The Democrats have an answer for President Trump, who canceled a trip abroad as high-ranking Democrats were on their way to the airport on Thursday. Democrats say if Trump doesn’t resign from office, they are prepared to impeach him.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) called for President Trump to resign from office after a bombshell Wall Street Journal report revealed the President may have directed his former consigliere Michael Cohen to pay a tech firm to rig polls in his favor.
Buzzfeed.com published an article accusing Trump of instructing Cohen to lie to Congress about his efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow prior to the 2016 elections.
“If the @BuzzFeed story is true, President Trump must resign or be impeached,” tweeted Castro, a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Castro was among the high-ranking lawmakers on a bus with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that was headed to the airport when the Pentagon phoned the driver to tell him to turn the bus around.
Also on the bus was Adam Schiff, who heads the House Intelligence Committee, and about two dozen other Democratic lawmakers.
The Dems sat fuming as the bus circled the Capitol building several times before stopping in front of the building to let the passengers off.
In a letter to Pelosi on Thursday, Trump said it was inappropriate for her to travel overseas on the taxpayers’ dime when 800,000 government workers were furloughed. He said she should stay in Washington to meet with him and negotiate the end of the partial government shutdown.
Trump ordered a partial government shutdown on Dec. 22, amid a dispute with Democratic senators over funding for the border wall. The shutdown is now the longest in US history with no end in sight.
Senate aides on Capitol Hill say only a full government shutdown will force Trump to end the standstill. But a full shutdown would be disastrous for the country.
“This is all pageantry,” said a Democratic House aide of the stalemate between Trump and Congress. “It’s going to take a big national event to move things. I mean we’re at a standstill.
One senior Republican Senate staffer told The Atlantic he could envision the shutdown lasting well into March, when federal funding for food stamps dry up.
“Not only are there going to be a lot of hungry families, but there are going to be a lot of Walmarts and Safeways and Krogers that are missing revenue,” he said.
The Senate staffer was referring to large grocery chains that accept food stamps from the majority of food stamp recipients.
Photos by Win McNamee/Getty Images
