House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) cautioned on Tuesday that President Donald Trump is attempting to provoke Democrats to jump at his impeachment ― a move she feels would play right into his hands.
“Trump is goading us to impeach him,” she said at an “Inside Congress” talk in New York City, hosted by Cornell University’s Institute of Politics and Global Affairs. “That’s what he’s doing. Every single day, he’s just like taunting, taunting, taunting because he knows that it would be very divisive in the country, but he doesn’t care. He just wants to solidify his base.”
Pelosi has previously spoken out against impeachment, arguing in a Washington Post interview in March that the president is “just not worth it” and that the action could backfire, fracturing the nation.
However, not all Democrats are heeding the speaker’s warning.
In a speech Tuesday on the Senate floor, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump, contending that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report “clearly constitutes adequate information” to justify the action.
Meanwhile the same day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) contended that it’s “case closed” on any question of collusion between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, urging Democrats to move on.
Staying above the fray, Pelosi noted that “the facts and the law” will guide lawmakers “to the place we need to be.”
“So we can’t impeach him for political reasons, and we can’t not impeach him for political reasons,” she said. “We have to see where the facts take us.”