Billionaire investor launches multi-million dollar campaign to impeach Trump: 'This president is mentally unstable'
Big money is pouring into the effort in impeach Donald Trump.
Billionaire Democratic activist Tom Steyer is continuing his crusade against the president by funding a national campaign of television and digital advertisements calling for Mr Trump's removal from office.
The spot warns that Mr Trump has “brought us to the brink of nuclear war, obstructed justice at the FBI” and has “taken money from foreign governments and threatened to shut down news organizations” in violation of the constitution. It pushes viewers to sign a petition endorsing Mr Trump’s impeachment.
“People in Congress and his own administration know this president is a clear and present danger who is mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons. And they do nothing”, Mr Steyer says in the spot. “Join us and tell your Member of Congress that they have a moral responsibility to stop doing what’s political and start doing what’s right”.
A representative for Mr Steyer said the advertisements would be running in all 50 states. Without providing specific numbers, the representative said the effort included an “eight-figure” television ad buy and a “seven-figure” outlay for digital ads.
In seeking Mr Trump's impeachment, Mr Steyer is opening his wallet to support an outcome several Democratic member of Congress have publicly backed. Mr Steyer last week sent letters to every Democrat in of Congress, all 50 governors and thousands of mayors urging them to support impeachment.
Calling Mr Trump a “clear and present threat to the United States of America”, the letter also warns Democrats that they must be responsive to a restive liberal base and seeks to inject the impeachment conversation into upcoming midterm elections. Arguing that impeachment could be a viable outcome if Democrats retake Congress in 2018, it urges officeholders to “make clear where every Democrat stands on the issue of the highest import to the lives of every single American now, before those elections happen”.
While a growing number of Republican officials have openly broken with Mr Trump - including longtime ally Sen Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican who warned of Mr Trump hurtling the country toward “World War III” - convincing a Republican-controlled Congress to remove a Republican president remains a long shot.
“If Democrats want to appease the far left and their liberal mega-donors by supporting a baseless radical effort that the vast majority of Americans disagree with, then have at it. Republicans will continue to focus on issues voters actually care about, like growing our economy and cutting taxes for the middle class“, Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens said in a statement.
After making a fortune in investing, Mr Steyer turned his attention to politics. He poured tens of millions into the 2016 election through his political action committee, bankrolling voter mobilization efforts and ads lambasting Mr Trump. His signature issue has been climate change, and he and his organization NextGen Climate have spent heavily to support environmentalist candidates and advance climate change legislation.
That focus makes Mr Steyer a natural antagonist for Mr Trump. The president has openly questioned the science of manmade climate change, once referring to it as a “hoax” perpetrated by the Chinese, and moved to pull the United Stated from the Paris Climate accords.
His pick to run the Environmental Protection Agency, former Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt, is a fossil fuel industry ally who has moved swiftly to dismantle to dilute Barack Obama’s environmental regulations.
