Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump has pushed back dramatically against the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry, claiming a “coup” was “taking place” to take away the people’s power.
“As I learn more and more each day, I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the… People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of The United States of America!” the president tweeted Tuesday evening.
“We’re trying to find out about a whistleblower,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Monday. He claimed the whistleblower reported “things that were incorrect” about his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, even though the complaint largely tracked with the contents of a rough transcript subsequently released by the White House.
In other tweets Tuesday he said, “So if the so-called ‘Whistleblower’ has all second hand information, and almost everything he has said about my ‘perfect’ call with the Ukrainian President is wrong (much to the embarrassment of Pelosi & Schiff), why aren’t we entitled to interview & learn everything about …. the Whistleblower, and also the person who gave all of the false information to him.”
The president has also repeatedly claimed the whistleblower was a political partisan. While the intelligence community’s inspector general did find that there were some indications the whistleblower had “arguable political bias… in favor of a rival candidate,” the inspector general also said that the revelation did not change his assessment that the complaint appeared credible.
As Trump keeps hitting the whistleblower — who enjoys legal protection under whistleblower laws and wants to remain anonymous — Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, defended the person, whose identity has not been made public.
“No one should be making judgments or pronouncements without hearing from the whistleblower first and carefully following up on the facts. Uninformed speculation wielded by politicians or media commentators as a partisan weapon is counterproductive and doesn’t serve the country,” Grassley said in a statement.
Trump’s rhetoric has rapidly escalated as Democrats in the House push forward with their inquiry.
On Sunday, he tweeted paraphrasing Pastor Robert Jeffress, a conservative commentator speaking on Fox and Friends, saying, “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.”
His invocation of a possible “Civil War” drew fierce blowback from Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who tweeted: “I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. @realDonaldTrump I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant.”
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