President Trump called Democratic efforts to impeach him a “disgrace,” saying the insult had only revved up his core supporters and would help him win reelection in 2020.
“It’s energized my base like I’ve never seen before,” Trump said on Thursday during an 80-minute interview with Washington Examiner reporters and editors just hours after the House voted to formalize impeachment proceedings.
The president said the impeachment proceedings are a personal insult that would unfairly mark his administration, and he insisted voters would agree with him.
“I think [impeachment is] a very dirty word, it’s a word that I can’t believe that the do-nothing Democrats are trying to pin on me, and it’s a disgrace. And I think it’s going to backfire on them,” he said from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, with a small stack of press clippings in front of him and a glass of diet soda on ice to his right.
“I did nothing wrong, and for them to do this is a disgrace,” he said. “To me, the word impeachment’s a very ugly word.”
Trump claimed the Democrat-driven process is being rejected in key battleground states and that he was continuing to poll well nationally.
“My poll numbers are very good. You know, they always like to talk about my poll numbers — you know they’re very good,” he said.
The polling on impeachment is more complicated than Trump suggests, and so are his personal numbers.
Support for the impeachment process across all publicly available polls initially rose to a slight majority but has declined slightly over the past three weeks to a plurality of 48.1%, according to FiveThirtyEight. The president’s job approval numbers, meanwhile, have remained steady and are currently averaging just under 43%, according to RealClearPolitics.
[ALSO FROM THE INTERVIEW: ‘Fireside chat on live television’: Trump says he wants to read Ukraine call transcript to American people.]
But among Republican voters, Trump receives historically high marks, solidifying his hold on the GOP even amid allegations he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a phone call to investigate political rival Joe Biden and Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election and threatened to withhold U.S. military aid if he refused. Those charges are at the center of the impeachment proceedings.
Party unity, with voters and on Capitol Hill, where House Republicans voted unanimously against the resolution Thursday establishing impeachment procedures, is buoying Trump. Republican insiders who are hand-wringing about the toll impeachment could take on his second term prospects need not worry, the president said.
“My base is much bigger than people think,” Trump said. “But I think I go way beyond my base.”
Trump’s winning coalition in 2016 included more than just his loyal, white, working-class base, many of whom had traditionally voted for Democrats. Even establishment-oriented Republicans who were skeptical of the real estate developer and reality television star also supported him — and were crucial to his success.
The president is running for reelection with a strong economy and having just ordered the military operation that hunted down and killed Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the elusive leader of the Islamic State.
“In 2016, it was talk, but now I’ve done it,” he said. “I’ve got the strongest economy in the history of a presidential run by far. We’ve got a powerful military, the most powerful we’ve ever had, relatively speaking, and it’s been rebuilt. The best job numbers that we’ve ever had … I’ve done a great job.”
