After bolting from the GOP, Rep. doesn’t nix idea of prez run
Days
Nancy Pelosi took aim at the progressives in her own party again.
The House speaker, without naming them, wrote off Reps. Alexandria OcasioCortez (N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (Mass.) — four House Democrats who recently voted against $4.6 billion in emergency border funding.
“All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi told The New York Times. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”
Pelosi was referring to their votes against the border bill, which President Trump signed into law Monday and failed to provide any funding for humanitarian assistance.
The longtime Democrat has gone after the progressive portion of her party before — in April, she relegated OcasioCortez and her colleagues to “like, five people” during an interview on “60 Minutes.”
She also dismissed Twitter followers as irrelevant in an interview, saying the only thing that matters is “large numbers of votes on the floor of the House.” Rep. Justin Amash has his eyes set on a bigger battle against President Trump.
The Michigan lawmaker, just days after announcing that he was leaving the Republican Party, played shy when asked about his 2020 presidential aspirations Sunday but left the door wide open for a White House run.
“I still wouldn’t rule anything like that out,” Amash told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I believe that I have to use my skills, my public influence where it serves the country best and I believe I have to defend the Constitution in whichever way works best and if that means doing something else, then I do that.”
The former Freedom Caucus member said he plans to run for reelection to Congress as an independent, and that making a decision on running for higher office isn’t “on his radar right now.”
Amash, 39, made waves as the first — and only — Republican to call for Trump’s impeachment in May, citing “specific actions and a pattern of behavior” laid out in Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The move, he claims, has been earning him applause behind closed doors from high-level party officials.