Trump Rails Against Articles Of Impeachment Within Minutes Of Announcement

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 05: U.S. President Donald Trump (R) and Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney (L) listen to comments during a luncheon with representatives of the United Nations Security Council, in the Cabin... WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 05: U.S. President Donald Trump (R) and Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney (L) listen to comments during a luncheon with representatives of the United Nations Security Council, in the Cabinet Room at the White House on December 5, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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President Trump and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney jumped at the chance to disparage House Democrats’ announcement Tuesday of two articles of impeachment.

In a series of tweets posted within minutes of the announcement, Trump took aim at House Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA). The President also reprised his argument from last week that when he said in his now-infamous call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that “I would like you to do US a favor,” the word “us” referred to the United States.

Trump’s tweets came on the heels of Mulvaney’s live question-and-answer session with the Wall Street Journal Tuesday morning. Mulvaney called the articles “very specific” and that “they should surprise nobody” because “that’s what this was going to be from the beginning anyway.”

The embattled acting chief of staff then argued that impeachment “is a political process, not a legal process” nor is it “judicial.”

However, when asked whether he would be open to testifying in the impeachment proceedings, Mulvaney responded that “part of me really wants to” but that it depends on what Trump “wants us to do,” according to CNN.

In a segment of the interview aired on CNN, Mulvaney said that the point he was trying to make during his disastrous press conference in October when he admitted quid pro quo was that “politics can and should influence foreign policy.”

“You may have one foreign policy you’re running on, I may have a different one. Whoever wins gets to set that foreign policy,” Mulvaney said. “That was the point I was trying to make in that, in that press conference, was that politics can and should influence foreign policy and hopefully always will.”

When asked about “stopping short of getting another country to investigate your political rival,” Mulvaney refused “to go into the facts” and insisted that he was “not going to talk about the facts until the President tells me.”

Watch Mulvaney’s remarks below:

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