One of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump insists that the party is continuing to back him because there is “no other option” available.
During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday, Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) was asked why he thinks Republicans have not moved on from the former president.
“There was no alternative. There was no other path,” Meijer began. “And given how President Biden, when he was elected into office, said he would be moderate and look for bipartisan solutions.”
He continued, “But then after, and frankly, I blame the former president for this, after we lost the two senate seats in Georgia and the Senate flipped, it became an exercise in trying to be an LBJ or FDR style presidency and enact transformational change in the absence of any compelling mandate from the American people to do so.”
“So that gave the rallying signal. That created a very steep divide, and at the end of the day, there’s no other option right now in the Republican Party, and that’s a sad testament,” Meijer added.
Watch the video below:
WATCH: After January 6th, Republicans like Lindsey Graham said “enough is enough” when it came to Trump. So why are Republicans still backing the former president?
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) January 2, 2022
@RepMeijer: “At the end of the day, there's no other option right now in the Republican Party.” pic.twitter.com/OnUazUWu6d
Host Chuck Todd pushed backing, asking, “Why is it on President Biden that the Republican Party can’t seem to kick their Trump habit? I mean, why isn’t it on Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, and yourself?”
Meijer replied:
“If you have one party plummeting into the depths and the other just uses that as an excuse to go further, to go more to an extreme, to go more away from any sort of governing consensus, and towards trying to enact whatever the will of the most extreme constituency they have is, that is a recipe for both parties to drive further away from anything that resembles serving the American people as a whole.”
Meijer, a freshman Congressman, has said he stands by his decision to vote to impeach Trump last year, despite admitting that it might have ended his political career.
