President Trump on Friday condemned a freshman Democratic congresswoman who profanely said the day before that he should be impeached.
“I thought her comments were disgraceful,” Trump said in the Rose Garden, adding he thought the remarked “dishonored” the country and Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s family.
The newly sworn-in Michigan Democrat, one of the first two Muslim American women elected to Congress, set off a media frenzy after she was recorded at a MoveOn.org rally near Capitol Hill on Thursday night.
{mosads}“When your son looks at you and says, ‘Momma, look, you won. Bullies don’t win.’ And I said, ‘Baby, they don’t.’ Because we’re going to go in there and impeach the motherf—er,” Tlaib said as the crowd erupted into cheering.
The comments came hours after she was sworn in to Congress and follow up on calls for impeachment she made during her campaign.
Several House Democrats said the comments were not helpful and “inappropriate” as the party pushes its agenda on ending a partial government shutdown and a variety of legislative priorities.
“I have never said that in a public setting. The choice of words is inappropriate,” longtime Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), a member of the Oversight and Reform Committee, told The Hill. “We should conduct oversight, which is our responsibility, vigorous oversight, because it’s been lacking the last two years. And I think that we should also wait for special counsel [Robert] Mueller’s report to Congress so we can determine what we need to do.”
“You cannot accomplish very much of anything unless you have civility and show respect for your colleagues. And I think those kind of comments do not take us in the right direction,” agreed House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.).
While Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told MSNBC she “wouldn’t use that language,” she added that she’s “not in the censorship business.”
GOP leaders in Congress also pounced on the comments, saying they were “very foul” and a “test” for Pelosi’s Speakership as she takes the reins presiding over an ideologically diverse caucus.
Tlaib doubled down on her remarks and issued a statement reiterating her call for the president to be impeached.
“Congresswoman Tlaib was elected to shake up Washington, not continue the status quo. Donald Trump is completely unfit to serve as president. The Congresswoman absolutely believes he needs to be impeached. She ran and won by making this very clear to the voters in her district,” her office said.
“I will always speak truth to power. #unapologeticallyMe,” Tlaib said in a tweet.
A number of liberal lawmakers have called for Trump’s impeachment, but Democratic leaders have so far resisted supporting the push to remove him from office.
“Well you can’t impeach somebody that’s doing a great job,” Trump said outside the White House on Friday. “That’s the way I view it. And we even talked about that today. I said, ‘Why don’t you use this for impeachment?’ And Nancy said, ‘We’re not looking to impeach you.’ I said, ‘That’s good, Nancy. That’s good.’ But you know what? You don’t impeach people when they’re doing a good job and you don’t impeach people when there was no collusion.”
—Updated at 3:53 p.m.