Maxine Waters taunts “Moscow Mitch” over impeachment popularity
Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) has been onboard the Trump impeachment train longer than any other member of Congress.
Well before the Ukraine scandal that eventually led the vast majority of her Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives to vote to impeach the president, Rep. Waters was saying things like this quote from May of 2017:
“Why would we let somebody like Trump, a con man, come in here and turn it all upside down with his lies and his disrespect? And so, I personally feel very strongly about this and I’m going to keep working until he’s impeached.”
Waters’ consistent messaging about Donald Trump’s untrustworthiness and her constant efforts to hold the president’s feet to the fire have finally paid off as the majority of America is finally catching up to her views about the need to remove this man from an office he would be completely unqualified for even if he were not a criminal defier of constitutional norms.
Waters took a victory lap on Twitter to kick off the return of Congress to Washington DC after the holiday break — celebrating a new poll that shows that a majority of our nation’s citizens now believe that there is sufficient evidence of impeachable behavior to remove Donald Trump from office — and taunting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) along the way.
Excellent new @FiveThirtyEight poll shows majority of Americans believe there is enough evidence to remove the impeached President from office. Joint GOP-Russian propaganda isn’t working. #MoscowMitch doesn’t want the truth to come out! What are you afraid of, Mitch?
— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) January 6, 2020
The FiveThirtyEight poll, conducted with Ipsos, that Rep. Waters refers to in her tweet not only shows a majority of Americans favoring showing Trump the permanent exit door to the White House but also proves that an even larger majority want to see new witnesses called at the Senate trial, including those who were prohibited by the president from testifying at the House impeachment hearings.
Congresswoman Waters pulls no punches with her ready acknowledgment that the Republicans in Congress are coordinating their messaging in line with the same Russian efforts to blame Ukraine rather than accept the responsibility for meddling in the 2016 presidential election as our intelligence agencies have universally found that the Kremlin did.
The feisty Southern California representative waves the poll results in Senator McConnell’s face in her tweet while essentially accusing the Senate Majority Leader of being terrified that the real truth behind the president’s actions will be revealed if senior White House officials are forced to testify under oath and penalty of perjury.
Waters poses her rhetorical question to McConnell — “What are you afraid of, Mitch?” — while fully aware of the answer: that a full, fair and truthful trial of Donald Trump will lead to an even larger majority of Americans to call for his removal and prevent him from swiftly and effectively ramming through an acquittal of the president in the Republican-controlled chamber he leads as he has vowed to do.
As such an early and relentless advocate for impeaching Donald Trump, Congresswoman Waters more than deserves the opportunity to gloat over the changing tide of political opinion among the American public.
With the rules of the Senate trial yet to be determined, however, and the articles of impeachment still being held by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) until she’s convinced that the Senate impeachment process will be fair and not just a partisan show trial, Waters may need to tame her expectations that the Democratic successes thus far in helping to push Trump out of the White House will be lead to his removal as quickly and smoothly as she — and the majority of Americans would like it to be.
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