Trump calls Pelosi 'impressive' and wanted to impeach Bush in resurfaced interview
In 2008, the business mogul said: 'Look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant, and they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense. Yet Bush got us into this horrible war with lies'
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Louise Thomas
Editor
Donald Trump believed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should have pushed to remove former president George W Bush from office for getting the US into a "horrible war" with Iraq, a resurfaced interview shows.
Mr Trump's comments during an 18 October 2008 interview with Wolf Blitzer resurfaced after the CNN host posted a clip to Twitter, 11 years later.
In the interview, Mr Trump said he's "very impressed" by Ms Pelosi — who he has since called "crazy" and "nervous Nancy" — but he was surprised that "she didn't do more" to check the former president after revelations that Iraq did not possess so-called weapons of mass destruction and after intelligence officials found no credible links between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.
He said: "I think she's an impressive person. I like her a lot. ... But I was surprised she didn't do more in terms of Bush and going after Bush. It just seemed like she was going to impeach Bush and get him out of office."
The interview appeared on Mr Blitzer's Twitter as the House of Representatives prepared to vote to impeach the president, facing charges of abuses of power and obstruction as Congress sought to investigate how Mr Trump and members of his administration pressured Ukraine to seek information on the president's political rivals.
President Bush "got us into the war with lies" and compared the Bush administration's rationale for invading Iraq with the impeachment hearings for former president Bill Clinton, which Mr Trump called "nonsense".
He said: "Look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant, and they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense. Yet Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying, by saying they had weapons of mass destruction, by saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true."
In 1998, Mr Clinton became the second president to be impeached after allegations he lied under oath and obstructed justice; he was acquitted in the Senate.
On the eve of the impeachment vote, Mr Trump sent Ms Pelosi a rambling, six-page letter accusing her of instigating an "illegal coup", breaking her "allegiance to the Constitution" and "declaring open war on American Democracy".
Ms Pelosi told CNN that the letter is "really sick".
She said: "I don't have a reaction. It's ridiculous.
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