President Donald Trump celebrated Tuesday House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to finally move forward on the USMCA trade deal, calling it a “silver lining” to the impeachment process.
“I call that the silver lining to impeachment because without impeachment they would have never approved it, in my opinion,” Trump said. “Impeachment is the reason they approved it.”
The president commented as he left the White House for a campaign rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
He said he viewed impeachment as almost a necessary step for Democrats in order to move forward on approving the USMCA, which the administration has been pressing the Speaker to call a vote on for a year.
“They were very embarrassed by it and that’s why they brought up USMCA an hour after, because they figured it might muffle it a little bit,” Trump said.
He noted that the two announcements were made by Pelosi to hide the weak case for impeachment.
“They put up two articles that frankly are very weak, and they’re very weak,” Trump said.
The president again repeated that there was nothing wrong with what he did in regards to aid for Ukraine and his scrutinized phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“I think it’s a disgrace that people can make impeachment out of nothing,” Trump said.
He cited analysis from conservative talk radio host Mark Levin of his call with Zelensky to make his case.
“There’s nothing to impeach on, it’s an absolute disgrace,” he said.
Trump cited fantastic economic numbers and recent swing-state polling from Firehouse Strategies poll showing that the president was beating all of the 2020 Democrat candidates.
“We have the best numbers that we’ve ever had in our country,” Trump said. “We’re the hottest country in the world, I think that has a lot to do with it.”
Trump appeared almost relieved by the reception the impeachment announcement got, describing the Democrat case as “very weak.”
Earlier in the day, the White House Press Secretary said that the White House was surprised that Democrats only drew up two articles of impeachment when reports had hinted that they were prepared to go after the president with all they had.
“We were anticipating certainly that they would come forth with articles of impeachment, but we thought actually that it was going to be four or five,” she said in an interview on Fox News, adding that “It’s two articles of impeachment that are the very lowest threshold that you’ve got.”