Donald Trump is being impeached for being right, Matt Gaetz claims

President Donald Trump‘s biggest congressional supporter from Florida, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, defended the President not only on impeachment but from anyone who thought he was wrong in the first place for claiming election fraud.

“President Trump may be most likely to be impeached when he is correct,” Gaetz claimed in Wednesday’s debate over a proposed second impeachment of the President.

In defending Trump from the impeachment charge that he inspired insurrection last Wednesday, Gaetz turned to a defense that has been soundly discredited: Trump’s claims that the presidential election was stolen from him, and that Congress needed to be stopped from certifying Democrat Joe Biden as the next President.

Gaetz also went over Trump’s full term. He insisted Trump had been correct in his dealings with Ukraine, when he pressured the new Ukrainian President to make a statement that both raised corruption suspicions against Biden and his son Hunter Biden, and that 2016 efforts by Russia to interfere in America elections were in fact done to help Democrats, not Trump.

“Before the last presidential impeachment, President Trump rightly pointed out the improper activities of the Biden crime family and subsequently he’s been proven right. And don’t think for a moment, Madam Speaker, that we’re going to drop that or stop our pursuit of the truth,” Gaetz said.

“And here we have the 2020 presidential election, where the President correctly pointed out unconstitutional behavior, voting irregularities, concerns over tabulations, dead people voting, and now impeachment again,” Gaetz said.

In all the states that Trump made those claims — Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada — he has lost both in appeals to elections officials, who mostly are fellow Republicans, and in courts, often in front of judges Republicans appointed. Similarly, his claims were soundly rejected by the Supreme Court, twice. Trump’s elections security director Chris Krebs declared the elections were fair, sound, and secure, and Trump fired him. Trump’s Attorney General William Barr declared the elections fair and secure, and received such backlash he resigned.

Still, a majority of House Republicans, including Gaetz, voted to object to the election results from Georgia and Pennsylvania. Gaetz continued that contention Wednesday, a week after the riots that seized and sacked the U.S. Capitol. Gaetz did denounce the attack on the Capitol, but charged that Democrats have inspired far more violence.

“Some have cited the metaphor that he lit the flame. Well they lit actual flames, actual fires! Gaetz screamed.