Bill Clinton knows a thing or two about impeachment. Clinton is one of two presidents in United States history to be formally impeached by Congress — Andrew Jackson is the other. Both men were ultimately acquitted by the Senate, but they still belong to the exclusive impeachment club that Donald Trump could be joining.
After calling in to CNN to discuss Trump’s impeachment hearings and gun control legislation following the latest school shooting in California, Clinton decided to offer up some advice to Trump has been tweeting away like a madman about how unfair the process is.
“My message would be, ‘look, you got hired to do a job,’” Clinton told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “You don’t get the days back you blow off. Every day’s an opportunity to make something good happen. And I would say, ‘I’ve got lawyers and staff people handling this impeachment inquiry, and they should just have at it. Meanwhile, I’m going to work for the American people’. Look at how much we got done in 1998 and 1999 and even in ’97.
“We had very productive actions in all three years. The only really tough year we had, after the Republicans won the Congress, was ’95 to the beginning of ’96 when they shut the government down twice. But once the public rendered judgment on what they thought should be done, I just kept working with them. I mean, that’s just an excuse.”
Whether Trump takes the advice — unlikely — remains to be seen, but the impeachment hearings will go on and continue to bring in the big ratings.
The impeachment hearings were billed as must-see TV and a number of Americans appear to have bought into the narrative because millions of viewers tuned in to networks like FOX News, MSNBC and ABC. According to Variety, the first day of impeachment hearings brought in a whopping 13 million viewers among all platforms.
FOX News registered the highest viewership with an average of 2.9 million viewers from 10:00 a.m. when the hearings started until 3:30 p.m. ET, while MSNBC averaged 2.7 million. ABC totaled 2 million viewers and led the way among standard networks like CBS and NBC which stopped their regular daytime schedule to cover the hearings.
On Friday, November 15, the House will call on Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, to the stand.
After a break for the weekend, the House Select Committee on Intelligence will call on 8 additional witnesses including National Security Council staffer Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, State Department official advising the vice president’s office Jennifer Williams, former US special representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker, US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, Defense Department official Laura Cooper, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David Hale, and former National Security Council staffer Fiona Hill.
Get your popcorn ready.