US President Donald Trump on Thursday organised a “celebration” at the White House over his Senate acquittal in his impeachment trial with a vengeful speech in which he reviewed the attacks against him over the past few years.
Trump repeated his longstanding criticisms of the impeachment, calling it a “witch hunt” launched and conducted by “bad people”, “dirty cops” and “liars” whose only goal was to remove him from office and supposedly “overturn” the results of the 2016 election.
“Nancy Pelosi is a horrible person,” Trump said, referring to the Democratic speaker of the House who launched impeachment proceedings against him last December after an intelligence agency whistleblower filed a complaint against him for exerting improper pressure on Ukraine.
“(Democrats) are vicious people,” he said.
Trump also singled out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – who was sitting in the front row in the East Room of the White House, where Trump spoke and was welcomed with a standing ovation by dozens of supporters, including specially invited Republican lawmakers, who were gathered there, saying: “Mitch McConnell, I want to tell you, you did a fantastic job.”
On Wednesday, the Senate voted to acquit President Donald Trump on two articles of impeachment and marked the inevitable and historic end to a bitterly fought, divisive impeachment trial that will reverberate into the 2020 election and shape Trump’s presidential legacy.
The acquittal verdict was the final act of a four-month impeachment process that inflamed the partisan tensions simmering throughout the course of the Trump administration, the friction that boiled over during the State of the Union even though Trump left impeachment out of his speech.
Earlier on Wednesday, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi denounced the Senate’s acquittal of President Donald Trump on Wednesday, saying he remains “an ongoing threat to American democracy.”
Ukraine’s former president had said that he discussed investments with President Donald Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in 2017, but that he never discussed Ukrainian companies with any US official.
On December 18, President Trump was formally impeached in a historic vote in the House of Representatives.
Adam Schiff, who led the House investigation, said the fact that it came after Mueller’s investigation showed that Trump’s 2016 campaign had actively sought help from Russia forced Democrats to act.
Earlier on Thursday, Trump attended the National Prayer Breakfast, where he attacked his political rivals and claimed that they had inappropriately invoked “their faith as justification” for their decisions to vote to remove him from office.
It appeared that Trump was referring to Pelosi and Romney, who both have said that their faith guided them to the decision on why Trump needed to be impeached.
“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong,” Trump said.
(With inputs from inputs )