On eve of State of the Union address, Trump’s popularity is drastically low, at an average of 39.5%, according to polls

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Talk of impeachment, Donald Trump said in remarks broadcast on Monday, is a sign Democrats know they cannot beat him in 2020.

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In the interview with CBS Face the Nation, recorded last week and first broadcast on Super Bowl Sunday, Trump said: “The only way they can win, because they can’t win the election, is to bring out the artificial way of impeachment.”

Impeachment would begin in the House, which Democrats control, but success would require a two-thirds majority in the Republican-held Senate, a vastly unlikely outcome.

Nonetheless, efforts to initiate proceedings have been pushed by elements of the House Democratic caucus. The billionaire Tom Steyer, who flirted with a presidential run, is funding a drive from outside Congress.

Most calls for Trump’s impeachment and removal centre around the work of Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian election interference, ties between Trump aides and Moscow and potential obstruction of justice by the president.

Numerous Trump aides have been indicted or convicted and some former close associates of the president are cooperating with the investigation.

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The acting attorney general, Mathew Whitaker, said last month Mueller’s work was nearly done. In the same CBS interview, Trump said it would be up to William Barr, his nominee for the permanent role, to release Mueller’s report or not, presuming he is confirmed.

Retreading a familiar argument, Trump said: “The problem is you can’t impeach somebody for doing the best job of any president, in the history of our country, for the first two years. And people have seen and people have watched what we’ve done whether it’s tax cuts …”

Asked if he was saying impeachment would be a political call, he said it would be and added of the constitutional language governing the process: “But you know, it’s supposed to be high crimes and misdemeanours. Well, there was no high crime. There was no misdemeanour. There was no problem whatsoever.”

Trump then said Democratic candidates to fight the election against him were “horrible” on abortion rights – apparently a reference to recent remarks by Ralph Northam, the scandal-plagued Democratic governor of Virginia – and on border security, and wanted “to cut our military, they want to take our wealth and give it away”.

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Seemingly referring to calls among Democrats for tax rises on the very rich to pay for such policies as Medicare for all, he added: “They want to tax people. Not 70%. It’s 100%. Because what they want to do, you’d have to quadruple taxes. You wouldn’t have enough money anywhere, throughout the whole world you wouldn’t have enough money.

“So, if you look at what they’re running on, they can’t win. So the only way they could possibly beat me, because they’re not going to win the election [is impeachment].”

The US economy is by most measures booming, Friday bringing further impressive numbers in terms of jobs creation.

But on the eve of a State of the Union address delayed by a historic government shutdown for which most Americans blame the president, Trump’s popularity rating is drastically low. The website fivethirtyeight.com puts it at an average of 39.5%.

Last week, 56% of respondents in an ABC News/Washington Post poll said they definitely would not vote for Trump.