Fox News host Stuart Varney confronted House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, on Friday over a new effort to impeach President Joe Biden, asking Scalise on Varney & Co., “Where’s the crime?”
Representative Cory Mills, a Florida Republican, has filed an article of impeachment against Biden over his threat to withhold aid to Israel if it invades Rafah, a city in southern Gaza to which 1.4 million Palestinians have been pushed as Israel bombed northern Gaza.
On Friday, Varney asked Scalise, “On what grounds would you impeach President Biden?”
“What he’s done to Israel, walking away from our strongest ally in the Middle East is disgraceful,” Scalise responded. “Our main objective is to get Israel the support they need, to show that we stand with our ally Israel even if Biden’s walking away because he is trying to appease the pro-Hamas wing of his party.”
Varney pushed: “But is it a high crime and misdemeanor to walk away from a big ally? Where’s the crime?”
Scalise dodged Varney’s question, shifting to discuss legislation being drafted that would require Biden to deliver the aid to Israel that Congress passed last month.
A White House official told Newsweek via email on Friday: “Senior administration officials had already made multiple public statements about Rafah similar to the President’s, including that we are also ensuring Israel gets every dollar appropriated in the supplemental.
“[Former President Donald] Trump failed to spend dollars appropriated by Congress that he was legally required to spend. This is about a purchase made by a foreign government and our decision whether to deliver that purchase right now, which could enable an operation we’ve publicly and privately objected to.”
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Newsweek reached out to Scalise and Mills’ offices via email for comment on Friday.
Biden signed a $95 billion aid package last month that included $26 billion for the Israel-Hamas war—$15 billion in Israeli military aid, $9 billion in humanitarian aid for Gaza and $2.4 billion for regional U.S. military operations.
Last week, Biden paused shipments of 2,000-pound bombs, telling CNN‘s Erin Burnett on Wednesday, “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers.”
“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah—they haven’t gone into Rafah yet—if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities—that deal with that problem,” Biden said.
Speaking to Fox News‘ Martha MacCallum on Friday, Mills justified the article of impeachment, saying, “It’s really no different if you go back to what President Biden had tweeted out previously; he said that withholding congressionally appropriated aid for a return of a political gain is in some way a quid pro quo and that [then-] President Trump should be impeached with regards to Ukraine.”
Trump was impeached in December 2019, accused of threatening to withhold aid to Ukraine until Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to investigate Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, over foreign business dealings. Trump was later acquitted by the Senate.
MacCallum pushed Mills: “A lot of people make the [former President Ronald] Reagan comparison and in 1981, he delayed a shipment of U.S. F-16 fighter bombers to Israel in an effort to restrain what the Secretary of State [Alexander] Haig, at the time, called an ‘escalating violence in the Middle East.’ And don’t you think that the president would say, ‘The reason that I’m holding back on this is because I wanna protect the people in the Palestinian territory and I wanna cool things off?'”
“Well, I think that’s actually the opposite of what he’s trying to do because he’s continued to try and put aid into Gaza that’s falling into the hands of Hamas, who’s selling that aid to the Palestinian people in need to help fund a potential counteroffensive,” Mills responded.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
