Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer
Billionaire Tom Steyer touring with anti-Trump message
brings his “Need to Impeach” tour to Orlando.
Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer brought his “Need to Impeach” tour to Orlando on Wednesday and said removing President Donald Trump from office is the most important thing Democrats can do.
“We think that 2018 is like ground zero,” said Steyer, a hedge-fund manager from San Francisco, in an interview before his town hall meeting at the Orchid Garden on Church Street. He has already spent $20 million on his national campaign for impeachment.
“This is a very competitive struggle for what it means to be an American,” he said. “It doesn’t get more elemental than that.”
Steyer said he and his PAC, NextGen America, plan to spend more than $32 million on organizing people younger than 35 to vote — “the largest segment of Americans who vote at half the rate of American citizens” — including as much as $3.5 million in Florida alone.
He told the crowd of more than 100 he believes Trump reaches the criteria for impeachment on several measures, including what he claims are obstructions of justice; violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bars officials from financially benefiting from their offices; and Trump’s attacks on the freedom of the press.
“One of the things I considered most serious: two psychologists who vet service people for appropriateness to access to nuclear codes and weapons,” Steyer said. “One [who] vetted 1,200 people on that basis said [Trump] is in no way qualified. … He wouldn’t get within a million miles of the nuclear codes if he was a service member.”
Steyer has faced criticism from some Democrats and progressives for focusing on impeachment over other issues before the 2018 midterm elections Nov. 6, which could potentially give Democrats control of one or both houses of Congress.
But he said such critics “are taking a big risk assuming nothing’s going to happen between now and Nov. 6, when we both know tons of things could happen,” he said of possible actions by the Trump administration. “If things do get bad, you’re going along with it by normalizing his behavior and excusing it. I don’t know how they sleep at night.”
Steyer said he tries not to get involved in internal Democratic politics, including the primary battle in District 9 in Orange, Osceola and Polk counties between incumbent U.S. Rep. Darren Soto and former U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson.
Grayson specifically criticized Soto for his votes against two motions of impeachment against Trump, for which only 66 and 58 Democrats voted in favor. Soto said he wanted the Robert Mueller investigation to be completed before he made any impeachment decision.
“I will note that an overwhelming number of Democratic voters are in favor of impeachment,” Steyer said. ‘It’s the most important issue in America today. If you’re not going to do what an overwhelming number of voters want you to do, I think you should explain what your reasoning is.”
At the town hall, Steyer fielded questions ranging from the difficulty of the impeachment process — which requires not only a majority of the House of Representatives but two-thirds of U.S. senators — to worries about making Vice President Mike Pence president if they succeed.
“We are aware we are not choosing a president; we are removing a president,” he said. “If we succeed, presumably the next president will be a conservative Republican from Indiana. … I know what Mike Pence has done. [But] what we’re seeing in this administration is what many people are underestimating — Donald Trump is one hell of a demagogue.”
Steyer called Trump “dangerous and lawless” adding: “This is a very unusual situation. But this is a very unusual president. … This is not partisan. We know we cannot do this without Democrats and Republicans coming together.”
The event brought out mostly people who already favor impeachment, and beforehand Steyer acknowledged that has been the case at previous “Need to Impeach” events nationwide.
But he said “the overwhelming response shows a seriousness, a strong sense of patriotism. And they want to work to get us out of this.”