With the end of his presidency looming, Donald Trump traveled to South Texas Tuesday afternoon (Jan. 12) to tout what he considers his accomplishments on immigration, including 453 miles of new “border wall system,” which has, so far, cost U.S. taxpayers, not Mexico, $15 billion.
Along with the false claims Trump made about the border during his stop in the Rio Grande Valley, he also rambled through his prepared speech that covered everything from the COVID-19 vaccine to “asylum fraud” to “gravy trains.”
This was Trump’s first public appearance since Jan. 6 when he incited an insurrection that saw his supporters storm the U.S. Capitol to stop the confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral votes. When asked about the words he delivered to his base the morning of the attack on the Capitol building, Trump, as usual, took no responsibility for his actions.
“People thought that what I said was totally appropriate,” he said.
How far that statement was from the truth was revealed Tuesday evening when Trump returned to the White House and word started coming in that some House Republicans would vote to impeach him today (Jan. 13). This includes Rep. Liz Cheney, chair of the House Republican Conference.
“The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack,” Cheney said in a statement. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
As of late Tuesday night, the other House Republicans who have officially said they would vote in favor of impeaching Trump today are Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Rep. John Katko, Rep. Fred Upton and Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler.
More House Republicans are expected to join in and vote for impeachment, but even without more support, House Democrats will have enough votes to make Trump the only president in U.S. history to be impeached twice. Whether the Senate votes to convict Trump is still unknown, but reports say that Senator Mitch McConnell believes the President committed impeachable offenses.