Following Pelosi’s Lead, Trump Still Scores Well Across the County
By Dan Murphy
As the democratic party fervor to impeach President Donald Trump continues to boil, Westchester’s three democratic members of Congress are not yet calling for impeachment and following the advice of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, to let the House investigatory committees complete their work. Among the many
Among the many democratic and progressive organizations calling for impeachment now are needtoimpeach.com, and billionaire Tom Steyer, who has been running television commercials calling for Trump’s impeachment for more than a year.
“House Democrats know that Donald Trump is unfit for office,” argues Steyer on his website, needtoimpeach.com. “Yet instead of moving forward with impeachment, they appear consumed with whether or not they will suffer for it politically. Our founding fathers expected Congress to hold a lawless president accountable, and they’re doing nothing.
“Acting on impeachment would force Senate Republicans to publicly stand with Mr. Trump –and the impeachment process can sway public opinion and force a reckoning among the president’s partisan defenders.”
The website also reviews all democratic members of Congress and their stance on four different votes related to impeachment: Publicly supported impeachment post-Mueller report? Voted in favor of impeachment Jan. 19, 2018? Supported Rep. Tlaib’s resolution inquiring whether the House of Representatives should impeach Donald J. Trump? And sponsored any impeachment legislation?
Rep. Eliot Engel voted in favor of impeachment last year, but has not supported any other of Steyer’s requirements. Rep Nita Lowey and Rep Sean Patrick Maloney, Westchester’s two other Congressmembers, have not voted for, or publicly supported any of Steyer’s demands.
Engel, who now represents more than two-thirds of Westchester County, recently tweeted, “Let me see if I’ve got this: a #DOJ policy written to protect Nixon and never endorsed by the courts is keeping this president above the rule of law?” Engel was referring to Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s determination that a president cannot be charged with crimes while in office. While Engel hinted at the possibility of Trump being impeached, he has not publicly called for impeachment proceedings to begin in the House of Representatives.
Engel, so far, has been relatively quiet as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In an interview with our paper last year, expressed a desire to find out what happened in a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Europe. According to The Hill, Engel said that Democrats “should be cautious” with impeachment.
Lowey, chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee and another long serving member of the House representing Westchester, has also made no move to announce that the president must be impeached. Lowey recently told the New York Times: “I support the work of the Judiciary Committee and other committees of jurisdiction to follow up on the Mueller investigation and examine other instances of misconduct in office. As these investigations proceed, they may form the basis of an impeachment inquiry.”
Maloney, who did not respond to the NY Times for its poll on House members’ views on impeachment last week, has consistently stated that it is best to let the investigation play out and not to play into republican hands of trying to impeach the president when the U.S. Senate will not vote to remove Trump and, in many parts of the country, Americans support Trump and do not support impeachment.
We reported in April about a recent TV confrontation that Maloney had with MSNBC Host Joy Reid over impeaching Trump. Maloney debated the pros and cons of moving forward with impeachment in the House of Representatives, with the underlying theme being, beat Trump in 2020 and don’t worry about impeaching Trump. That comment was unacceptable to Reid, who wanted Maloney to say that he supports moving forward with impeachment immediately after Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren called for the House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings.
“Here’s what matters to me: We want accountability from the president, that could come in different forms,” said Maloney. “Impeachment is one way, though that is likely to fail in the end. Another way is to beat him in 2020. I don’t want to play Checkers, I want to play Chess, and I don’t think setting out a course of action that is counterproductive is the best way. Does he deserve to get impeached? Yes. I’m appalled by what is in this (Mueller) report, but the big picture is to beat him and replace him.”
Reid continued to push, asking Maloney if he thought Trump committed impeachable offenses.
“Why are republicans so eager for us to impeach the president?” asked Maloney. “The republicans did it when I was in the White House with President (Bill) Clinton and it didn’t work out for them. Impeachment is not an exercise that the American people are ready for. When a republican senator agrees to vote for impeachment, let me know.”
Maloney, who represents a district far less progressive than Engel and Lowey’s, made his comments in April, two months before Speaker Nancy Pelosi began to try to hold back democrats’ calls for impeachment.
Last week, Pelosi said: “What’s important for people to know, first of all, I travel all the time in the country. Do you know that most people think impeachment means you’re out of office? Did you ever get that feeling or are you just in the bubble here? They think if you get impeached, you’re gone, and that is completely not true.
“You get impeached and it is an indictment. So when you’re impeaching somebody, you want to make sure you have the strongest possible indictment. Nothing is off the table but we do want to make such a compelling case, such an ironclad case that even the Republican Senate, which at the time seems to be not an objective jury, will be convinced.
“I think the president wants us to impeach him,” the California Democrat told Jimmy Kimmel on late-night TV. “He knows it’s not a good idea to be impeached, but the silver lining for him is then, he believes, that he would be exonerated by the U.S. Senate. So when we go through with our case, it’s got to be ironclad. Ironclad.”
Many believe Pelosi has it right, and she has the support of Westchester’s three members of Congress, who will wait with her.
A completely different view, outside of the blue wave of Democratic, Progressive support here in the Northeast, D.C. , Los Angeles and Silicon Valley comes from those who believe that Trump, and the Republican Party, is alive and well.
“Impeachment is the buzzword of the day for many democratic activists, and House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler has been pushing speaker Nancy Pelosi to facilitate the launch of proceedings,” wrote Independent talk show host Michael Smerconish. “But the polling suggests this is not where a majority of Americans stand. A CNN poll conducted from May 28 to 31 found that 41 percent of Americans believe President Trump should be impeached or removed from office, compared with 54 percent who said he shouldn’t.”
On CSPAN, Smerconish said: “The GOP is doing just fine. That might be unsettling news for many of you, but the republican party controls the Senate, The White House, most of the gubernatorial mansions and most of the state legislatures. Donald Trump will go, whether it’s at the end of this term, whether it’s through some impeachment process – which I think is highly unlikely – or whether its serving after a second term. And those forces that put him in office are still going to be with us.”
Conservative writer Hugh Hewitt wrote in the Washington Post: “President Trump has an ace in the hole for the 2020 election: The media elite cannot keep their contempt for Trump voters under wraps. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd penned a sentence that perfectly encapsulates this disdain for fellow citizens. ‘Mitch McConnell, Barr and almost everyone else in the G.O.P.,’ Dowd opined, ‘have made themselves numb to (Trump’s) abhorrent actions because of self-interest.’
“There you have it: In Dowd’s world – and Dowd is one of the tribunes of the Manhattan-Beltway media elite – almost every person who supports Trump today does so because of self-interest. By Dowd’s assessment, no one can possibly support Trump without being corrupt.
“Ignored is the fact that Trump has delivered on his crucial pledges concerning the judiciary – Trump has put 100-plus judges on the federal bench, including two on the Supreme Court, 41 on federal circuit courts (with two more confirmations pending), and dozens and dozens on federal trial courts.
“The roaring economy, and the tax cuts and deregulation that power it, speaks for itself. But for Dowd and her colleagues in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley, none of this record matters. To support Trump is to be morally flawed. Let’s face it, most of the media thinks most of Trump supporters are stupid or evil. Incredibly, secular elites have appointed themselves judges of moral character.
“Dowd’s damning indictment calls to mind Hillary Clinton’s ‘basket of deplorables’ comment. For 50 years the left has been flipping off the apolitical as well as the quiet moderate and conservative citizens who go to work and church, who raise families in somewhat prosaic fashion. But who also vote. Regularly.
“This contempt of the left for ordinary Americans is not new. We saw it directed at President George W. Bush (the stupid cowboy) his father (‘the wimp factor’), President Ronald Reagan (another cowboy) President Gerald Ford (‘played football without a helmet’) and President Richard Nixon (‘Tricky Dick’ decades before Watergate). The media conveniently forgets that every Republican president has had to campaign and govern against both the Democrats and their auxiliary troops in the Manhattan-Beltway media elite.
“Insults and invective are not how you win elections, though they are great at winning applause and handshakes from other elites.” (End of Hewitt piece.)
