Trump claims impeachment will help him get re-elected

President Donald Trump has told confidantes that impeachment could help him to get re-elected because it would enforce the message that he is the victim of elitist forces, it was claimed yesterday.

‘‘He has repeated to folks that, if the Democrats impeach him, it would be a victory, politically, because it would be a complete overreach and he could exploit it and run against it in 2020,’’ a source told the Axios news website.

Trump has begun to acknowledge privately that Democrats could win a majority in the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections, allowing them to start proceedings against him. They need to win 23 seats to seal a majority.

If a Democrat-led House were to impeach Trump by a simple majority he would be tried in the Senate and face removal from office. However, conviction by the upper house would require a twothirds majority, which Democrats have no hope of achieving in the midterms.

Bill Clinton was impeached by the House in 1998 and then acquitted by the Senate, a process that boosted his poll ratings because many voters regarded him as the victim of a witch-hunt. Democratic leaders are split over whether to impeach Trump, should they win control of the House.

Until recently, Trump was said to have been sceptical of advisers who were concerned by the poor poll numbers for his party. However, in the past week, Republicans in several House and Senate seats which were regarded as safe have seen their leads eroded and now face strong Democrat challenges. The Democratic Senate candidate in Arizona is four points ahead of her Republican rival.

The party’s continuing decline in the polls, less than two months before the elections, appears to have spooked the president, who has lashed out against real and imagined opponents.

He has been urging supporters to vote in the midterms, telling them that if he is impeached it would be their fault for not doing so. Three polls this week gave the Democrats double-digit leads, compared to an average eight percentage point advantage last week.

With a hurricane approaching the east coast, Trump has kept all public events off his diary, although he has found time to defend his record on Twitter.

Yesterday he sent a tweet mocking Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan’s chief executive, who suggested that he could beat Trump in an election.

‘‘The problem with banker Jamie Dimon running for president is that he doesn’t have the aptitude or smarts and is a poor public speaker and nervous mess – otherwise he is wonderful,’’ he wrote.

Dimon has insisted that he is not planning to run.

Trump has also taken aim at Google, which he claims ‘‘rigs’’ its algorithms to hide news about his accomplishments while amplifying the message of his opponents. On Thursday, a video of Google executives discussing their disappointment with Trump’s election victory in 2016 was leaked to Breitbart, the Right-wing news site.

In the video, taken from an internal company meeting, Sergey Brin, a founder of Google who was born in Russia, says: ‘‘As an immigrant and a refugee, I certainly find this election deeply offensive and I know many of you do too.’’

Google said in a statement: ‘‘Nothing was said at that meeting, or any other meeting, to suggest that any political bias ever influences the way we build or operate our products.’’

Trump has thrown himself into campaigning for the midterms, holding 16 rallies in August and making stops in at least three states this month.

He has been unusually active in endorsing candidates – 58 so far in Senate, House and governor’s races – though with mixed results.

About half have won their primaries but some Republicans fear that the president’s backing will make them less appealing to more centrist voters in the general election.

Other Republican grandees, including George W Bush, have been enlisted to campaign for vulnerable candidates. – The