Even before the Democratic Party reclaimed control of the House of Representatives in last November’s election, a frequent question was whether or not the Democrats would pursue impeachment of President Trump.
While two Democratic congressmen, Al Green and Brad Sherman, have introduced articles of impeachment against Trump multiple times since 2017, and Rep. Rashiba Tlaib of Michigan famously declared “impeach the [expletive],” the Democrats have not launched a full-scale impeachment effort. Conventional wisdom states that the Democrats will wait for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, or possibly the outcome of other existing investigations, before going forward with impeachment.
Now, the Democrats’ leader in the House appears to have thrown cold water on the impeachment talk.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a new profile in The Washington Post , declared that she doesn’t support the impeachment of the president, for a surprising reason: he’s not worth the trouble that impeachment would cause.
“I’m not for impeachment,” Pelosi said in the interview, noting that she was making news by saying this to the press for the first time. “But since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this: Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”
Also in the interview, Pelosi says that is always straight in her dealings with the president, and that she has praise for the younger members of her caucus, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib, because she sees herself in them.
“The young women today, though, coming in… the way they balance family and children and home, I’m in awe of them,” she said.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposes impeaching Pres. Trump as too divisive: “He’s just not worth it.” https://t.co/NmZoz7LQJt pic.twitter.com/i15obMEYgL
— ABC News (@ABC) March 11, 2019
Pelosi also discussed the ideologically disparate Democratic Party, her Catholic faith and how it informs her politics, the inside machinations of the government shutdown negotiations, and whether Trump is fit to be president. Her answer?
“Are we talking ethically? Intellectually? Politically? What are we talking here?… All of the above. No. No. I don’t think he is.”
This is Pelosi’s second turn as speaker of the House. She became the first woman to serve as speaker after the Democrats gained control of the chamber in the 2006 midterm elections, and kept the gavel for four years, until the Republicans got the House back in 2010. Pelosi remained minority leader for the ensuing eight years, before becoming speaker again this year.