Media pundits and partisan politicians are deliberately distorting the argument I made during the Senate's impeachment trial. Taking advantage of the fact that most of their readers or viewers didn’t actually watch the Senate's question-and-answer session, they have mischaracterized my argument as if I said that a president who believes his reelection is in the national interest can do anything.
I said nothing like that, as anyone who actually heard what I said can attest. What I said was in response to the House impeachment managers' argument, which was that any action by a politician motivated in part by a desire to be reelected was, by its nature, corrupt. In my response, I listed three broad categories of relevant motive.
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