Nancy Pelosi defends Trump impeachment inquiry, says it’s sworn duty of Congress
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday defended the impeachment inquiry against President Trump, saying members of Congress were just carrying out their sworn duty and insisting, “Nobody comes to Congress to impeach a president of the United States. No one.”
But her Republican counterpart in the House, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, countered that Democrats have been gunning for Trump since he was elected.
“For the last three years, they have predetermined the president’s guilt. They have never accepted the voters’ choice to make him president,” McCarthy said on the House floor before the 232-196 impeachment inquiry vote.
“This Congress’ record is more subpoenas than laws. That is the legacy. It is not just devoid of solutions for the American people, it is now abusing its power to discredit democracy,” he added.
Indeed, Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib made clear what her intentions were when she was elected to Congress in 2018.
“When your son looks at you and said, ‘Mamma, look, you won — bullies don’t win.’ And I said, ‘Baby, they don’t, because we’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the motherf—-r!,” the freshman lawmaker said after she was sworn in on Jan. 4, 2019.
Tlaib was one of a handful of Democrats who rode into the House on an “impeach Trump” blue wave.
Pelosi, meanwhile, also pushed back at Republican criticism that House Democrats are treating the president unfairly with the impeachment rules.
“The facts are what they are. They can try to misrepresent them, but the fact is, this is a process that is expanded opportunity for them to show anything that is exculpatory to prove the innocence of the president,” Pelosi said.
“These rules are fairer than anything that have gone before in terms of an impeachment,” she continued.
Pelosi appeared at the news conference just minutes after she addressed the chamber from the floor standing next to a visual aid of a US flag printed on a square posterboard.
“Speaker Pelosi keeping the Cap Hill Kinko’s busy this morning with a poorly printed American flag,” Jason Miller, a former spokesman for the Trump 2016 campaign, said on Twitter.
“Pelosi and other Dems speaking next to a cardboard Flag just to show how patriotic they really are is disingenuously Hilarious,” said David Colon in a posting.