Trump news: President attacks congresswomen for 4th consecutive day, hours after video of him ogling young women with paedophile Epstein revealed
House prepares to vote on impeachment proceedings after rebuking president's racist tweets
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Videos of Donald Trump partying with with billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and making a racist remark about Native Americans before Congress in the 1990s have re-emerged, piling pressure on the embattled president.
Mr Trump had claimed he is “not a fan” of Epstein, having previously described him as a “terrific guy” in an interview with New York magazine, but the pair can be seen laughing, joking and ogling women at a party at the president’s Florida retreat Mar-a-Lago in the footage shot in 1992.
The president remains under fire for the racist tweets he posted on Sunday telling four Democratic congresswomen to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”, with the House of Representatives voting in favour of a resolution condemning his actions on Tuesday evening.
Meanwhile, the House prepared Wednesday to easily derail a maverick Democrat’s drive to the president, an effort that party leaders consider a premature exercise that needlessly forces vulnerable swing-district lawmakers to cast a perilous and divisive vote.
The resolution by Texas Democrat Al Green, which cites Mr Trump’s “racist” comments imploring Democratic congresswomen of colour to go back to their native countries, had no chance of prevailing.
Trump 2020 launch: Fascist Proud Boys, baby blimps and Uncle Sam
Show all 30But even facing certain defeat, the vote risked deepening the already raw rift between liberal Democrats itching to oust Mr Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leaders.
Top Democrats prefer waiting to see if a stronger case for removal can be developed that would win broader public support, and they’re eagerly awaiting next week’s scheduled testimony to two House committees by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Recent polling has shown majorities oppose impeachment. Even if the House voted to impeach Mr Trump, which would amount to filing formal charges, the Republican-run Senate would be unlikely to remove him from office.
Ms Pelosi noted that six House committees are conducting investigations of Mr Trump and said, “That is the serious path we’re on.”
The showdown over Mr Green’s resolution also comes amid tensions between Ms Pelosi and the same four progressive Democratic women who Mr Trump targeted.
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Hello and welcome to The Independent's rolling coverage of the Donald Trump administration.
Donald Trump remains under fire for his racist tweets telling four Democratic congresswomen to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”, with the Republican governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, the latest to break ranks and attack his “shameful, racist, disgraceful” comments and accuse the president of bringing “disgrace to public policy and public life”.
"The president's tweets were shameful, they were racist and... they bring a tremendous amount of, sort of, disgrace to public policy and public life and I condemn them all," said Baker.
The governor appeared to be coming to the defence of Ayanna Pressley specifically, one of the four members of "The Squad" - along with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib - and the first black woman to be elected to the US House from Massachusetts.
Speaking at the quartet's press conference on Monday night, Pressley urged the American public not to "take the bait" of the president's dog whistle racism.
Here's a reminder of the original offending tweets and everything the president has tweeted since as part of the worst self-inflicted crisis he has found himself embroiled in since the last one.
The House of Representatives voted in favour of a resolution condemning Trump’s posts on Tuesday evening, doing so largely along partisan lines with only four Republican members of congress finding the courage to cross the aisle.
The four GOP representatives with principle were: Susan Brooks (Indiana), Brian Fitzpatrick (Pennsylvania), Will Hurd (Texas) and Fred Upton (Michigan). Also backing the measure was Michigan's independent representative Justin Amash, who left the Republican Party earlier this month after becoming the party's sole member of Congress to back a Trump impeachment inquiry.
The vote, passing 240-187, approved a resolution saying “Donald Trump’s racist comments have legitimised fear and hatred of new Americans and people of colour”. It said it “strongly condemned” Trump’s remarks that called for “our fellow Americans who are immigrants, and those who may look to the president like immigrants, should ‘go back’ to other countries”.
The rebuke is an embarrassment for Trump but carries no legal repercussions.
There was high drama at the start of proceedings as Republicans formally objected after speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said during a floor speech that Trump's tweets were "racist." Led by representative Doug Collins of Georgia, Republicans moved to have her words stricken from the record, a rare procedural rebuke.
After a delay exceeding 90 minutes, the No. 2 House Democrat Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Pelosi had indeed violated a House rule against characterising an action as racist. Hoyer was presiding after representative Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri stormed away from the presiding officer's chair, lamenting, "We want to just fight," apparently aimed at Republicans. Even so, Democrats flexed their muscle and the House voted afterward by party line to leave Pelosi's words intact in the record.
The resolution was ultimately passed and Democrats saved one of the day's most passionate moments until near the end. "I know racism when I see it," said Representative John Lewis of Georgia, whose skull was fractured at the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" civil rights march in Selma, Alabama. "At the highest level of government, there's no room for racism."
“Quite a day!” the president reacted afterwards on Twitter.
Here's Andrew Buncombe's report.
The issue continues to dominate Washington, with 2020 Democratic presidential challengers Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders all issuing strong statements yesterday.
The Republicans, however, have dodged more bullets than Neo from The Matrix, attempting to bat away any suggestion the tweets are racist and turn the attack back towards The Squad by accusing them of everything from socialism to fascism.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell's hypocrisy has been especially noticeable throughout this unsavoury episode...
...And has drawn the ire of AOC.
President Trump - who badly needs to move on from this - yesterday took questions from reporters after a cabinet meeting at the White House and attempted to steer the conversation back towards the migrant crisis at the border ahead of his latest 2020 campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, this evening.
He couldn't avoid the issue entirely, of course.
One Republican not helping by wading into the debate is White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway - fresh from ignoring a House Judiciary Committee subpoena - who decided it was a good time to question the ethnicity of reporter Andrew Feinberg of BeltwayBreakfast.com.
She also appeared on Fox's American Newsroom to call The Squad representative of a “dark underbelly in this country” and to make the wild accusation that some of them are “palling around with terrorists” (apparently a reference to Rashida Tlaib being photographed with Abbas Hamideh, a Palestinian activist who backs Hezbollah).
"We are tired - we’re sick and tired of many people in this country. Forget these four," she told Bill Hemmer.
"They represent a dark underbelly in this country of people who are not respecting our troops, are not giving them the resources and respect that they deserve. They voted against the military aid."
Here's Lily Puckett's report.
This was another great moment from the House floor yesterday courtesy of former presidential candidate Eric Swalwell, provoking the anger of Georgia Republican Doug Collins.
If you're wandering how Fox is coping with all of this, the answer is: not well.
Louisiana senator John Kennedy here likens The Squad to "the four horsewomen of the apocalypse" and states his right to call them "wack jobs".
Trump’s administration is planning to divert $42m (£33.9m) in humanitarian aid intended for Guatemala and Honduras to support the US-backed opposition in Venezuela instead, according to The Los Angeles Times.
The Central American nations are embroiled in a migration crisis in which thousands of people have fled poverty, violence and corruption, crossing Mexico in the hope of finding a better life in the US, only to find themselves running up against Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policies of family separation and squalid detention centres at the border.
The money will instead be used for salaries, airfare, propaganda, technical assistance for elections and “good governance” training for Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido and his faction, who have challenged embattled incumbent Nicolas Maduro for the presidency.
Here's more from Henry Austin.
The authorities in Washington have been urged to step up protections for Congresswomen Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley and Tlaib in response to the Trumpster's racist tweets.
Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has asked the Capitol police board to change the way it assesses the risk of violence directed at politicians in the wake of the tweets.
Officials should institute “thresholds for enhanced security for certain targeted members, and evaluate threat streams with law enforcement partners in member districts”, he said in a letter seen by The Independent.
“Being proactive in this instance is vital to the safety of not only these targeted members, but all members of Congress”, he said, adding that Mr Trump’s tweets “should not be taken lightly” and could precipitate assaults on politicians.
Here's Jon Sharman's report.
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