GOP Rep's Old Tweet About Impeaching a Former President Haunts Him After He Rails Against Trump Impeachment

Following the deadly riot at the United States Capitol earlier this month, the House of Representatives impeached former President Donald Trump on January 13th for a historic second time.

They charged Trump with inciting an insurrection, noting his months-long promotion of the lie that widespread election fraud coordinated by Democrats delivered a false victory to President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race.

While House Republicans were more amenable to Trump's second impeachment, his defenders in Congress have urged Americans to remember anything but the failed insurrection that resulted in the deaths of at least five people.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), who propped up Trump's lies by voting to overturn the swing state of Pennsylvania's votes, has spent more energy condemning so-called cancel culture than condemning the violence of Trump's supporters.

And on Monday—hours before the House delivered its article of impeachment against Donald Trump—Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) lamented cancel culture as well, using Trump's impeachment to do so.

Though Gaetz decried it as "cancel culture," impeachment is a constitutional process laid out by the founding fathers to hold a President accountable for actions that break the oath of office. Some Republicans have decried Democrats for pursuing impeachment, since Trump is no longer in office.

But while the Senate trial of the former President will occur after Trump has left, the former President was impeached while in office and his conviction in the Senate could bar him from ever holding public office again.

It wasn't long before denizens of Twitter revived another Gaetz tweet claiming the House could impeach a former President—an apparent contradiction of his tweet from Monday afternoon.

His claim that impeachment was the "zenith of cancel culture" saw quick rebuke.

Gaetz is currently leading the charge to "cancel" Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY), the third-ranking House Republican, for voting in favor of Trump's impeachment.