Fault lines appear to be opening within the Democratic ranks. This week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler pushed ahead with what he’s calling an “impeachment hearing.”
However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t as enthused.
Nadler’s first witness was former Trump campaign manager Cory Lewandowski. The questioning was anything but smooth, with CNN describing the hearing as having “went off the rails.”
Lewandowski demanded that representatives provide page citations whenever they questioned him about the contents of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. And when asked confrontational questions, he wasn’t afraid to give flippant answers.
At one point, New York’s Hakeem Jeffries demanded to know if Lewandowski was President Trump’s “hitman, the bag man, the lookout, or all of the above?”
“I’m the good looking man”
“I think I’m the good looking man, actually,” the witness replied.
Nadler isn’t the only one in favor of impeaching the president, with so-called “squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) voicing her desire to remove him on a segment of CBS’s Face of the Nation.
“Well, what I have always said was that it wasn’t if we were going to impeach, it is when we were going to impeach,” the freshman representative explained.
She continued, “And I think it is okay for some people to have hesitations, for other people to catch up to where some of us have been for a really long time. And I think with Chairman Nadler, he understands that, you know, we have a constitutional duty and we must exercise that constitutional duty.”
Pelosi isn’t happy
Yet although there may be support for impeachment among the party’s base, that sentiment isn’t shared by the public at large: a Politico/Morning Consult poll found that only thirty-seven percent of voters are in favor of doing so. Those numbers probably explain comments that Politico recently attributed to Pelosi.
Politico reported that during a closed-door meeting last week, Pelosi was critical of the rush to impeachment, blaming committee members and their staff for going beyond what was politically feasible, stressing that Democrats don’t have the votes to move forward.
“And you can feel free to leak this,” she reportedly said.
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