Trump: How do you impeach a president as successful as me?
President Trump on Friday responded to renewed impeachment talk by some Democratic members of the new Congress with a two-part defense: tweeting that his success in office is the only reason Democrats want to get rid of him, and by the same token, he has done too good a job to be removed from office.
“They only want to impeach me because they know they can’t win in 2020, too much success!” Trump tweeted. “How do you impeach a president who has won perhaps the greatest election of all time, done nothing wrong (no Collusion with Russia, it was the Dems that Colluded), had the most successful first two years of any president, and is the most popular Republican in party history 93%?”
According to Gallup, Trump’s job approval rating among Republicans is 89 percent, and just 39 percent among all voters. It’s unclear where he got the 93 percent figure.
The president is facing criminal investigations in Washington, D.C., where special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia and whether Trump obstructed the investigation; and in New York, where his former lawyer and longtime fixer Michael Cohen says he personally directed him to make illegal hush money payments to two women on the eve of the 2016 presidential election.
Before Friday, Trump had mentioned impeachment in his tweets only a handful of times, about a half-dozen — and two of those were from 2014 and directed at President Obama.
Trump’s tweeted response came a day after Democrats took control of the U.S. House of Representatives. And while most Democrats in Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, say they are waiting for the cases to play out before taking action, some aren’t being so patient.
Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., who introduced articles of impeachment against Trump last year, told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday that he plans to re-introduce the measure, accusing Trump of obstruction of justice in the firing of then FBI Director James Comey.
And in a speech to a progressive advocacy group Thursday night, freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., used an expletive in vowing to impeach Trump.
“We’re gonna go in and impeach the motherf*****,” she said.
“Congresswoman Tlaib was elected to shake up Washington, not continue the status quo,” Tlaib’s spokesman said in a statement Friday morning. “Donald Trump is completely unfit to serve as President. The Congresswoman absolutely believes he needs to be impeached. She ran and won by making this very clear to voters in her district.”
Tlaib herself appeared to be equally unapologetic.
“I will always speak truth to power,” she tweeted.
Pelosi, who retook the gavel in the House on Thursday afternoon, told NBC News she isn’t ready to consider articles of impeachment. But she pointedly did not rule out the possibility that Trump could be indicted while in office, despite Justice Department guidelines against it.
“I do not think that that is conclusive,” Pelosi said. “I think that that is an open discussion. I think that is an open discussion in terms of the law.”
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