Newly sworn-in GOP lawmaker says he may have ended career by voting to impeach Trump

First-term Republican Rep. Peter Meijer (Mich.) said on Sunday that he may have ended his political career when he joined nine GOP colleagues in the House in voting to impeach President Trump.

On ABC’s “This Week,” host George Stephanopoulos asked Meijer if he was concerned that he had ended his career by voting to impeach Trump.

“I may very well have,” Meijer responded. “But I think it’s also important that we have elected leaders who are not thinking solely about what’s in their individual self-interest, not what is going to be politically expedient, but what we actually need for the country.”

Stephanopoulos also asked Meijer if he thought it was time for the Republican Party to move past Trump.

“I think it’s time that we acknowledge that what happened on Jan. 6 was a betrayal of what had been accomplished over the past four years, that it was a culmination of a politics that at all too often, you know, fanned flames rather than focusing on building and governing,” said Meijer.

“You know, the president brought some necessary energy. He brought some necessary ideas. He shook the tree. He was a change agent. The challenge was that he didn’t know when to stop, and he didn’t draw a line, and to me, political violence is the line that we must draw,” he added.

Meijer said last week that he was buying body armor and changing his routine due to fears of more violence at the Capitol.

Ten Republicans joined Democrats last week in voting to impeach Trump over his role in the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, making him the only president to be impeached twice. Trump spoke to his supporters at a rally before they stormed the complex, where a joint session of Congress was meeting to certify President-elect Biden’s victory.