Trump issues ominous warning as Democrats get another chance to impeach him. Will they take it?
President Donald Trump has warned that any attempts to impeach him would “destroy” the Democratic Party after his party lost its control of Congress.
Trump and the Republican Party were hit by a “Blue Tsunami” in Tuesday’s midterms, looking on in horror as the GOP’s majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate were washed away on a wave of public anger.
As of Wednesday morning, the opposition Democrats had picked up 25 additional seats in the House and seven in the Senate, taking them well clear of the 218 and 51 seats they needed to claim the upper hand in the twin chambers of Congress.
Asked whether he was concerned that the legislative bodies would move to impeach him, Trump issued a defiant and ominous warning: “Not even a little bit. I think it would destroy the Democratic Party if they did that.
“Impeachment for no reason, what for having a successful country? Our country is more successful now than at any time in its history.”
The results have left an uncharacteristically downtrodden Trump conceding defeat, lashing out at his own candidates and media allies and already looking ahead to the prospect of a Democrat-run legislative making life difficult for him in the final two years of his second term.
The newly emboldened Democrats are likely to interpret the outcome as a mandate from an unhappy electorate to go after the Trump administration. They are expected to wield the powers of the congressional committees to launch probes into the president and his inner circle.
Trump is already the first American president to be impeached twice, so whether the Democrats will seek to do so again is a natural question.
The Republican was first impeached by the Nancy Pelosi-led House in 2019, after a whistleblower reported him for threatening to withhold $400 million in congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine on an official call with that country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, unless the latter opened an investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s business dealings in Kyiv.
Trump went on to be acquitted in the Senate, a scenario that was repeated when he was impeached for an unprecedented second time after his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Republicans like Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have both said they fully expect the Democrats to try for a third impeachment. The betting markets Kalshi and Polymarket are offering odds of 77.2 percent and 80 percent respectively as of Wednesday morning. However, the noise from the other side of the aisle has been much more muted.
New Yorker Hakeem Jeffries, who is about to become the first Black speaker of the House, was asked about the prospect by ABC News in September and said only: “We haven’t ruled anything in, and we haven’t ruled anything out.”
Speaking to The New Yorker’s Political Scene podcast earlier this week, influential Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin was equally cagey, telling host David Remnick impeachment was just one of many “tools” his side might choose to use on the Trump administration.
New-minted Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who just beat Trump favorite Jon Husted, also expressed disapproval during his campaign, saying: “I can’t speak for everybody else but I would not support an impeachment of Trump. There’s just simply no reason for that, no matter what happens in the midterms.”
