(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had only been in office for a few hours when a handful of Democrats defied her persistent calls not to begin the new Congress by talking about impeachment.
Just after Pelosi was sworn in on Thursday, longtime Democratic Reps. Brad Sherman of California and Al Green of Texas introduced articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. A few hours later, newly elected Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan riled up a supportive crowd that evening by calling the president a profanity and predicting that he will be removed from office.
Tension over impeachment is likely to be a persistent thorn for Pelosi, who will have to balance between a small, vocal group of the most liberal members of her caucus, who want to see Trump removed immediately, and the majority of her members who want to wait for special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation to finish. Pelosi purposely avoided — and encouraged most fellow Democrats to avoid — any talk of impeachment during the election, believing it would hurt them instead of help them.
While many Democrats might favor impeachment, those calling for it now are largely outliers. Most Democratic lawmakers listened to Pelosi and campaigned on kitchen table issues such as health care and jobs and prefer to keep them at the forefront of the party’s focus.
Still, it will be hard for Pelosi to quiet some on her left flank who see their new majority as a direct challenge to Trump.
“Impeachment is on the table,” Sherman said. “You can’t take it off the table.”
The division delights Republicans, who have used impeachment calls to fire up their base of voters. Trump was eager to immediately seize on the topic, asking in a tweet Friday, “How do you impeach a president who has won perhaps the greatest election of all time, done nothing wrong.”
Trump added that he has had the “most successful two years of any president” and claimed, without evidence, that he’s “the most popular Republican in party history.”
Tlaib, who represents liberal Detroit, exclaimed at an event late Thursday that Democrats were going to “impeach the mother——.” She didn’t back down Friday, tweeting that “I will always speak truth to power.” She added the hashtag, “#unapologeticallyMe.”
Her spokesman, Denzel McCampbell, said in a statement that Tlaib, one of only two Muslim women in Congress, “was elected to shake up Washington” and will not stay silent.
“The congresswoman absolutely believes he needs to be impeached. She ran and won by making this very clear to the voters in her district,” McCampbell said.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the new head of the Republican conference, denounced the comments. It’s “a level of vitriol that’s not good for this country,” Cheney said.
Pelosi said Friday at an MSNBC town hall that that House shouldn’t move to impeach Trump without more facts. She said, as she has many times before, that impeachment is “divisive” and she wants the new Democratic majority to be unified.
On Tlaib’s language, Pelosi said she doesn’t like it and wouldn’t use it. But she also said that it’s no worse than things Trump has said, adding that she wouldn’t censor her colleagues.
Top Democrats have supported Pelosi’s approach to impeachment, with House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler also saying that it is a divisive, even traumatic, process that should only be done with Republican support. Both Nadler and Pelosi were in Congress when the Republican-led House impeached President Bill Clinton in 1998.
Sherman and Green forced votes to impeach Trump in 2017 and 2018, but the Republican House blocked those resolutions twice, with the help of many Democrats who said the effort was premature.
Even if the House should approve articles of impeachment — very unlikely at present — a two-thirds-majority vote to convict Trump in the Republican-led Senate and remove him from office would seem out of the question, barring new revelations or a dramatic decline in the president’s political support.
Many Democrats on Friday distanced themselves from Tlaib’s comments. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he doesn’t think “comments like these particularly help.” House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said the comments were “inappropriate” and go against efforts to reclaim civility.
Other Democrats were more forgiving, even if they disagreed.
“I think some of our new members probably don’t realize that you are always on, that when you are a member of Congress, there’s always someone listening,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill.
Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly said the comments were just “red meat” for Tlaib’s supporters.
“I think it’s a forgivable sin, an outburst of exuberance with her and her supporters, and I think we all need to move on,” he said. “It doesn’t reflect the caucus, and I’m sure upon reflection, she might choose other words to describe her feelings.”
Sherman dismissed suggestions that the impeachment talk distracts from the fight over the partial government shutdown, where Democrats are clashing with Trump over funding for a southern border wall.
“Does it compete for attention? Yes. So do the Lakers’ games.”
