Democrats should “be careful what you ask for” when calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment ahead of the November 2018 midterm elections, former independent counsel Kenneth Starr warned on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” Tuesday.

“And part of the message in my book is be careful what you ask for. Because I do think that impeachment is hell,” Starr, who is promoting his new memoir, “Contempt: A Memoir of the Clinton Investigation,” told Fox News host Laura Ingraham.

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“It’s hell to go through for the American people. Even though there are very strong feelings on one side and then on the other side, that is not our system,” Starr continued.

Starr’s investigation led to former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 by the Republican-led House of Representatives for perjury and obstruction of justice charges. The Senate, also Republican-led, declined to convict Clinton.

Ingraham, who noted that Clinton’s approval rating rose to its highest point after he was impeached, asked Starr if the same phenomenon could occur if Trump were impeached.

“Well, it could very well happen,” Starr said. “We have impeachment in the Constitution. It’s an important last resort. And the country did not feel as a whole that Bill Clinton, for all of his crimes — and he committed crimes, and we proved that he committed crimes — that he should actually be removed in his last year and a half in office.”

“We have elections in the country, and those elections mean something,” Starr added. “Why in the world are the Democrats — some of the Democrats — seriously discussing impeachment? I think it’s folly. But that’s the politics. I just think it’s very bad for the country. It is ultradivisive.”

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif., shown above right) in particular began speaking in earnest about impeaching Trump shortly after he took office because she disliked his policies, personality and rhetoric.

The congresswoman again made headlines over the weekend when she told a group of people in Los Angeles, “There’s a difference in how some of our leadership talk about how we should handle all of this.”

“They say, ‘Maxine, please don’t say impeachment anymore,'” Waters added. “And when they say that, I say, ‘impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment, impeachment.'”

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Trump himself took to Twitter Tuesday evening to rebuke Waters, writing, “Crazy Maxine Waters: ‘After we impeach Trump, we’ll go after Mike Pence. We’ll get him.’ @FoxNews Where are the Democrats coming from? The best Economy in the history of our country would totally collapse if they ever took control!”

And other Democrats have joined Waters in suggesting impeachment will be on the table should Democrats retake the House in November.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy insisted if Democrats “were wise, they would heed Judge Starr’s sage words,” especially with the midterm elections on the horizon.

Related: Pelosi Says Trump Made Maxine Waters Do It; Schumer Still Civil

“But I think if they’re just going to play brass knuckles, brass tacks politics, they’re going to need more than a margin of a few congressmen or representatives in order to have enough in the way of numbers to get even the simple majority that you need to file articles of impeachment in the House,” McCarthy told Ingraham. He is a National Review contributor and former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

As the nation awaits the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into allegations of collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russia interests, Starr said, “Given what we know, there’s no evidence of collusion.”

“And I think that the American people have wanted to know that for a long time,” Starr said.

(photo credit, article image: Bill Clinton, CC BY 2.0, Kate Wellington / Maxine Waters, CC BY 2.0, by Elvert Barnes)