Nancy Pelosi on Trump and the power of the gavel: 'He'll be impeached for ever'
Trump heads
to Florida for the holidays as Senate adjourned until January without agreeing
to impeachment trial procedures
Associated
Press
Sat 21 Dec
2019 01.49 GMT
Nancy
Pelosi has left her mark as House speaker: pushing through a trade agreement,
passing a plan to lower prescription drug costs and impeaching the president.
Nancy
Pelosi promised as speaker she would “show the power of the gavel”. This year,
she laid it out for all to see.
The past
week alone, the Democratic leader delivered a $1.4tn government funding package
to stop a shutdown, pushed through the bipartisan US-Mexico-Canada trade
agreement, and passed her party’s plan to lower prescription drug costs. In
between, she led a congressional delegation to Europe for the 75th anniversary
of the Battle of the Bulge.
And on
Wednesday, she impeached the president.
As the
first year of Pelosi’s second stint as speaker draws to a close – she is the
only woman to hold the office, and the first speaker in 60 years to reclaim the
gavel after losing it – the California Democrat took stock of whether she
fulfilled her campaign trail promise.
“Donald
Trump thinks so,” Pelosi told the Associated Press during an interview Thursday
at her office in the Capitol.
“He just
got impeached. He’ll be impeached for ever. No matter what the Senate does.
He’s impeached for ever because he violated our constitution,” she said.
“If I did
nothing else, he saw the power of the gavel there,” Pelosi told the AP. “And it
wasn’t me, it was all of our members making their own decision.”
Not since
an earlier era of leaders – like Sam Rayburn, whose name is on a building at
the Capitol, or Newt Gingrich, who defined a political movement – has the House
speaker wielded such influence.
“She has
governed with force and authority,” said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history
and public policy at Princeton.
Zelizer
said Pelosi has accomplished with Trump what others have not, which is to build
a coalition strong enough to hold the president accountable, through
impeachment, while also muscling through big bills. This, on top of what she
did during her first term in the office.
“She is
likely to go down in history as one of the most effective speakers,” he said.
Donald
Trump, meanwhile, escaped the chill of Washington and his impeachment on Friday
to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s in sunny Florida with family and friends.
One thing
he isn’t celebrating is the delay in his Senate impeachment trial. It’s got him
“mad as hell”, according to one ally.
The Senate
adjourned until January with the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and
Democratic leader Chuck Schumer unable to agree on trial procedure. Pelosi has
said she wants to know how the trial will be handled before she sends two
House-passed articles of impeachment against Trump to the Senate.
Trump, who
was due to arrive at his private Palm Beach resort late Friday, has been
looking forward to a trial in the friendlier Republican-controlled Senate and
is riled up about the delay, according to Senator Lindsey Graham.
“He’s mad
as hell that they would do this to him and now deny him his day in court,”
Graham told Fox News Channel after meeting with Trump at the White House on
Thursday night.
McConnell
has all but promised an easy acquittal of the president. He appears to have
united Republicans behind an approach that would begin the trial with
presentations and arguments, lasting perhaps two weeks, before he tries drawing
the proceedings to a close. The Senate will reconvene 3 January.
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