U.S. President Donald Trump responded to impeachment threats made by a newly sworn-in Democrat Friday by defending his track record amid a government shutdown.
While speaking outside the White House in a rambling news conference, the president said: “You can’t impeach somebody that’s doing a great job. That’s how I view it.”
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Trump was responding to a statement made by congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who was elected in the U.S. midterm election in November and officially sworn into the House of Representatives Thursday.
“We’re going to go in there and we’re going to impeach the motherf*****,” Tlaib said on her first day in office.
The president said Tlaib’s comment was “disgraceful.”
“I thought that was a great dishonour to her and to her family,” he said. “I thought it was highly disrespectful to the United States of America.”
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Trump also noted that Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already told him that they don’t plan on trying to impeach him.
Pelosi explained in a town hall with MSNBC Friday that she understands why there is a desire to impeach Trump, but she believes the best way of ousting the president is through the 2020 election.
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The Democrat leader defended Tlaib’s controversial statement, noting it’s “nothing worse” than what Trump has said.
Trump also reacted to the statement earlier on Friday on Twitter, suggesting that Democrats are threatened by him.
“They only want to impeach me because they know they can’t win in 2020, too much success!” he wrote.
Meanwhile, Tlaib stuck to her comment Friday, saying, “I will always speak truth to power.”
Trump’s praise of his own job performance comes as the government approaches the two-week point in a partial shutdown.
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The closure was prompted by the president demanding billions of dollars to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. The president has doubled down on this demand several times, including at Friday’s press conference.
Trump suggested that he could call a national emergency in order to get the wall built without congressional approval.
“I can do it if I want. We can call a national emergency and build it very quickly.”