Rep. Al Green: We Need to Impeach Trump Because He Might Get Reelected
Democratic Congressman Al Green proves once again to be the gift to Republicans that keeps on giving.
Rep. Al Green (D-TX) has made no secret over the last two and a half years of his desire to impeach President Donald Trump. In fact, Green made impeachment the centerpiece of his seventh Congressional term. It remains the centerpiece for this term.
He first spoke of it on the House floor on May 17, 2017 and has several times since in various floor speeches, statements, interviews, and on social media.
Green cited character issues and suspicion of wrongdoing rather than any alleged impeachable offenses as his reasons. But this past weekend in an interview on MSNBC, Green finally revealed the real motive behind Democratic impeachment efforts: the possibility that Trump will get re-elected.
Here’s what he said:
MSNBC HOST: You have been calling for starting articles of impeachment since 2017, but a new Quinnipiac poll taken after the release of the redacted Mueller report said 66% say Congress should not start impeachment proceedings, there’s a sharp partisan divide, with only 4% of Republicans favoring impeachment. Are you afraid this talk will help the president’s re-election?
REP. AL GREEN: I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected. If we don’t impeach him, he will say he’s been vindicated. He will say the Democrats had an overwhelming majority in the House and didn’t take up impeachment. He will say we have a constitutional duty to do it if it was there and we didn’t. He will say he’s been vindicated.
Here’s what I say, we’re confronting a constitutional crisis as I speak to you. As I look at the people of America in the eye, I’m telling you, we have a constitutional crisis. The chief executive office of the president of the United States refuses to comply with subpoenas and says he will order others to do so, this creates a constitutional crisis. But this isn’t the genesis of it. It started when the president decided he would fire Mr. Comey for his failure — pardon me, as a result of his desire not to be investigated. And when he decided to do this and went on national TV at primetime and indicated he was thinking about this Russia thing, that was the genesis of it. We have a constitutional crisis.
Watch the video clip of Green’s interview below:
.@RepAlGreen: “I’m concerned if we don’t impeach this president, he will get re-elected. … We must impeach him.” pic.twitter.com/3cwG7eFIdy
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 5, 2019
President Trump responded to news of Green’s remarks in a couple of tweets early Monday morning:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1125351003572797440
Presumably, the alleged crimes from the “other side” that Trump referred to relate to “Spygate” and allegations the investigations that started in 2016 were part of an orchestrated attempt to try and keep him from winning the election, and to undermine his presidency.
Trump and a number of other high-profile Republicans, including House Oversight Committee member Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), have hinted in recent weeks that Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s upcoming report on allegations of FBI abuse of FISA procedures while investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections will be “blockbuster” in nature. Meadows even stated that it was “highly likely” the report will result in a number of criminal referrals.
The New Yorker notes that calls for impeachment do not just come from Green. The impeachment declarations have become all the rage for the more radically left wing members of the House and for a few Democratic presidential candidates, too:
Even before the [Mueller] report’s release, Representative Rashida Tlaib introduced a resolution to begin investigations into whether Trump committed impeachable offenses. It has six co-sponsors so far, including high-profile freshmen representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley. On the campaign trail, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Julián Castro have backed impeachment.
In addition to the lack of legitimate reasons for impeachment, Democrats have other issues to consider as they weigh their options. As the MSNBC host noted during the Green interview, results from a recent poll found a solid majority of Americans don’t want Trump impeached. And another poll released Sunday shows that Democrats have started to lose independents on the issue of impeachment hearings:
The latest NBC News–Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday found that 45 percent of independents say Congress should not hold impeachment hearings, compared to 19 percent who believe there’s enough evidence to begin impeachment proceedings.
Meanwhile, 34 percent say that Congress should keep investigating to see if there’s enough evidence to start impeachment hearings later.
The opposition to impeachment comes despite Trump’s low 38 percent approval rating among independents and highlights the political risk for House Democrats in moving toward impeaching the president.
Could Green and other Democrats be ratcheting up their calls for impeachment in an attempt to blunt the blows they think may hit the Democrats once IG Horowitz’s report comes out? Or are they doing it because they despise the president so much and are willing to take the risk in hopes that their efforts don’t ultimately backfire on them come election time?
It could be both, for that matter, but one thing that’s for sure is Green’s Saturday comments gave Republicans plenty of political ammunition to use against Democrats in the coming months, as Ed Morrissey explains:
Green played right into the GOP narrative on impeachment, which is that Democrats are so afraid of running against Trump again that they’ll do anything to avoid it. They know they can’t win, Trump argues, and so they want to rig it so that they can. With two-thirds of Americans opposing impeachment (and 70% of independents), it might well look that way to the electorate as well, who will wonder why we’re still talking about it after Robert Mueller found no collusion.
Contrary to the oft-repeated claim by outspoken Democrats that their political opposition wants them to “shut up,” Democrats like Rep. Green are a gift to Republicans. The more Democrats go on and on about impeachment, the more they defend anti-Semitic members of their party, and the more they voice approval for outside-the-mainstream ideas like the Green New Deal, reparations, and abortion extremism, the more out of touch the left looks and the more sane the right looks in comparison.
The Democratic impeachment circus has gotten out of control, and unless Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi can rein them in, look for their poll numbers on impeachment to continue to crater in the months to come.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
I always wondered what happened to the GEICO Caveman…..glad to see he landed a cushy gig in DC.
So easy, even a Democrat can do it.
Persecutor,UJ,O2, et al, what objective knowledge guides yall’s marking Representatives Green and Jackson as individuals with low IQs? What’s your proof?
What public blog interest, what higher polemical interest of Legal Insurrection do y’all serve in bringing attention to their inherited Negroid features? Are y’all asserting a link between those individuals’ IQs and those features?
Professor Jacobs, why don’t you and your monitors issue temporary bans on folks who post such insulting, racially prejudicial comments?
This guy is the embodiment of someone you would not want encounter on a dark street late at night.
It’s Not Trump Derangement Syndrome
Karen McQuillan, April 27, 2019
———— Excerpt ————
“The Democrats don’t believe in our two-party system anymore. They utterly reject American civic norms of treating the president with a modicum of respect and cooperation. They don’t want to alternate presidential power every four or eight years. They think theirs is the only party that deserves to be elected.
Before Trump was a gleam in their eye, Democrats saw themselves as the only morally valid people in the country. They don’t want individual rights anymore, only group rights. They want Republicans and dissenting liberals to be silenced. Silencing is too good for us—they want us publicly shamed, if need be physically attacked, and any contrary ideas hounded out of the public and the private square.
Democrats hate our electoral system as unjust because it doesn’t deliver to them guaranteed victory. All their efforts towards 2020 will be focused on changing our election laws and norms. They don’t want the electoral college, which guards against domination of the country by politically narrow urban population centers.
They don’t want any safeguards against voter fraud. In fact, they want to legalize a broad highway to fraud, voter “harvesting.” Paid political operatives go door to door, picking up unused mail-in ballots (sent out without request if Democrats have their way), fill them in for the Democrat candidate, and voilà, the Democrats win. They just rolled out the beta test in Orange County, and it flipped long-time red districts blue.
To win in 2020, Democrats will commit every voter scam and fraud ever invented and they are in the process of inventing a whole lot of new ones. Intimidation and moral grandstanding are keys to success for them, hence, attacking Republicans who dare to wear a Trump hat, put up a yard sign, or put a bumper sticker on their car. They will stop the census from asking about citizenship, because illegal voters on the population rolls gives California alone six seats in Congress they would not otherwise have, robbing those seats from more rural, more Republican states.”
https://www.amgreatness.com/2019/04/27/its-not-trump-derangement-syndrome/
That excerpt is describing
Pathological altruism. This is at the root of the liberal left’s crisis of
authority. The left derives its
sense of moral authority from the supposition that its intentions are
altruistic and its opponents’ are selfish. That sense of moral superiority
makes it easy to justify immoral behavior against any opposition. That opposition is inferior, defective and must be defeated by any means necessary.
Straight from Jane Goodall’s band in the Gombe Reserve.
Al Green and Sheila Jackson Lee ought to get together and birth a super moron.
If a super moron was born, you know there’d have to be a DNA test to see if Green or Barry Sortero was actually the father.
I am shocked that Al Green could actually use the word “genesis” in a sentence. Don’t worry, Al, Every Thing’s Gonna be Alright.
Wow, I guess you really are that stupid, Green.
Rocket surgeon.
How green does Green think Persons are? The tell-tale hearts beat ever louder.
That’s like saying “we need to lock up black people because they might commit crimes”… What an Idiot!
Let’s take up impeachment first. So, far, there is NO evidence of any criminal act, committed by the President, which would allow impeachment and guarantee conviction. So, no impeachment.
Now, on to constitutional crisis. The powers of Congress are finite. The body does not have carte blanche to demand the executive, or any member thereof, to take actions which violated the law. And, the powers to compel attendance before Congress require a compelling reason for such an appearance. Executive Branch employees and officials do NOT work for Congress. So, we will have to see what the courts decide, with regard to this issue. Also, the Congress ignored the biggest Constitutional crisis of the last century, with regard to the question of whether Barack Hussein Obama met the Constitutional requirements to hold the Office of President. None of the Congresses, in session during the Obama Administrations, ever requested, let alone subpoenaed, a certified copy of BHO’s long form birth certificate.
Now, it should be remembered that Al Green was elected only after a gerrymandered Congressional district was created, which he won.
I never really liked his music much.
I’ll go with the Al Green who was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.
I’d bet you $100 that if this guy took an IQ test it would reveal that he meets the clinical definition of retarded.
Retarded (adj): “less advanced in mental, physical, or social development than is usual for one’s age.”
Yup. He meets the definition.
Persecutor,UJ,O2, et al, what objective knowledge guides yall’s marking Representatives Green and Jackson as individuals with low IQs? What’s your proof?
What public blog interest, what higher polemical interest of Legal Insurrection do y’all serve in bringing attention to their inherited Negroid features? Are y’all asserting a link between those individuals’ IQs and those features?
Professor Jacobs, why don’t you and your monitors issue temporary bans on folks who post such insulting, racially prejudicial comments?