House Democrats waited almost three whole weeks before launching their impeachment efforts against President Donald Trump.
Rep. Al Green, D-T.X., announced Wednesday he would file articles of impeachment against Trump after the former president proposed the U.S. take control of the terrorist-run Gaza Strip as a last resort during a White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump said Tuesday. “I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East and maybe the entire Middle East.”
Trump suggested turning the territory into “the Riviera of the Middle East” but provided no details about how the U.S. would take control of the land or how it would resettle its 1.8 million Palestinian residents.
The comment sent Democratic lawmakers into hysteria.
“The movement to impeach the president has begun,” Green said in a House floor speech Wednesday. “Ethnic cleansing is not a joke, especially when it emanates from the president of the United States, the most powerful person in the world.”
Green continued his complaints during a Thursday appearance on C-SPAN.
“The president and the prime minister, what they said will live in infamy and I don’t know that they’ll recover from it,” he said. “Quite frankly, if I may say this, I think the president, that alone in my world would cause him to have to resign.”
The Constitution allows Congress to impeach and remove presidents for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Green claimed that actual crimes are not required for impeachment — just for the president to be “shocking.”
“Many people assume that that means a statutory offense,” Green said. “It does not, and the word misdemeanor means misdeeds. Aside from some minor offense, misdeeds are those things that will shock your conscience, so a president can literally be impeached for shocking one’s conscience.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Trump’s position, and said he was not afraid of shaking up the status quo in the violence-consumed Middle East.
“This is an out-of-the-box idea. That’s who President Trump is, that’s why the American people elected him, and his goal is lasting peace in the Middle East for all people in the region.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-M.I., had a “meltdown” about Trump’s comments on social media — and blamed other Democrats for allowing “bipartisan support” of Israel, which she falsely claimed is committing genocide.
“Palestinians aren’t going anywhere. This president can only spew this fanatical bull***t because of bipartisan support in Congress for funding genocide and ethnic cleansing. It’s time for my two-state solution colleagues to speak up.”
Republicans currently hold slim majorities in both the House and Senate. House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar indicated little appetite within his party for impeachment proceedings, telling reporters Thursday: “This isn’t a focus of the Democratic Caucus.”
Green previously launched multiple impeachment attempts during Trump’s first term. Trump was impeached twice by the House but acquitted both times by the Senate