Trump assails Republican over impeachment talk
WASHINGTON — President Trump called Rep. Justin Amash as a “total lightweight” and “loser” on Sunday, a day after the Michigan Republican said Trump’s behavior as president had reached the “threshold for impeachment.”
The president’s attacks reinforced Amash’s isolation within his party, as even the Republican lawmakers who might be most sympathetic to his position avoided stepping forward to join him.
Earlier Sunday, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who has been one of the few members of his party to even mildly chastise Trump in public after the release of the Mueller report, described Amash’s statement as “courageous.” But Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, dismissed the idea of impeachment, saying on CNN that the evidence lacked “the full element that you need to prove an obstruction-of-justice case.”
Trump — who has stonewalled requests by House Democrats for documents and has commanded current and former aides to turn down requests to testify before investigative committees — was not so circumspect.
“Never a fan of @justinamash, a total lightweight who opposes me and some of our great Republican ideas and policies just for the sake of getting his name out there through controversy,” Trump tweeted.
“Justin is a loser who sadly plays right into our opponents hands!” he added.
On Saturday, Amash, 39, became the first sitting Republican member of Congress to suggest that Trump’s actions, as described in the report of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, met the constitutional threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors.
“President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct,” Amash wrote in a series of Twitter messages after reading the redacted version of the 448-page report.
Contrary to the public statements and summaries offered by Attorney General William Barr, “Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment,” wrote Amash, a self-described strict constitutionalist who has considered running against Trump in the 2020 Republican primary.