CNN's Rick Santorum squirms as Erin Burnett confronts him with video calling for Clinton's impeachment

On Wednesday, former GOP Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) tried to tell CNN's Erin Burnett that impeachment of President Donald Trump is not merited — and stumbled badly after Burnett played back a clip of him from 1998, when he was a congressman and supported impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

"So senator, back to you, you have a little bit of an inconsistency here to answer for," said Burnett. "In 1998, you voted to impeach President Bill Clinton, and here is what you said at the time."

Removing a president during some of the more prosperous American times, and life is good here in America right now, and as someone who is seen as at least partly responsible for this, obviously is not going to be a particularly popular thing," said Santorum in the 1998 clip. "But what we do here is going to set a standard for future presidents' behavior, and future impeachment standards, and I think, as well as conviction standards."

"Okay. How is that consistent with you saying now that there is no reason?" Burnett pressed him.

"I didn't say there is no reason," said Santorum. "There was a special counsel, and the special counsel found that the president perjured himself, something that was not found in the Mueller report ... I think Nancy Pelosi has learned from that, that maybe even though he may deserve it, and I don't believe the president does in this case, it's not maybe the right thing to do."

Burnett immediately pushed back. "You had this whole investigation, and there was nothing impeachable found except for that he lied about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. So it was a totally separate thing. Yes, it was a lie, it was perjury. But I'm just making the point. In this case, you have more than 500 former members of the DOJ, prosecutors, saying that it's clear the president obstructed justice and committed multiple felonies."

"The person responsible for that did not find that," Santorum insisted.

"Well, we don't know what he found, because he declined to tell us what he found!" said Burnett. "He did not find. He said, you guys decide."

"The reality is, those 500 people, how many dealt with an obstruction case with the president?" Santorum retorted. "I would suspect not 500 of them or anything close to that. This is a very unusual case. And to go out and I think was highly irregular and not helpful for them to go out and make this claim when most of them don't even know what they're talking about. This is a very difficult case."

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