Trump starts Thanksgiving break with anger-filled rally
SUNRISE, Florida: A darkly angry, sometimes swearing President Donald Trump vowed to win landslide reelection at a Florida campaign rally Tuesday ahead of a Thanksgiving break spoiled by looming impeachment. The rally in Sunrise, located just north of Miami, saw Trump unleash harsh invective against his political foes, calling out Democrats’ “depravity” and claiming that “the failed Washington establishment” is targeting him because he is “exposing a rigged system.”
As always, Trump reserved special venom for American journalists, whom he called “some of the most corrupt people in the world”. The attack prompted thousands in the crowd to turn and boo and shout insults at media outlets covering the event. With Democrats scheduling the next phase of impeachment in the House of Representatives for next week, the Sunrise event allowed Trump to show off the rightwing base he’s counting on to keep him in power through the crisis - and again in the 2020 election.
Democrats in the House seem likely now to impeach Trump on charges that he abused his office by attempting to pressure Ukraine to open a deliberately embarrassing corruption probe of one of his main 2020 Democratic rivals, Joe Biden. Even if the Republican-dominated Senate acquits him, as expected, that would still make him only the third president ever impeached. But Trump hopes to take revenge by winning reelection, and Florida will be a key piece to the electoral puzzle.
Trump recently made the state his legal home, after he announced a switch of residence from his native New York, and he’ll hope to repeat his surprise win there against the far more heavily favored Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Even the choice of rally location, inside pro-Democratic Broward County, demonstrated his intent to challenge for the state’s crucial electoral college votes. “That landslide is going to start right here in the great state of Florida,” he said. “Four more years! Four more years!” the crowd chanted.
Storm clouds
After the rally, Trump was to retreat to his Mar-a-Lago golf resort for the rest of the week, including Thursday’s national Thanksgiving Day holiday. But there was to be no respite from the impeachment probe, which Democrats say has already proved Trump ran a corrupt parallel foreign policy intended to benefit his political fortunes at home. The Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives,
Jerry Nadler, announced that new public hearings, which could lead to articles of impeachment, will start December 4.
Nadler even issued an invitation for Trump to attend. “The committee looks forward to your participation,” Nadler said. At the rally, Trump called impeachment a “witch hunt.” He then drew some of the loudest applause of the night by saying that Americans knew the case against him was “bulls**t.”
Trump is increasingly frustrated and angered by impeachment, which has left the country almost evenly divided, fueling predictions for the most ill-tempered and volatile election season in decades. Impeachment even made its way into the friendly annual ritual of a presidential pardon for two enormous turkeys at the White House on Tuesday. The birds “already received subpoenas to appear in Adam Schiff’s basement on Thursday,” Trump joked to guests in the Rose Garden, referring to the head of the intelligence committee leading the impeachment probe in the House of Representatives. —AFP