The House’s Lone Black Republican Is Blamed For Dooming Trump’s Impeachment

hurd — Texas Rep. Will Hurd / Photo Source Pool/Getty S

Texas Rep. Will Hurd / Photo Source Poole/Getty

The retiring so-called moderate who previously broke from Trump was called a “coward” for defending the president.

Posted 15 hours ago

Democrats’ optimism over the impeachment inquiry public hearings got a bit of a reality check late Thursday following testimony of several high profile witnesses who offered further damning allegations of the president’s bribery and extortion scheme the compromised national security for his own political gain.

And while it still seemed like Donald Trump was all but guaranteed to be impeached, one Congressman, in particular, seemed to all but confirm that the president would not be removed from office. The comments from Texas Rep. Will Hurd, the only Black Republican member of the House of Representatives, were being blamed for playing both sides of the political fence that condemned as well as absolved Trump for his admitted quid pro quo.

Hurd spoke after hours of revealing testimony from Dr. Fiona Hill, a former National Security Council adviser on Russia, and David Holmes, a state department aide in Ukraine, which Trump threatened to withhold financial aid from unless it opened investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his family’s ties to the eastern European country. The working logic is that Trump wanted the investigation in order to smear Biden’s campaign as a means to gain political leverage ahead of and into the 2020 general election.

Hill testified that she told Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, that the Ukraine quid pro quo scheme was “going to blow up. And here we are.” Holmes followed that up by saying under oath: “It was obvious what the president was pressing for.”

Hurd has a history of breaking from Republicans on contentious issues, including immigration. In fact, back in 2017, it was rumored he might be thinking of leaving the Republican Party. That’s why it was widely anticipated that the Texan, who has been called a moderate Republican, would side with his Democratic counterparts and vote in favor of the impeachment. That seemed to be true at the outset of his testimony Thursday when he said that he believed Trump “undermined our national security and undercut Ukraine.” Hurd also said that he disagreed “with this sort of bungling foreign policy.”

Hurd’s looming retirement and his decision against running for election had him seen as one of the few Republicans who might actually vote with his or her conscious instead of along party loyalties. That vision proved to be short-sighted with Hurd’s next words:

“An impeachable offense should be compelling, overwhelmingly clear and unambiguous, and it is not something to be rushed or taken lightly,” Hurd said. “I have not heard evidence proving the president committed bribery or extortion. I also reject the notion that holding this view means supporting all of the foreign policy choices we have been hearing about over these last few weeks.”

Rumor has it that Hurd is eyeing a run for president in 2024. Voting in favor of impeaching a Republican president would surely hurt his presumed candidacy.

The entire episode on the last day of the impeachment inquiry public hearings propelled Hurd’s name to be a top trending topic on Twitter for all the wrong reasons. Social media users promptly dragged Hurd as a coward whose latest [in]actions will be remembered as being on the wrong side of history.