U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Glenbeulah, said the House impeachment inquiry is being pushed by people who “fundamentally disagree” with President Trump on trade and immigration, and while he doesn’t think Trump did anything impeachable, “we’ll have to see what more comes out.”

In an interview aired Sunday on “UpFront,” produced in partnership with WisPolitics.com, Grothman said impeachment should be looked at skeptically.

“You’ve got to remember people have wanted to impeach President Trump since the day he took office. And there are reasons why he is more of a lightning rod or hated prior to his predecessors. He is trying to drain the swamp,” Grothman said.

“So as long as he is different than, what I guess I’ll call the swamp, you’re going to have a lot of people try to impeach him. Now if he did something wrong, we’ll see if that comes out today, or next week,” Grothman said in the interview recorded on Friday.

“Is there doubt in your mind that he might have done something wrong?” host Adrienne Pedersen asked.

“I don’t think he did something impeachable, but we’ll have to see,” Grothman answered.

Pedersen also asked about Trump’s decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria, and the offensive Turkey has launched against Kurdish forces inside Syria.

“On the surface, I don’t like the decision,” Grothman said, adding he expects to learn more in a briefing from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo later this week.

Grothman also said the USMCA trade agreement, which would replace NAFTA, is a good example of something that “only President Trump would have tried to tackle.”

He said the new trade agreement would be good for Wisconsin farmers and manufacturers.

Pedersen asked if he expected Congress to vote on the USMCA anytime soon.

“(House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi says we’re going to vote on it in the next two months. I think it’s hard for her to back off of that commitment,” he said. “I look forward to voting for it.”

In another segment, state Rep. Jimmy Anderson, D-Fitchburg, said it was a “really unfortunate circumstance” that caused him to vote against disability accommodations he had been seeking for months.

Anderson had been seeking the ability to call in to committee hearings and other changes that would accommodate his use of a wheelchair and related needs.

Anderson, who was permanently paralyzed in a car crash that killed his family, said Republicans packaged the accommodations with “a bunch of other rule changes that would have limited the power of the minority at a time when Republicans already hold all the cards.”

During the floor session on Thursday, Assembly Republicans eventually did split some unrelated rules changes from the accommodation package. Anderson and his fellow Democrats still voted against it.

Anderson said Republicans did not include him in the process of writing disability accommodations. He said they had a “secret conversation and then brought me in last minute.”

The Assembly did approve a change on Thursday that would allow people permanently disabled to call in to committee hearings. Anderson said that was a step in the right direction, but “my other accommodations were completely ignored.”

Pedersen asked Anderson to respond to criticism from GOP Speaker Robin Vos that Anderson had politicized the matter. In a letter to Anderson several months ago, Vos said the Fitchburg lawmaker had resorted to “political grandstanding” rather than calling Vos directly, and called it “an unfortunate way to communicate.”

Anderson said he started working for changes early this year and only talked to the media after months of no progress.

“The idea that I politicized this in any way is completely not true and devoid of any fact,” Anderson said.

Anderson also said it is still possible that he will file a lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

See more from the program:
http://www.wisn.com/upfront

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