could have gotten away with any of this. Not just the words and the content, but just the policy reversals and what we’re doing to the fabric of our country,” she said.
{mosads}However, Jarrett said she believed the focus should not be impeachment but “what are we going to do to get people engaged in improving our democracy,” noting her efforts with former first lady Michelle Obama to increase civic engagement through the nonpartisan group When We All Vote.
Jarrett also addressed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) recent comments that he would allow a vote for a Trump nominee to the Supreme Court if there was a vacancy in 2020. In 2016, the GOP leader sparked ire after he refused to allow a vote on Merrick Garland, Obama’s final pick for the high court, citing the presidential election later that year.
“Are you really trying to raise my blood pressure? I am always very positive on Twitter, and he is the one person that can actually make me snap,” Jarrett said of McConnell. “For him to suddenly, quite smugly say, ‘Well yeah, of course we’ll push it through,’ just shows you who he is. As, as I said a couple of weeks ago, ‘when people show you who they are [quoting Maya Angelou] believe them the first time.’ ”
A number of Democratic lawmakers and several presidential candidates such as Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) came out in favor of impeachment this week after special counsel Robert Mueller gave a rare public statement. Mueller emphasized that his investigation he did not exonerate Trump of obstruction of justice, but he said that Justice Department guidelines did not allow him to consider whether to charge the president with a crime.