The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
House condemns racist tweets
The Democraticled House has voted to condemn President Donald Trump for making “racist comments” about four congresswomen of color, and Texas Rep. Al Green has introduced articles of impeachment against Trump.
WASHINGTON — In a remarkable political repudiation, the Democraticled House voted Tuesday night to condemn President Donald Trump’s racist comments against four congresswomen of color, despite protestations by Trump’s Republican congressional allies and his own insistence he hasn’t “a racist bone in my body.”
Two days after Trump tweeted that four Democratic freshmen should “go back” to their home countries — though all are citizens and three were born in the U.S.A. — Democrats muscled the resolution through the chamber by 240187 over strong GOP opposition. The rebuke was an embarrassing one for Trump, and he had appealed to GOP lawmakers not to go along, but there were four Republican votes for the resolution.
The measure carries no legal repercussions for the president and the vote was highly partisan, unlikely to cost him with his diehard conservative base.
Shortly after the House vote, Texas Rep. Al Green introduced articles of impeachment against Trump, potentially forcing a vote this week on whether to remove the president from office.
The vote would come too soon for most Democrats, as a majority of the caucus appears to oppose impeachment, for now. But Green is seeking to capitalize on a growing sentiment for impeachment in the wake of Trump’s racist tweets over the weekend.
Any member of the House can force an impeachment vote. Green has done so twice before, unsuccessfully.
Before the showdown roll call, Trump characteristically plunged forward with timetested insults. He accused his four outspoken critics of “spewing some of the most vile, hateful and disgusting things ever said by a politician” and added, “If you hate our Country, or if you are not happy here, you can leave!” — echoing taunts long unleashed against political dissidents rather than opposing parties’ lawmakers.
The president was joined by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and other top Republicans in trying to redirect the focus from Trump’s original tweets, which for three days have consumed Washington and drawn widespread condemnation. Instead, they tried playing offense by accusing the four congresswomen — among the Democrats’ most leftleaning members and ardent Trump critics — of socialism, an accusation that’s already a central theme of the GOP’s 2020 presidential and congressional campaigns.
Even after twoandahalf years of Trump’s turbulent governing style, the spectacle of a president futilely laboring to head off a House vote essentially proclaiming him to be a racist was extraordinary.
Underscoring the stakes, Republicans formally objected after Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said during a floor speech that Trump’s tweets were “racist.” Led by Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, Republicans moved to have her words stricken from the record, a rare procedural rebuke.
After a delay exceeding 90 minutes, No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer of Maryland ruled that Pelosi had indeed violated a House rule against characterizing an action as racist. Hoyer was presiding after Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri stormed away from the presiding officer’s chair, lamenting, “We want to just fight,” which he apparently aimed at Republicans. Despite Hoyer’s ruling, Democrats flexed their muscle and the House voted afterward by partyline to leave Pelosi’s words intact in the record.
Some rankandfile GOP lawmakers have agreed that Trump’s words were racist, but on Tuesday party leaders insisted they were not and accused Democrats of using the resulting tumult to score political points.
Among the few voices of restraint, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Trump wasn’t racist, but he also called on leaders “from the president to the speaker to the freshman members of the House” to attack ideas, not the people who espouse them.
“There’s been a consensus that political rhetoric has gotten way, way heated across the political spectrum,” said the Republican leader from Kentucky, breaking his own two days of silence on Trump’s attacks.
Hours earlier, Trump tweeted, “Those Tweets were NOT Racist. I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!” He wrote that House Republicans should “not show ‘weakness’ ” by agreeing to a resolution he labeled “a Democrat con game.”
Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez of New York, one of Trump’s four targets, returned his fire.
“You’re right, Mr. President — you don’t have a racist bone in your body. You have a racist mind in your head and a racist heart in your chest,” she tweeted.