‘Thanks Tom!’ Republicans mock Tom Steyer at debate for his longtime impeachment support
Tom Steyer has long championed the impeachment of President Donald Trump, a fact that Republicans leaped on during the Thursday night Democratic 2020 presidential primary debate.
Steyer made it a point to say that he has been supporting the cause of impeachment for two years, spending tens of millions of dollars on his “Need to Impeach” campaign.
That’s well before the July phone call between Trump and the president of Ukraine that led to the president’s current impeachment charges.
“Tom Steyer just bragged that he started the movement to impeach Trump more than two years ago. So it was DEFINITELY the Ukraine call (revealed a couple months ago) that was the reason for Trump’s impeachment,” conservative author and commentator Ann Coulter wrote on Twitter.
Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh echoed that sentiment.
“Tom Steyer very helpfully just reminded everyone that there’s been a Democrat effort to impeach President Trump for years - WAY before that phone call with the president of Ukraine. It was always an impeachment in search of a reason. Thanks, Tom!” Murtaugh wrote.
Steyer was ahead of the Democratic Party when he began paying for ads promoting impeachment in 2017 and toured the country to advocate for removing Trump from office.
He preceded many elected Democrats in his support for impeachment, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who once called impeachment a “gift to the Republicans.”
Pelosi opened an impeachment inquiry into Trump in September, in response to a whistleblower complaint alleging that Trump sought to withhold military support from Ukraine until the president of that country announced the opening of an investigation into the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, who is running against Trump.
The inquiry ended this week, when the House of Representatives on mostly partly-line votes impeached Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
