(Bloomberg) -- President
Donald Trump is scheduled to address supporters at a campaign rally in Michigan on Wednesday evening at the same moment the U.S. House holds a historic vote to impeach him, setting the stage for an unprecedented split-screen spectacle of the political strife dividing the nation.Trump is to take the stage in Battle Creek at 7 p.m., about 30 minutes before Speaker
Nancy Pelosi plans to call for a vote on the first of two articles of impeachment against the president.But Trump isn’t saving his response for the rally. As the House debated the articles of impeachment Wednesday, the president repeatedly took to
Twitter to voice his outrage.Trump’s tweet came shortly after Pelosi opened debate, calling the president an “ongoing threat to our national security,” and declared that, “If we do not act now, we would be derelict in our duty.”By the time the House votes, lawmakers will have spent at least six hours in debate.While the chamber remains on track to vote during Trump’s rally, timing could change depending on how proceedings unfold.The frustration Trump has displayed reflects the potential harm impeachment does to his re-election campaign, which will be the first inpost-war
American history waged by an impeached president.Underscoring the political risks, Trump’s Wednesday rally will take place in Battle Creek -- a
Republican stronghold that helped him win the otherwise
Democratic state in 2016. But it’s also the home of Representative Justin Amash, who quit the Republican Party earlier this year over what he called the president’s impeachable conduct.A narrow plurality of Americans -- 49% -- support
Congress impeaching the president and removing him from office, while 46% oppose the effort, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Tuesday.But the president’s campaign has insisted the impeachment effort has been a boon for the president, releasing internal polling Tuesday that showed voters in swing districts won by the president in 2016 but by House
Democrats in 2018 opposed impeachment by 10 percentage points.“These Democrats already knew they were in trouble before the sham impeachment, but now they are in serious jeopardy,” Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. “By moving forward with her political theater of impeachment, Nancy Pelosi has accomplished two things: She has energized the President’s supporters and walked her entire majority caucus off the plank.”Democrats’ first article of impeachment finds Trump abused the power of his office by withholding military assistance from
Ukraine and pressuring President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former Vice President
Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. The second article finds that Trump obstructed Congress’s inquiry into his dealings with Ukraine, including by directing
White House employees to defy lawmakers’ subpoenas to testify.While the Democratic-controlled House is expected to vote to impeach Trump, he’s almost certain to be acquitted by the Republican-controlled
Senate at a trial early next year, meaning he will remain in office.On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the trial a “political process” and said he would not serve as “an impartial juror.”“The House made a partisan political decision to impeach,” McConnell said. “I would anticipate we will have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate. I’m not impartial about this at all.”Trump has previously said he’s eager for the Senate to call witnesses -- including Vice President Biden and his son, Hunter, whose work for a Ukrainian energy company was at the heart of the president’s call for an investigation -- as part of their trial. But on Tuesday, Trump said he would defer to McConnell on the procedure for the trial.“To me, I’d let the Senate decide on that.”To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Sink in
Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua Gallu, Justin BlumFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.