Fox News hosts and their Republican guests sounded the alarm on Monday, warning conservative viewers that an impeachment push against President Donald Trump could be imminent. Under the Constitution, impeaching a president requires only a simple majority in the House, while removal from office demands a two-thirds vote of the Senate — making control of both chambers the pivotal variable in the scenario the network is describing. With just over two weeks remaining until the midterm elections, the GOP has coalesced around a core message: should Democrats capture majorities in the House and Senate, it could spell the end of the president's historically unpopular agenda.

Fox News host Chad Pergam said Republicans remain "leery" of what Democrats have in store should they deliver the sweeping victories that current polling suggests may be on the way. Pergam spoke with Senator Jon Husted (R-OH), a MAGA-aligned incumbent locked in an exceptionally tight contest against former Senator Sherrod Brown, with most surveys showing Brown ahead by margins of one to six points. In Husted's estimation, the Ohio race "will determine whether Republicans stay in the Senate majority or not."

Pergam then aired a clip of Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), who first ran and won office as a Democrat in 2019 before switching to the GOP in 2020 — though the Fox segment still identifies him as the latter. In Van Drew's view, criticism of the administration boils down to "Trump Derangement," and he warned that his former Democratic colleagues are "gonna slow them down and try to stop the government. It's gonna be mayhem."

If Van Drew is right, then Trump Derangement Syndrome appears to be catching: polls consistently show the president, his policies, and his record on corruption registering historically weak support — a picture borne out by Fox News's own surveys. A Fox poll released last week found that Trump's approval has plunged to 36 percent, the lowest reading he has ever charted on the network, while other polls have placed him even lower. The slide is not being driven by Democrats, who have rated the president poorly all along, but by Independents and Republicans who are increasingly turned off by his policies and self-serving agenda. The same Fox survey revealed that, for the first time ever, Americans rank government corruption as their top concern, surpassing even the economy. It also found that 74 percent of voters view Trump's economy negatively, while a mere 18 percent say their lives are better now than they were two years ago.

Confronted with such numbers, Fox News has turned up the volume on its warnings to Republican viewers. As longtime network financial analyst Stuart Varney explained last week: "Fox Power rankings suggest the House is very likely to go Democrat. The Senate is a toss-up. The latest Fox poll shows 54 percent prefer Democrat candidates, 45 percent Republicans, and the lead by the Democrats is widening. Worse, are very unhappy with inflation – increasingly unhappy. 77 percent disapprove of his policy, only 22 percent think he's doing an OK job. That's a massive gap."

In light of voters' profound rejection of Trump's second term and the likelihood of a bruising midterm result for the GOP, Pergam said on Monday that "voters should expect two years of investigations and even impeachment if Democrats prevail." Whether that warning moves from rhetoric to the next Congress's working reality now rests on the elections just over two weeks away — and, by Husted's own accounting, on whether his tight Ohio race keeps the Senate in Republican hands.

Source: Alternet