San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer has spent $11 million on ads to drum up support for impeaching President Trump, but House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she doesn’t want to go there.
“Somebody has some facts that come forth about President Trump, let the chips fall where they may, but it’s not some place that I think we should go,” Ms. Pelosi said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi: Impeaching President Trump “is not someplace that I think we should go” #CNNSOTU https://t.co/WmDPC5yC5q
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) November 5, 2017
The California Democrat said she wanted to the party to focus on the issues, including stopping the Republican tax-reform bill, in the 2018 election.
Two Democrats, Reps. Brad Sherman of California and Al Green of Texas, launched in July a quixotic effort to impeach Mr. Trump, an effort viewed as having almost no chance of success, given that Republicans control the House.
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat, said last week that he and several other Democrats plan to file new articles of impeachment against Mr. Trump before Thanksgiving.
“Again, I don’t want to dampen anybody’s enthusiasm for what they believe because a lot of people in our country think the president should be impeached,” Ms. Pelosi said. “But that’s not what our election is about. Our election is about meeting the needs of the American people.”
The Democratic Party’s largest individual donor in the 2014 and 2016 campaigns, Mr. Steyer launched television ads about two weeks ago blasting Mr. Trump, calling him “mentally unstable” and asking voters to demand that Congress impeach him.
The ad campaign drew a response on Twitter from the president, who called Mr. Steyer “[w]acky & totally unhinged.”
Wacky & totally unhinged Tom Steyer, who has been fighting me and my Make America Great Again agenda from beginning, never wins elections!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2017
Fox News removed the ads from its lineup on Tuesday, citing an outcry from viewers.
“Due to the strong negative reaction to their ad by our viewers, we could not in good conscience take their money,” said Fox president Jack Abernethy in a statement to the San Jose Mercury News.
Mr. Steyer’s lawyers responded with a Friday letter accusing Fox News of capitulating “to political pressure from the Trump administration itself” and urging the network to “honor your contract with Mr. Steyer by airing the Advertisement as agreed.”
Mr. Steyer, known for his climate-change advocacy through NextGen Climate, is gathering signatures on a pro-impeachment letter on the website NeedtoImpeach.com.
He gave $91 million in 2016 and $75 million in 2014 to Democratic and liberal candidates, making him the single largest individual donor to either party in those elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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