'Are you allowed to impeach a president for gross incompetence?' Donald Trump's 2014 tweet comes back to haunt him as he faces impeachment inquiry

House speaker Nancy Pelosi launched a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump on Tuesday. This is how Twitter reacted to the news.

FP Staff September 25, 2019 09:10:45 IST
'Are you allowed to impeach a president for gross incompetence?' Donald Trump's 2014 tweet comes back to haunt him as he faces impeachment inquiry
  • House speaker Nancy Pelosi launched a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump on Tuesday.

  • The probe focuses partly on whether Trump abused his presidential powers and sought help from a foreign government to undermine Democratic foe Joe Biden and help his own reelection.

  • Pelosi said such actions would mark a 'betrayal of his oath of office' and declared, No one is above the law.'

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi launched a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump on Tuesday, yielding to mounting pressure from fellow Democrats and plunging a deeply divided nation into an election-year clash between Congress and the commander in chief.

As soon as the news broke, the hashtags #ImpeachTrump #Impeachment, #ImpeachDonaldTrumpNOW, #NancyPelosi soon started trending on Twitter.

The probe focuses partly on whether Trump abused his presidential powers and sought help from a foreign government to undermine Democratic foe Joe Biden and help his own reelection. Pelosi said such actions would mark a "betrayal of his oath of office" and declared, "No one is above the law."

At issue are Trump's actions with Ukraine. In a summer phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, he is said to have asked for help investigating former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

In the days before the call, Trump ordered advisers to freeze $400 million in military aid for Ukraine — prompting speculation that he was holding out the money as leverage for information on the Bidens. Trump has denied that charge but acknowledged he blocked the funds, later released.

Meeting with world leaders at the United Nations, he previewed his defence in an all-caps tweet: "PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!"

Several people retweeted a tweet from 2014 by the president, which had said, "Are you allowed to impeach a president for gross incompetence?" as he made a dig to the then-president Barack Obama.

He expressed his displeasure at the Democrats' news with several tweets of his own, that condemned the decision and attacked the party for their announcement of the same.

Several people responded to the same with tongue-in-cheek comments that left people in splits. Social media was abuzz with people trying to figure out the best way to go about the decision, but applauded the Democrats regardless, for their decision to begin the investigation to impeach the US president.

Many well-known personalities like Morgan Freeman, Stephen King — known for his books like It, The Shining, and Salem's Lot — and Don Cheadle also tweeted, reacting to the news.

Several people also compared hashtags #ResignNow and #Impeachment, the former being for British prime minister Boris Johnson. The prime minister is currently under scrutiny for the upcoming Brexit deadline.

With inputs from AP.

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