Charlie Dent was a Republican Congressman and member of the House Ethics Committee. He doesn't sugarcoat it when asked how Congressional Republicans today would react if a Democratic president responded to subpoenas the way Trump is -- with unconstitutional disregard for Article I of the Constitution.
CHARLIE DENT: Oh, no, that would be a human rights violation, Don, come on! (laughing) I mean, remember during 'Fast and Furious', Congress held Eric Holder in contempt for failing to turn over documents related to Fast and Furious at that time. So if the shoe were on the other foot, oh no, Republicans would be waving a bloody shirt, this would be a human rights violation and they'd be outraged and try and figure out ways to enforce their subpoena.
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LEMON: what happens -- listen, the presidency comes with term limits unless this president goes to the Supreme Court because he wants to be president for life. I'm being facetious, but that wouldn't be far off. I wouldn't be shocked. So then what happens after this administration? After this presidency when maybe a Democratic president comes into office, then what happens? What do Republicans do then? What if the Democratic president says the same thing? "I'm not going to abide by anything you say, I'm just going to do what I'm going to do, I'm not going to comply with anything," What do you think happens?
DENT: Well, what I fear is that precedents get set. and future administrations will look at what happened now and say this justifies their action at a point in the future. so I think that's really the bigger concern. in fact, I would argue that Congress's powers have eroded steadily, I could argue probably since the Roosevelt administration under both Democratic and Republican administrations, Congress has seated a lot of power to the executive. and if this issue is resolved in an unsatisfactory way for congress this will just be a further erosion of the power of Congress. the president will be further empowered institutionally. so again, Republicans -- I was a Republican and I saw how my colleagues reacted at the time. when Obama was president. and when Eric Holder defied, you know, the subpoena for documents. I mean, they went crazy over that. and went to court and it was pretty ugly. Again, nobody's pure in this business. A lot of people are guilty of hypocrisy.
LEMON: This is beyond. You're using Eric Holder as one example. This is an example of many -- all in a row.
Thank you, Don Lemon, for calling out Dent's bothsiderism. Dent is right, Republicans would be on full freak-out if Trump was a Democratic President. How do we know? Because they did this already with Obama and Clinton. There is NO comparison to what Trump is doing with the possible exception of Richard M. Nixon.
