Democratic presidential hopeful Tom Steyer on Thursday said he believes he’s won the argument on whether or not President Trump should be impeached, after saying in January he planned to forego a presidential run in order to focus on that issue.
“I felt at that point I had a responsibility to push the impeachment of Mr. Trump,” the billionaire environmental activist said on “CBS This Morning.”
“I’m going to continue to fund that, but I believe we’ve won that argument,” Mr. Steyer said. “I think everybody in D.C., including Republicans, realizes that what we were saying for 20 months before people came around to it is now obvious and true.”
“There’s still a question about whether it happens, but I felt as if watching that for the last six months and pushing it was a profound failure of government because everybody understands he should be impeached at this point,” he said.
Mr. Steyer’s 2020 Democratic rivals do support Congress starting impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump, but congressional Democrats have resisted moving forward. Recent public polling has also shown that Americans remain intensely divided over the issue.
Mr. Steyer, who announced on Tuesday he was entering the presidential race, said he was watching the campaign and felt as if he “couldn’t sleep.”
“Because to me the biggest question facing the United States is not what we should do, but how are we going to break the corrupt stranglehold that corporations have on our government and how we are actually going to get done things that the American people want?” he said.
“How are we going to return power to the American people? That is the question in front of us today, and I didn’t feel it was being addressed,” Mr. Steyer said.
Other presidential candidates such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont have also pushed an anti-corporate theme, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is focusing much of his presidential campaign on the issue of climate change, another topic near and dear to Mr. Steyer.
“I’m an outsider,” Mr. Steyer said. “I don’t believe that this failed government is going to be reformed from the inside.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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