Rep Roy joins Daily Caller to talk about opposing impeachment, uniting America, and restoring confidence in our elections

WASHINGTON -- In an interview published over the weekend with the Daily Caller News Foundation's Samantha Renck, Rep. Chip Roy (TX-21) laid out his reasons for voting against Democrats' most-recent impeachment articles against President Donald Trump, his opinion on restoring confidence in America's election systems, and his vision for an America united through federalism.

Key quotes and approximate time stamps are available below for the following link:

On his vote against impeachment:

The Democrats drafted articles of impeachment which I believe were flawed. They focused in very specifically on incitement and connecting that to insurrection which are very specific legal terms and actually have very important meaning in our society. And when you start doing that and you start attributing to statements uttered by -- particularly public officials, but anyone really -- as being incitement, then that's a very dangerous road to go down. And we start risking cleansing the public square of political speech and we should not do that. …

So I didn't agree with the way they framed it and I think it'd be dangerous to go down that road. And my Democratic colleagues, no doubt, are okay with that; would like to use it, for example, under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to go after Members of Congress -- and we don't want to go down that road. We need to do our part, we need to stop that. Put it down. Let's sit down and let's lead this country.

On where Congressional Republicans' focus ought to be:

Republicans need to get busy focusing on the train that's coming at us as Conservatives, and it's a big train coming at us in terms of the size and scope of government, and $2-trillion bills, and H.R. 1 that's going to try to rework our election system in the next week and federalize a lot of it in ways that we're not going to be comfortable with, things that [Democrats] are going to do with respect to open borders and reversing Trump policies, backing away from siding with Israel and siding with Iran … let's get busy doing our damn job, y'all, and stop pointing fingers [at each other over impeachment and electors].

On restoring confidence in our election systems:

We have 50 states for a reason. The 50 states send electors to Washington. So get busy changing things, do the hard work you need to do in Atlanta, Georgia, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in Austin, Texas. Let's make sure that we get our own states right.

Number two, we should be concerned about the massive expansion of mail-in ballots. And across states, we should be talking about how it's a problem. It's a bipartisan recognition that you end up with more fraud when you have that [many] mail-in ballots.

We'd be much better-off [voting] in-person. I actually think that we ought to have a national holiday, we ought to all go in and vote in-person, as close to the same election day as possible. I hope to probably introduce some legislation along those lines or work with my colleagues to do it.

But I also don't think we need to overly federalize things. Let's just get out of the way and try to do the best we can federally to set some parameters; but, largely, states need to do the hard work of fixing their election system locally. We care about getting them right in Texas just as folks do in Georgia or Pennsylvania.

On how to make America united again:

I think the biggest thing we need to do is to remember that we're a large country of 330 million people, 50 states, and we are designed for a very specific structure of federalism so we can agree to disagree. I don't need to tell people what to do in California, but they sure as hell need to stop telling me what to do in Texas.

Let's stop making things so important in Washington. We shouldn't be hanging with bated breath every July when the Supreme Court makes its pronouncements. We shouldn't care so intently about the president that it's going to impact our personal life, as opposed to making sure we choose somebody who is going to be a good Commander in Chief, who will make some good decisions about appointments and then otherwise gets the hell out of the way.

I always laugh when they complain about Obama being on the golf course or Trump being at the golf course. Honestly, if we have a president who will just keep us safe and stop having bad guys attack us and make sure our defense is strong and otherwise just kinda stay out of my life, I'll be a hell of a lot better off and so will every other American.

Let's stop making D.C. so central to our life. Let's agree to disagree. Let's unite through federalism. Let's balance the budget and get out of town.