Freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is right to refuse to apologize for a rant against President Trump in which she boasted to a crowd of cheering supporters " we're going to impeach the motherfucker."



Here is video of freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan who, when speaking about President Trump, told her supporters "we're gonna go in and impeach the motherf--ker." pic.twitter.com/wO9AMKsBdN — Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) January 4, 2019

Tlaib, a radical member of the new socialist bloc in Congress, has already attracted attention for being the first Palestinian elected to Congress as well as for her hatred of Israel. She has now created a national firestorm when, hours after the new Democratic majority was sworn in, she used the foul language as the "mic drop" moment of her speech.

On Friday morning, she tweeted:



I will always speak truth to power. #unapologeticallyMe — Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) January 4, 2019



Setting aside the false bravado, that somehow it's a show of courage to attack Trump in a room full of MoveOn activists who are out for blood, this reaction is the appropriate one.

To start, obviously, there are exactly zero of her supporters who will be upset that she used harsh language to describe plans to go after Trump. This is what they elected her to do. But more importantly, the video clearly represented who she is, what she believes, and what the liberal base wants. The public should get to know that rather than be subjected to some sort of sanitized and obviously phony, forced apology.

To be sure, for the Democratic Party as a whole, this is not helpful.

As I've written previously, polling has suggested that Democrats are in a real bind on impeachment, which is overwhelmingly favored by their base but opposed by a strong majority of the country. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., would love to avoid dealing with the issue, or at least wait until there's more information from the Robert Mueller investigation so she could argue that it was only done as a result of facts, after a fair process played out. Tlaib's comments right out of the gate will make it much more difficult to avoid the appearance that impeachment is a strictly political undertaking.