Rep. Al Green on Thursday pledged to force a House vote to impeach the president, citing the blackface scandals plaguing Virginia Democrats as “a symptom” of the president’s bigotry.
“When we allow bigotry to infect the body politic with impunity at the highest level, other levels will expect impunity for their bigotry,” the Texas Democrat tweeted Thursday morning. “Gov. Northam’s refusal to resign for his bigotry is a symptom. Failure to act on Pres. Trump’s bigotry is the problem. #ImpeachmentIsNotDead.”
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and state Attorney General Mark Herring, both Democrats, are facing calls to resign after they both admitted to wearing blackface decades ago. A photo also surfaced from Mr. Northam’s personal page out of his medical school yearbook that showed two men, one in blackface and the other in a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood.
Mr. Green, who has already forced two failed impeachment votes, said on the House floor Thursday that he planned on forcing a third vote against the president, asking fellow congress members to go “on record” and reject bigotry by starting “at the top.”
“You have in Virginia, a Klansman and blackface next to each other in a yearbook. It has been acknowledged as that of the governor,” Mr. Green said. “There is enough evidence not only to ask that the governor resign but to demand that he do so.
“But I understand why this level of bigotry is going to be tolerated to a certain extent because we don’t want to take on the president,” Green said. “If we allow the president to exist with his bigotry, how can we demand with any degree of credibility that the governor resign? We have to start at the top. This level of bigotry is trickling down.
“What better way to deal with bigotry in this country than to say to the world we will extricate a president from office for his bigotry?” he said. “There will be a vote on impeachment regardless as to what the Mueller commission says. Bigotry in policy will not be tolerated.”
.@RepAlGreen: “There will be a vote on impeachment regardless as to what the Mueller Commission says.” pic.twitter.com/07Nk0YxTHZ
— CSPAN (@cspan) February 7, 2019
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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