President Donald Trump raised eyebrows Wednesday when he told reporters he “could’ve done very bad things” to Hillary Clinton and former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
Trump made the off-the-wall claim during an Oval Office announcement touting his “Trump Accounts” for children after returning to Washington, D.C. from a series of campaign events across the country ahead of the midterms. The top Democratic figures are often targets of Trump’s tirades.
At the event, a reporter asked the president about his previous claim that Democrats would impeach him if they gained control of Congress in November.
“For what?” the reporter asked.
“They don’t know,” Trump said, before he pivoted to attacking his 2016 rival Clinton and his Democratic predecessors in the White House.
“I could've done very bad things to Hillary Clinton,” Trump began. “I could've done very, very bad things to Joe Biden. I could've done very bad things to Barack Hussein Obama. I …thought it was inappropriate to do so because you have to treat the office of the presidency with respect.
“Then I found out that they impeached me twice and I certainly, to this moment, I can do whatever I want, if I want,” the president continued. “They’ve done some very bad things.”
“I’ve had plenty of people say, Let’s go get them.’ And I said no, you can’t do that to the presidency,” Trump added.
Trump was impeached twice during his first presidency, but was not removed from office by the Senate. Neither Clinton, Obama nor Biden had any hand in those actions, and the Constitution only empowers Congress with such power to impeach.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has warned that Democrats are “raring to go” and impeach Trump if they reclaim the House in November — which also serves as a rallying cry for him and his party as they face a tough road ahead in the midterms.
“It’s guaranteed, probably on the first day – first or second day,” Johnson told conservative commentator and CNN contributor Scott Jennings this week. “Remember, they’ve already filed articles of impeachment in this Congress.”
A handful of Democrats have floated impeachment should they win back the House in November, but others in the party have dialed down talk of the idea.
“This is something, oftentimes, I think the right-wing media wants us to talk about,” said California Rep. Pete Aguilar, chair of the House Democratic Caucus. “But it’s not anything that is top of the agenda for House Democrats.”
Last month, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that Democrats “haven’t ruled anything out” but also added, “we haven’t ruled anything in.”
Illinois Rep. Brad Schneider, the chairman of the New Democrat Coalition, said earlier this year that “we've already seen twice unless you're going to get a two-thirds majority in the Senate ... the president will not be removed from office.”
