Democracy should not be a partisan issue in the United States — yet, if Donald Trump’s time in office has proven anything, it’s that nothing can be taken for granted. This Thursday, House Democrats formally approved procedures for going forward with their impeachment inquiry, which will soon feature public testimony. Thursday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) discussed the situation on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and the following morning, she shared a key selection on Twitter in which she asserts just how serious their efforts are.
Colbert asked her what her first reaction was to hearing a now widely infamous phone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, quipping that the network could censor them if need be. Trump’s shakedown of Ukraine in an effort to procure dirt on the Bidens drove Democrats to their impeachment inquiry.
Pelosi told Colbert:
‘I prayed for the United States of America. Really, because this is very sad — we don’t want to impeach a president. We don’t want the reality that the president has done something that is in violation of the Constitution.’
In a Twitter caption, she added:
‘Our inquiry into @realDonaldTrump’s betrayal of his oath of office is deadly serious. This isn’t about his personality or his politics. It is about our duty to #DefendOurDemocracy’
Our inquiry into @realDonaldTrump’s betrayal of his oath of office is deadly serious. This isn’t about his personality or his politics. It is about our duty to #DefendOurDemocracy. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/ge7cjZV3pT
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) November 1, 2019
Violating the Constitution is precisely the path that Trump has taken. He’s even been quite explicit in flouting the Constitution. As Pelosi herself noted in recent remarks like a Thursday speech on the House floor, Trump recently brazenly asserted that Article II of the Constitution lets him do “whatever” he wants. Also recently, he claimed the Constitutional clause against presidents accepting gifts from foreign powers while in office was “phony.”
It’s not. The reality of the situation is that Trump has consistently tried to use the power of the presidency for himself, and now he is facing the consequences. Considering the incessant difficulty that Trump and his supporters have had with the facts of the situation, they have relentlessly resorted to attacking the process itself, but that can only take them so far!
Check out Twitter’s response to Pelosi…
