“Deranged.” “Insane. “Unhinged.” “Warmonger.”
That’s just a sampling of words Senate Democrats used to describe President Donald Trump’s words and actions over the past week — which have included threatening to wipe Iran off the map, attacking the pope and even sharing an image of himself as the Messiah, which he deleted on Monday after widespread criticism from Republicans and faith leaders around the world.
But unlike in the House, where dozens of Democrats are calling for Trump’s removal from office via the 25th Amendment or impeachment, most Democratic senators are urging their party to stay focused on offering a clear contrast to the policies of Republican-controlled Washington ahead of the coming midterm elections.
“In any normal world, Republicans in this Cabinet would recognize that we’ve got a deranged president,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen told NOTUS. “He threatened massive war crimes against Iran, [and] is attacking the Pope. He’s putting out images of himself as Christ. But this is Trump’s world, and so I don’t expect that.”
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“I think the focus needs to be that Donald Trump betrayed the country. He lied to the country that he would stay out of foreign wars,” Van Hollen added.
Sen. Cory Booker, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, also shot down the House effort, saying removing Trump by way of the 25th Amendment is “not going to happen.”
“I understand because the things he’s saying seem absolutely insane, frankly,” Booker said. “What he’s doing is cruel. What he’s doing is chaotic. He’s tanking our national economy and driving pain into the lives of tens of millions of Americans.”
Another potential White House contender, Sen. Mark Kelly, expressed skepticism about the prospect of another impeachment effort after two failed attempts by Democrats during Trump’s first term — once in 2019 regarding Ukraine and then in 2021 related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“Congress went down the impeachment path with him a couple of times,” Kelly told NOTUS. “Unless you have Republican senators saying, ‘Hey, this is the appropriate thing to do,’ it’s like, it just becomes an exercise in futility.”
More than 70 House Democrats are pushing for Trump’s removal, including by invoking a process established in the Constitution that relies on a majority of the president’s Cabinet, including his vice president, agreeing to replace him. A few Democrats in the Senate have joined them in that effort.
“We have a warmonger in the White House,” Sen. Ed Markey said last week. “He has threatened war crimes on an apocalyptic scale and appears eager to commit them, including through the possible use of nuclear weapons. We cannot fund this illegal war. The Congress must act now.”
But the vast majority of Democrats are in favor of a more tactical approach in checking Trump on Iran: forcing repeated votes in the Senate on privileged resolutions limiting hostilities against Iran. The plan aims to turn the screws on Republican lawmakers as they face questions about another unpopular war in the Middle East that has resulted in higher gas prices at home and uncertainty in financial markets around the world. Such efforts have failed in the past, but Democrats hope to pick off more Republicans in the coming weeks as the war grinds on, or at the very least interrupt the GOP’s plans for passage of a quick reconciliation package that includes more funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“We’re going to have a debate and a vote every week in the United States Senate until either this war comes to an end or our Republican colleagues decide to do their constitutional duty,” Sen. Chris Murphy said at a press conference Monday on Capitol Hill.
“Congress has a job to do, and that is to be a check on this president,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin added. “We will use the levers we have to do that and stop this illegal war of choice.”
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