Right-wing pundit Todd Starnes appeared on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Newswatch Wednesday to comment on the public impeachment hearings. Not surprisingly, Starnes repeated Republican talking points about the investigation, saying that President Donald Trump “has done nothing wrong” and dismissing the whistleblower complaint and impeachment inquiry as “deep state collusion to take down a duly elected president of these great United States.”
Starnes made similar comments in the summer, when he was still employed as a Fox News pundit. In a June blog post he warned that “anti-Trump Democrats Are Dragging the Nation Towards Civil War” and complained about Democrats “actively trying to overthrow a duly elected president.” Starnes called the Mueller investigation a “political hit job” and said, “Congressional Democrats stand ready to finish what the Deep State started.” He added that if the Democrats moved to impeach Trump, “do not be surprised if the bikers are joined by hundreds of thousands of gun-toting, bible-clinging, smelly, Walmart patriots.”
In his Wednesday comments on CBN, Starnes said he is convinced that Senate Republicans will stand with Trump. He claimed that Trump’s reception at the LSU-Alabama football game last weekend, where “you have more than 100,000 people cheering this president,” is “representative of the general feeling of the American public at large.”
Well, it may surprise Starnes to find out that attendees at an Alabama football game may not be representative of the American public at large. Politico reported Wednesday that a new poll shows that 50 percent of voters support the impeachment inquiry.
Before Starnes and Fox News parted ways last month, Starnes was a regular source of stories about alleged anti-Christian persecution in the U.S. and an ardent defender of Trump and the administration’s anti-immigration policies.