WASHINGTON -- The House easily killed one Democrat's effort Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump for his recent tweets against four female lawmakers.
Democrats leaned against the resolution by Rep. Al Green of Texas by about a 3-to-2 margin as the chamber killed the measure 332-95. The vote showed that so far, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been successful in preventing a Democratic effort toward impeachment.
The numbers also showed that the number of Democrats open to impeachment remains substantial. About two dozen more conversions would split the party's caucus in half over the issue.
"There's a lot of grief, from a lot of different quarters," Green, speaking to reporters after the vote, said of the reaction he's received from colleagues. "But sometimes you just have to take a stand."
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Every voting Republican favored derailing Green's measure.
Trump reacted to the vote on Twitter.
"This is perhaps the most ridiculous and time consuming project I have ever had to work on. Impeachment of your President, who has led the Greatest Economic BOOM in the history of our Country, the best job numbers, biggest tax reduction, rebuilt military and much more, is now OVER," he wrote. "This should never be allowed to happen to another President of the United States again!"
Pelosi and other party leaders considered Green's resolution a premature exercise that needlessly forced vulnerable swing-district lawmakers to cast divisive votes.
Even if the Democratic-run House would vote to impeach Trump, the equivalent of filing formal charges, a trial by the Republican-led Senate would all but certainly acquit him.
Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters earlier that six House committees are investigating Trump.
"That is the serious path we're on," she said.
Democrats are also awaiting next week's scheduled public testimony to two House committees by former special counsel Robert Mueller.
With Democrats preparing to defend their House majority in next year's elections, Green's measure put incumbents in closely divided districts in a difficult spot. Democrats owe their House majority to 39 challengers who won in 2018 in what had been GOP-held districts, places where moderate voters largely predominate.
"It's not ideal for a lot of people to have to take that vote right now," one of them, Rep. Katie Hill, D-Calif., said Wednesday of impeachment. She said that "if and when" the House votes on impeaching Trump, it should happen when "we can make sure our constituents understand and can get behind" the move.
Democrats are also concerned that Republicans could use a failed impeachment vote to try taking the steam out of the continuing probes into Trump's performance in office by arguing that the House had demonstrated it had no appetite for removing him from office.
"This is all they've ever wanted to do from the day of the election" in 2016, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said in a brief interview.
Green's measure cites Trump's recent comments imploring four Democratic lawmakers to go back to their native countries. The House voted Tuesday largely along party lines to condemn those statements. His targets were Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
All are Americans and all but Omar were born in the U.S. They've also been among the party's most outspoken advocates of impeachment.
At a campaign rally Wednesday night in Greenville, N.C., Trump doubled down on his earlier comments.
"Tonight I have a suggestion for the hate-filled extremists who are constantly trying to tear our country down," Trump told the crowd. "They never have anything good to say. That's why I say, 'Hey if you don't like it, let 'em leave, let 'em leave.'"
Green's resolution said Trump is "unfit to be President, unfit to represent the American values of decency and morality, respectability and civility, honesty and propriety, reputability and integrity, is unfit to defend the ideals that have made America great, unfit to defend liberty and justice for all."
Green's resolution does not mention Mueller's investigation into whether Trump's 2016 campaign conspired with Russia to influence that year's presidential election or whether the president obstructed Mueller's probe.
Green's measure was the third resolution to impeach Trump that he has taken to the House floor since 2017.
Information for this article was contributed by Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press.
A Section on 07/18/2019