Trump Encourages Republicans to Fight Impeachment
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We ran the numbers: There are 1431 news articles covering this topic. 45% (637) are left leaning, 38% (546) center, 17% (248) right leaning.
In a Monday cabinet meeting, President Trump said that Republicans must “get tougher and fight” Democrats’ impeachment inquiry against him. Right-leaning articles on Trump’s comments tend to focus on Trump’s criticism of specific Republicans and their reactions, while left-leaning articles consider the future of the impeachment inquiry and centrist articles examine other leaders’ reactions to Trump’s continuing recalcitrance.
A right-leaning New York Post article recounts Trump’s remarks, in which he called members of his party “lousy politicians” and accused Senator Mitt Romney of disloyalty. The article reports, “While Trump slammed Romney for his disloyalty, he praised Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), who defended the president on his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that sparked the inquiry.” Trump’s criticism of Romney was prompted by a revelation on Monday that Romney used a private Twitter account and a screenname to criticize the president online.
A left-leaning New York Times article focuses on the reactions of Americans to the impeachment proceedings, noting that while support for impeachment is growing overall, Republicans remain almost unanimously opposed. The survey, released on Monday, did reveal that non-Republican white working-class voters who once supported Trump are beginning to defect from him; in particular, this trend is driven by white working-class women. However, 94 percent of Republicans said that Trump should not be impeached.
A centrist article from NPR reports on Trump’s comments and notes that Romney is one of the few Republican senators to say that they are open to a vote to remove Trump from office. According to the article, Romney has said that other Republican senators do have reservations about Trump’s competence, but are unwilling to risk the political repercussions of speaking out. Surprisingly, Trump loyalist Senator Lindsey Graham has joined Romney, saying that he would not rule out voting against Trump in an impeachment trial if more evidence of wrongdoing should emerge.