Rep. Norma Torres (D-CA) argued at the House Rules Committee on Tuesday afternoon that President Donald Trump should be impeached, among other reasons, for his famous joke about shooting someone on 5th Avenue.
She declared that Trump was becoming an autocrat, such as those in Central America, and Congress therefore had a duty to stop him.
“Now, President Trump famously said that he could shoot someone dead in the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York City and he would get away with it. What mindset do you have to be in to say this out loud on national TV, and to believe that?” Torres asked. “Well, anyone that turns a blind eye to behavior like this is providing him that right.”
Trump’s original comment was made when he was a candidate, not president. He said it during a campaign rally in Iowa in January 2016, and was expressing his wonder at the loyalty of his supporters — not expressing an actual desire to shoot anyone, much less describing his anticipated constitutional authority as president.
Even Snopes, the left-leaning “fact-checking” website, felt compelled to throw cold water on misquotes of Trump:
It’s true that Trump made the “shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue” remark widely attributed to him across standard and social media sites. However, the (somewhat clumsy and crass) comment also generally appeared absent of its broader context, which pertained to the loyalty of his followers, and not an actual desire, intent, or interest in shooting any individuals for the sole reason that he believed it would have no effect on his popularity.
Torres went on to lament the fact that Republicans had canceled several primary votes in the 2020 presidential election cycle, saying that Republicans were “locked in step” behind him.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) has made similar arguments, saying over the weekend that impeachment was “not a punishment for past behavior,” but to prevent future misconduct by the president.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.