In a wild interview with Boston Public Radio, freshman Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) lambasted President Donald Trump and called for his immediate impeachment from office–while also ripping the president over the crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico and attacking federal law enforcement agencies.
Back in September, Pressley said she would “do whatever we can” to impeach Trump and remove him from office, the local public radio outlet noted, and now she feels the same way as she eagerly anticipates Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. But, she added without knowing what’s in Mueller’s forthcoming report, Trump has “lost all moral authority” to lead the United States of America.
“As I’ve said, impeachment has always been on the table and should be on the table,” Pressley said. “The occupant of the White House … has lost all moral authority and the high ground, and certainly it appears there could be evidence of obstruction of justice and other things, but I can’t substantiate until I see this report.”
Pressley said too that she views President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency in order to build the border wall as a “fake emergency,” and that she and her colleagues in Congress would do everything they can to stop him.
“We’re going to leverage every legislative tool and legal avenue available to us to obstruct this declaration of what we consider to be a fake emergency,” Pressley said. “It is a complete overreach and abuse of authority, and I think it’s a diversionary tactic from the real emergency. I sit on financial services and oversight. We held the first hearing on homelessness — that is a national emergency.”
Pressley, who voted against the spending bill last week that kept government open through the rest of the fiscal year and served as the predicate for Trump’s national emergency declaration, said she did so because she views Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as “rogue” federal law enforcement agencies, echoing a line first popularized by her fellow freshman Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) that they want to “abolish ICE.”
“I have tremendous respect for my colleagues. I’m proud to be a Democrat, and honored to be serving in Congress at a time when the country is at a crossroads,” Pressley said. “I had to put a marker down early that if we were going to increase funding for ICE or the CBP, then I couldn’t support it. … I think the best predictor of the future is the past, and these are agencies that have proven themselves to be rogue.”
She also, per Boston Public Radio, compared the new freshman class to the “Watergate babies” who were elected in the immediate aftermath of the Watergate scandal that took down President Richard Nixon:
Partisan gridlock and growing political partisanship might not make for the most welcoming atmosphere in Washington, but Pressley says that she’s excited and optimistic for the freshman class of the 116th Congress. She compared them to the “Watergate Babies,” the freshman class of lawmakers who came into Congress following the Watergate scandal, on a platform of rooting out corruption.
Pressley’s comments, as well as several actions of her other freshman colleagues, undercut a message of optimism that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi struck when she retook the Speaker’s gavel at the beginning of the year:
“When our new members take the oath, our Congress will be refreshed and our democracy will be strengthened by the optimism, idealism and patriotism of this transformative freshmen class,” @SpeakerPelosi says https://t.co/J1V4WOeTUe pic.twitter.com/OqC1SSR6FN
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 3, 2019
Pressley, interestingly, has until now been quieter than her fellow controversial freshman representatives in the boisterous new Democrat majority in the House. Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), for a variety of different reasons, have dominated the headlines until now.
But Pressley coming forward with a strong push for impeachment of Trump in this Boston Public Radio interview, and strongly backing the rhetoric of the hard socialist left that ICE and CBP are somehow “rogue” agencies because they enforce federal immigration laws, as well as her backing up the Green New Deal, put her now in the headlines with her fellow new radical Democrats. Pressley wrapped all of this in an argument that Trump is unfit to continue serving as commander-in-chief.
Tlaib and Omar have garnered headlines in recent weeks for anti-Semitic views they have espoused over the years, while Ocasi0-Cortez’s policy views on environmentalism–the Green New Deal she introduced would end the American automotive industry by eliminating the internal combustion engine and would significantly harm airline travel among other radical components–has captivated the Democrat Party, as almost every Democrat running for president in 2020 has endorsed it.
Pressley, though, has stayed mostly quiet and out of the limelight in her first month or so in the House. Now, though, that changes with this interview, which goes right up against the president. It also comes on the heels of a report from the Boston Herald that Pressley’s husband owed the feds more than $17,000 in back taxes–which he paid this week.
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