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A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSWOMAN kicked off her term with an expletive-laced vow to impeach Donald Trump, testing her party’s discipline and earning a chiding from the president.
As a clip of Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib’s animated comments circulated widely on social media, Trump tartly dismissed the threat of impeachment, while the newly elected Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared loath to reign in the congresswoman’s language.
“How do you impeach a president who has won perhaps the greatest election of all time?” Trump said on Twitter, saying Democrats only consider impeachment “because they know they can’t win in 2020.”
At an event hours after her swearing-in on Thursday, Tlaib told supporters that “we are gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the motherfucker.”
The crowd roared, and Tlaib hugged supporters.
Salty language by US lawmakers — or presidents, for that matter — is nothing new. Trump, hardly the paradigm of verbal decency, last year derided African nations as “shithole” countries, after all.
But when Trump was asked about his critic’s comments, he said they were “disgraceful,” and “highly disrespectful to the United States of America.”
“I think she dishonored herself and I think she dishonored her family, using language like that,” he added.
The timing and optics of Tlaib’s outburst are notable.
Democrats have just won control of the House of Representatives, after eight years in the minority.
Tlaib, 42, is one in a cadre of ebullient, media-savvy rising stars — the self-described “radical” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is another — who aim to shake up Washington’s status quo.
Such progressives will be eager to push back against an administration they believe has abused its authority in the nearly two years since Trump’s inauguration.
Doubling down on her outburst, Tlaib — the first Palestinian-American elected to Congress — tweeted yesterday:
But she dodged reporters repeatedly asking about her remarks.
Tlaib found support on Twitter, where #ImpeachTheMF was a trending item in the United States on Friday night, with more than 110,000 tweets.
No ‘censorship’
As the chamber’s new speaker, the 78-year-old Pelosi is challenged with keeping Trump — as well as the more radical elements of her own party — in check.
Pelosi sought to downplay Tlaib’s potty mouth.
“I probably have a generational reaction to it. But in any event I’m not in the censorship business,” she said in comments aired Friday on MSNBC.
“But I don’t think it’s any worse than what the president has said.”
Republicans have bridled at Tlaib’s comments, using them to portray Democrats as seeking politically-motivated retribution against Trump rather than common ground.
“We watched a new freshman stand up, use this language, get cheered by their base, and we watched a brand new speaker say nothing to her,” top House Republican Kevin McCarthy said.
“That action should not stand.”
Democrats who support impeachment have argued that Trump obstructed justice by firing former FBI director James Comey, and that hush payments to at least two women made by his personal attorney during the presidential race violated campaign finance laws.
As a long-time Trump critic, Tlaib made calls for his impeachment central to her campaign — and was once arrested for heckling the then-candidate during his White House run.
“The time for impeachment proceedings is now,” she wrote in a co-authored op-ed published in the Detroit Free Press newspaper the morning of her entry into Congress.
House Democrat Brad Sherman agrees, and on Thursday formally introduced impeachment measures against Trump. They are unlikely to get a vote on the House floor, at least for now.
Even if Democrats believe some of Trump’s actions clear the threshold of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” Pelosi has downplayed the prospects of impeachment, saying it’s “not something that I’m stirring the pot on.”
She wants special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian electoral interference — and possible collusion with Trump’s campaign — to run its course before Congress decides about taking such a serious step.
Equally pressing, Pelosi must contend with liberal Democrats seeking to pull the party leftward in the run up to the 2020 election.
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Who’s mammy and daddy left who the most. Let the battles begin!
@Dan The Man: Yeah,keep telling yourself that.typical Irish attitude towards success and hard work.We must be the worst begrudging nation on earth.
@Dan The Man: Just because you didn’t make it very far in life, doesn’t mean others can’t either. You just assume that anyone with something decent was just given to them. Is that your coping mechanism because you can’t admit there is people who work harder than you and make better decisions?
@John Paul: well that’s one way to look at it, but you can see how such shows might really grate on those that haven’t been able to afford a house. I am in fact lucky enough to have purchased a house I can afford but I do wonder when we might see a tent or a temporary type of house on the show. Doesn’t fit the narrative though.
This is tat, pure and simple, but it’s par for the course with RTE!
This abomination along with the other shitshow cheap Irish homes have to be the worst ever attempt by RTE at entertainment.
@Sea Spirit: Why don’t they give updates or tell you what home the people featured, make a bid on. What’s the point of it all!
@Sea Spirit: A stop Dathai should be on this show aswell for god sake he’s brilliant oh Frank
Hugh Wallace makes me nauseas ‘Hooooooome of the year’… while the majority of us hard working people can’t even afford the circular red pillow to put in our ‘favourite place’. Yup rub it in please Man just a little bit more.
@J B: No fair enough JB and thank you for that x You must be so proud of your children that’s amazing x You’re right in fairness, I need to get over my resentments it’s just hard because genuinely worked so hard and lost everything. There I go again with the self pity!! Sorry JB and thanks again for your reply x
@Donna Fallon: As all the evidence shows, Irish people have never been better off financially. Look at car sales, holidays etc. There are always people who get left behind or endure bad circumstances etc but they are definitely not the majority
@Brian M: Yup there certainly are people who get left behind I agree but our obsession with property porn in this Country is quite unsettling. I personally find it distasteful. Just an opinion.
Love the show and the judges. It is amazing what people can do on very little as in the converted shop in Tipperary. Gorgeous home full of personality.
@Suzanne Phelan: I prefer those to the ones that obviously just had more money than taste thrown into them, everything to the max size, but minimal and sterile at the same time.
Home of the year …
I blame Duncan Stewart and his show “our house” with rté which started in the mid 90s for the start of the property boom. Just looat the graph 1996 / 2008 \ 2014 / 2025
@P. V. Aglue: Ah Drunken Duncan. There’s a name I haven’t seen in a while
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