New York: Fifty-eight floors above Manhattan, President Donald Trump watched his legacy change and his political future grow more uncertain.
The president, back in his hometown here for the UN General Assembly, was taking ‘executive time’ at his Trump Tower penthouse late Tuesday afternoon when Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House was launching a formal impeachment inquiry against him.
Nancy Pelosi’s move increases the odds that Trump will become the third US president to be impeached. It was a step more than 2½ years in the making and one that moves the president farther down the path of self-styled political martyrdom.
The product of Donald Trump’s norm-breaking presidency and Democrats’ lingering anger over the outcome of the 2016 elections, the impeachment inquiry has largely been welcomed by the Republican president’s advisers, who believe it could backfire against Democrats.
The president himself said the move could help his electoral chances, but he reacted in the moment with a cascade of angry tweets that accused Democrats of engaging in ‘a witch hunt’ and ‘presidential harassment’.
“They’re going to lose the election, and they figure this is a thing to do,” Trump told reporters. Speaking of Pelosi, he added, “If she does that, they all say that’s a positive for me, for the election. You could also say, ‘Who needs it? It’s bad for the country’.”
The revelations revolve in part around a July 25 phone call the US President had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump is said to have asked for help investigating Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
In the days before the call, Trump ordered advisers to freeze USD 400 million in military aid for Ukraine, prompting speculation that he was holding up the money as leverage for information on the Bidens. Trump has denied that charge but acknowledged he blocked the funds.
Frustrated by the rapid pace of developments and how they have overshadowed his time at the United Nations, Donald Trump said he believed this was the Democrats trying to get a ‘do-over’ after failing to take him down with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
AP