President Trump is concerned he will face impeachment if Republicans lose their House majority, he said Saturday night at a rally in Michigan.
“We have to keep the House,” he said. “Because if you listen to Maxine Waters, she goes around saying, ‘We will impeach him! We will impeach him,’” he said, referring to the Democratic congresswoman from California. “Then people said, ‘He hasn’t done anything wrong,’…’Oh, that doesn’t matter, we will impeach the president.’”
Trump noted that the party in the White House usually loses seats during the midterms and called for Republicans not to get comfortable.
“We cannot be complacent — we gotta go out and we gotta fight like hell and we gotta win the House and we gotta win the Senate,” he said.
Waters, whom Trump singled out, has repeatedly called for Trump to resign or be impeached. Most recently, last Tuesday, she was asked at the Time 100 gala if she had any advice for Trump.
“Please resign so that I won’t have to keep up this fight of your having to be impeached because I don’t think you deserve to be there,” she said. “Just get out.”
Congresswoman Maxine Waters has a message for President Trump: "Please resign" #TIME100 https://t.co/q64Fgsbala pic.twitter.com/OdjeOVTBwS
— TIME (@TIME) April 25, 2018
On Monday on MSNBC, Waters said she often hears from people around the country saying they support impeachment.
“Everywhere I go, people are talking about, ‘Why can’t y’all get rid of him? Why can’t you impeach him?’” Waters said. “They say all of these things and I’m not just talking about my district — whether I’m on the airplane, I’m walking down the street in New York, wherever I am — I’m hearing it.”
And Waters is onto something: A poll released last Thursday found that if Democrats take back the House, more than 70 percent of Democratic voters want them to take steps to begin impeachment proceedings.
But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has been less keen to call for impeachment, saying she believes it would harm Democrats ahead of the midterm elections, and calling the push for impeachment a “gift” for Republicans.