Donald Trump merits impeachment
At the Washington source told that the Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke, who is challenging Sen. Ted Cruz, told to news on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s performance at a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin merits impeachment.
And he blasted Cruz for failing to denounce Trump, who shocked U.S. intelligence and law enforcement by taking the former KGB spy chief’s word that Russia did not meddle in the 2016 election.
Last week, the Justice Department issued indictments against a dozen Russian military intelligence officers for doing just that.
The Cruz campaign shot back by asserting that O’Rourke’s stance on impeachment makes him “so radical and reckless that he is unfit to serve in the U.S. Senate.”
“Standing on stage in another country with the leader of another country who wants to and has sought to undermine this country, and to side with him over the United States — if I were asked to vote on this I would vote to impeach the president,” O’Rourke, a three-term congressman from El Paso, said in response to a question from The Dallas Morning News. “Impeachment, much like an indictment, shows that there is enough there for the case to proceed and at this point there is certainly enough there for the case to proceed.”
Trump’s stance at the Helsinki summit on Monday left Democrats and many Republicans appalled. Presidents always hang over midterm elections but the eruption of dismay over the summit took that to a new level.
The GOP’s last two presidential nominees before Trump, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Mitt Romney, who is expected to win a Senate seat from Utah in the fall, both called Trump’s behavior at the summit “disgraceful.”
On Tuesday, Cruz called Trump’s comments with Putin a “mistake.” But he said Trump critics have gone too far in labeling his actions treason. “It wasn’t treason when Barack Obama refused to stand up to our enemies … and it wasn’t treason when President Trump stood at a podium and failed to condemn Russian aggression and interference in our election,” he said, according to the Texas Tribune.
On the stump, Cruz has warned voters that Democrats would impeach Trump if they wrest control of Congress in November’s midterm elections. On Monday night, Cruz told a CNN reporter that “we need to be acting vigorously to prevent Russian aggression. And I think it’s a mistake to be apologizing for Vladimir Putin.”
That response was not good enough, said O’Rourke.
“I heard him talk about Russia but I did not hear him say a word about the president’s conduct,” he said.
The uproar stemmed from Trump’s answer at a news conference with Putin. Asked whether he believes U.S. officials or Putin’s denial regarding allegations of Russian cyberattacks in the 2016 elections, Trump said that while his own director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, pointed to Russia, “Putin says it’s not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
Trump said Tuesday that he had misspokenand meant to say: “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be.”
O’Rourke collected an award for civility in politics on Tuesday morning and spoke with a handful of Texas reporters afterward. His co-honoree, Rep. Will Hurd, a San Antonio-area Republican, has been one of the most outspoken critics of Trump’s handling of the summit.
Cruz mocked O’Rourke via Twitter, calling the civility award and support for impeachment an example of irony “amidst far-Left fury.”
Hurd, a former undercover CIA officer, called the Trump-Putin news conference an exercise in “disinformation.” He said Trump was “getting played.” And he said that “there is nothing about agreeing with a thug like Putin that puts America First.”
The meeting between President Putin and myself was a great success, except in the Fake News Media!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 18, 2018
