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Jagmeet Singh Doubles Down On Donald Trump Impeachment Remark

The NDP leader said it wasn't a joke.
U.S. President Donald Trump attends a meeting at the UN General Assembly in New York on Sept. 25, 2019.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. President Donald Trump attends a meeting at the UN General Assembly in New York on Sept. 25, 2019.

OTTAWA — NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh closed a town hall Friday by doubling down on comments he made a day earlier expressing his desire to see U.S. President Donald Trump impeached.

Singh was asked by an audience member if someone who’s vying to become prime minister should be joking about impeaching the U.S. president.

The NDP leader’s response was short: “I wasn’t joking.” The crowd of supporters applauded.

Watch: Whistleblowers who changed U.S. history

During another stop on Vancouver Island, Singh was asked what he would say to Trump should he become prime minister.

”I hope he gets impeached before that happens,” Singh responded, before adding that the response is “a little tongue-in-cheek.”

When the applause softened, the NDP leader criticized the Trump administration’s family separation policy, calling it “disgusting” how the president could “inflame hatred” against immigrants.

“It’s horrible that someone in a position of power like him would allow for kids to be stripped from the arms of their parents, from their moms.”

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh fields questions from reporters after a campaign stop with Mayor Kennedy Stewart at city hall in Vancouver on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press via AP)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh fields questions from reporters after a campaign stop with Mayor Kennedy Stewart at city hall in Vancouver on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press via AP)

Migrant children continue to be separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border despite a court order last year to halt the controversial policy. The conditions in the facilities where the children are detained have been called inhumane.

Singh has been vocal about his criticism of the controversial U.S. policy in the past calling it “heinous” and an example of “complete corruption in morality of this administration” last year.

He used the strongest language among the major federal party leaders when asked to comment on the family separations happening stateside in June 2018.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called it “wrong” and Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer called it a policy that doesn’t have support from any political party in Canada.

“We made it clear that that specific policy — separating children from their parents — lacks all compassion and was not a dignified way to treat people,” Scheer said. “Regardless of how they enter into a country, human beings have to be treated with the dignity they deserve.”

This week, the U.S. House of Representatives launched an official impeachment investigation following Trump’s admission that he asked a foreign leader, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to probe former vice-president Joe Biden’s son during a July call.

Trump dismissed the investigation as another “witch hunt.”

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