Former White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said Thursday that former President Barack Obama would have been impeached in "a nanosecond" if he behaved like President Donald Trump.
In an interview on Sirius XM's "Signal Boost," Jarrett was asked by co-host Zerlina Maxwell how quickly Obama would have been impeached in similar circumstances.
"About a nanosecond," Jarrett shot back.
"I think that the standards have slipped dramatically and there's no earthly way President Obama could have gotten away with any of this – not just the words and the content, but just the policy reversals and what we're doing to the fabric of our country," she said.
As for Republicans, she said, they have "lost their soul and their grounding — I don't even recognize the Republican Party right now."
But Jarrett said she believed the focus should not be impeachment but "what are we going to do to get people engaged in improving our democracy," referring to her efforts with former first lady Michelle Obama to increase civic engagement through the nonpartisan group When We All Vote.
She also addressed recent comments by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., he would allow a vote for a Trump nominee to the Supreme Court if there was a vacancy in 2020.
In 2016, the GOP leader ignited a furor among Democrats for refusing to allow a vote on Judge Merrick Garland, Obama's final pick for the high court, citing the presidential election later that year.
"Are you really trying to raise my blood pressure?" Jarrett asked, The Hill reported.
"I am always very positive on Twitter, and he is the one person that can actually make me snap," she said, according to The Hill. "For him to suddenly, quite smugly say, 'Well, yeah, of course we'll push it through,' just shows you who he is. As I said a couple of weeks ago, 'when people show you who they are [quoting Maya Angelou] believe them the first time.'"
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