US President Donald Trump on Thursday took a victory lap, railing against those who tried to remove him from office and pointing ahead to his re-election campaign.
Triumphantly waving newspaper front pages that declared him “ACQUITTED,” Trump denounced the impeachment proceedings as a “disgrace” and portrayed himself as a victim of political foes he labeled “scum,” “sleaze bags” and “crooked” people.
“It was evil, it was corrupt, it was dirty cops,” Trump said in a packed White House East Room, where he was surrounded by several hundred supporters. “This should never ever happen to another president, ever.”
“We went through hell, unfairly,” he said. “Did nothing wrong.”
His comments were a clear sign that, post-impeachment, Trump is emboldened like never before as he barrels ahead in his re-election fight with a united Republican Party behind him.
The only contrition Trump offered was to his own family, apologizing “for having them go through a phony, rotten deal.”
Trump ticked off names of the “vicious and mean” people he felt had wronged him: US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and former FBI director James Comey.
He reveled in the verdict handed down on Wednesday by the Republican-controlled Senate, saluting one-by-one the “warrior” Republican lawmakers who had backed him both in the Capitol and on television.
“Now we have that gorgeous word. I never thought it would sound so good,” Trump said. “It’s called ‘total acquittal.’”
Earlier on Thursday, Trump shattered the usual veneer of bipartisanship at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington by unleashing his fury against those who tried to impeach him, with Pelosi sitting on stage.
“As everybody knows, my family, our great country and your president have been put through a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people,” Trump said at the annual event.
His remarks were especially jarring coming after a series of Scripture-quoting speeches, including a keynote address by Arthur Brooks, a Harvard professor and president of a conservative think tank, who had bemoaned a “crisis of contempt and polarization” in the nation and urged those gathered to “love your enemies.”
“I don’t know if I agree with you,” Trump said as he took the microphone, and then he proceeded to demonstrate it.
“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong,” he said in an apparent reference to US Senator Mitt Romney, a longtime Trump critic who cited his faith in becoming the only Republican to vote for Trump’s removal.
“Nor do I like people who say ‘I pray for you’ when you know that is not so,”’ he said, in a reference to Pelosi, who has offered that message for the president when the two leaders have sparred publicly.
Pelosi, who shook her head at various points during Trump’s remarks, later told reporters they were “so completely inappropriate, especially at a prayer breakfast.”
She took particular issue with his swipe at Romney’s faith and said that, yes, she does pray for the president.
Trump later said he “meant every word.”
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