"Deal not close, buddy": Warren mingles with the dismissal of Trump

When Elizabeth Warren came to work on Tuesday, she did not intend to read damning excerpts from the Senate's Mueller report while demanding the removal of President Donald Trump.

The Senate majority leader made her do it, she said.

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"I felt compelled to stand up and say," The record is not over, my friend, "Warren said in an interview, citing Mitch McConnell's statement that it was time for Congress to withdraws from the investigation on Russia. .

Warren was arguing more vociferously for removal in recent weeks than his 2020 Democrat rivals, which could help Massachusetts senator's party activists want to attack Trump. The incitement, as well as Warren's deployment of a range of political proposals, coincided with a rise in poll numbers and a wave of positive press coverage.

Yet most congressional Democrats – and even some of his main opponents – think Warren's play is polarizing and risky. They are worried about hurting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is opposed to a race to remove or define their campaigns by a potential show demanded by a relatively small share of the electorate.

And most of her competitors are reluctant to join her.

"The indictment should remain on the table. But I really think what President Pelosi is doing is smart, "said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Who is also a Democratic nominee. The voters are not aware of all the "facts and the details", she added, "so I think that if you want to bring the American people with you, you really need to hold these hearings" before Initiate an impeachment proceeding.

Warren said she did not intend to pressure Pelosi privately about it. But she fought back to the Democrats who said it was better to slow things down, sue government officials or possibly take legal action to get them to court. documents.

"I tried to let the House make its own decision and explained how I saw that," she said. "Everyone in the House and Senate should vote to see if what Donald Trump did to obstruct justice is an impenetrable foul. And then, they should live with this vote for the rest of their lives. "

Warren's long list of proposals, ranging from free universities to opioids, to military housing, leaves little room for criticism that she focused on dismissal by neglecting kitchen table problems. She does not fear impeachment when voters ask her, but she also did not inscribe it in her usual speech on the stump.

Other Democratic senators acknowledged that Warren's position on impeachment was probably a good policy in a cluttered primary with an ascending left. But she took a lonely position with her aggressive comments.

Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) Has been more cautious than Warren in impeachment – she has asked the House to "take steps toward removal" – and has not In an interview, Harris said that Trump's imposition worried Democratic voters, but "it was not an immediate priority" in relation to health care and to l & # 39; economy.

Joe Biden said it was better to leave the dismissal in court if the administration continued to block the House's investigations. And Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Said that he feared that the impeachment speech "works to the benefit of Trump."

Many Democrats agree that further impeachment can play in Trump's hands. But this is a problem for general elections; The imperative now is to "win the primary," said Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire. Shaheen thinks it's "not logical" to launch an impeachment procedure but she acknowledged that this "seems to be a popular stance with the Democratic base".

Warren's call for dismissal could also be aimed at raking in small donations, which she badly needed after vowing to raise expensive private fundraisers. She was less than Pete Buttigieg in the first three months of the year and spent a lot of money on an army of personnel in the early states.

But to hear Warren say it, his crusade in impeachment is not an elaborate strategy.

"Mueller presented the evidence on a silver platter in Congress. Congress is now the only body able to prevent a president from obstructing justice and getting out of it without any sanction being imposed, "she said. "I never wanted it to be part of my presidential campaign. I am looking for ways to make this government work. "

Asked about the reluctance of others to join her, she shook her head as she walked quickly into the Capitol: "I just do not understand."

Warren insists that there is no link between his campaign and his dismissal. But after stumbling over the treatment of her DNA test, she has clearly found her balance in recent weeks. The Senator from Massachusetts responded to her initial call for impeachment in early April with a host of well-received events across the country.

In an email to supporters on Tuesday, Warren encouraged people to add their name and contact information to his petition calling for removal. Anyone other than Trump "would be arrested and thrown in jail," she wrote, echoing what she said in the Senate.

But privately, Democrats say the impeachment procedure against President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s was a debacle for the GOP. Pursuing an effort that Senate Republicans will never support is a mistake, they say.

And publicly, most of them are with Pelosi.

It's "so politically charged that I frankly think we're getting better in the next 18 months by trying to pass bills that actually solve the problems that matter to average Americans and use the election." of 2020 as the accountability mechanism for the president's misdeeds, said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.).

The Senate minority whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) Spoke just after Warren's speech and rented it – to a certain extent.

"Of course, I'm not with her on the last line, impeachment," he said in an interview. Durbin however acknowledged that Warren "certainly was distinguished" within the Democratic Party with his outspokenness on the issue.

Warren said that she had done little to prepare her 40-minute speech and that it was sometimes obvious that she was speaking spontaneously.

But it was not a difficult speech to pronounce, she said.

"The difficult part was keeping the speech relatively short," said Warren. [have been] standing there three hours later.

Alex Thompson contributed to this report.