Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 08:56 pm
Republicans keep repeating that Trump’s impeachment is “Soviet-style,” but impeachment didn’t exist in the Soviet Union.
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) said after the House vote, “And when we talk about the vote I think it’s important the note when you see that not only did every single Republican reject this soviet style impeachment process but we were even joined by Democrats who couldn’t stand it anymore. If you look at where we are right now, we’re at an important point in history. Clearly there are people that we serve with that don’t like the results of the 2016 election. That’s their prerogative. But the country next year will be deciding who our president is going to be. It should not be Nancy Pelosi and a small group of people that she selects that get to determine who is going to be our president.
Video of Scalise:
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Republicans are going all-in with this crazy claim of "Soviet-style" impeachment. Impeachment didn't exist in the Soviet Union. pic.twitter.com/QMjfmsTHOb
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) October 31, 2019
The problem with the House Republican claim is that there was no impeachment process in the Soviet Union:
Everyone needs to stop staying “Soviet-style impeachment.†Impeachment did not exist in the Soviet Union. The way you say impeachment in Russian is импичмент which transliterates as “impichment†because there literally isn’t a word for it!
— Miriam Elder (@MiriamElder) October 31, 2019
Impeachment of a president is a uniquely American constitutional concept.
Rep. Scalise also claimed on the House floor that Stalin could have been impeached, which is impossible because the Soviet Union wasn’t a democracy, and had no impeachment process. Stalin was a dictator, not a US president.
The whole point of the Republican “Soviet-style” nonsense is to smear Democrats and delegitimize Trump’s impeachment. The White House is screaming from the peanut gallery about the impeachment of Trump being un-American. House Republicans are trying to play into that theme in the most boneheaded and historically ignorant way possible.
There is no Soviet-style impeachment, but Donald Trump is definitely attempting to be America’s first Soviet-style president.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
