Pelosi on House impeachment attempt of Mayorkas: ‘Everything they do is about Donald Trump’

Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday criticized House Republicans for seeking to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“Understand this: Everything they do is about Donald Trump. He’s a puppeteer,” she said in an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell discussing Tuesday’s failed Republican impeachment effort. “Sadly, as I always say, he lights up the strings and he looks terrible. It’s all about him.”

“So what they’re trying to do is impeach Mr. Mayorkas, who is a distinguished public servant who respected the law and policy and enforced the law, and they’re trying to get away with it on the cheap,” Pelosi said. added. .

Three Republicans sided with Democrats in Tuesday night’s vote, 214-216, narrowing the chances that Republicans would impeach Mayorkas. This was a significant loss for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and the Republican Party, which had vowed to impeach the secretary for months.

Republican Reps. Ken Buck of Colorado, Tom McClintock of California, and Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin all voted against the effort on Tuesday. A fourth Republican, Rep. Blake Moore of Utah, switched his vote to “no” just before adjournment, allowing the conference to return the bill to the floor another day.

Prime Minister Johnson acknowledged on Wednesday that rejecting the impeachment vote was a “setback” but said he would pass articles of impeachment “in the next round.”

Pelosi argued that lawmakers shouldn’t bring bills to the floor without knowing where they’ll vote.

“I always tell my colleagues, the Republicans who are now in leadership, don’t bring a bill to the floor unless you know you have the votes,” she said. “And you had to have a vote in your pocket to know you had a vote.”