Rep. Al Green (D-TX) attempted to justify his efforts to impeach President Donald Trump for the third time by implying the president may carry out a military coup with tanks “rolling down the streets of American cities.”
Green sparked controversy in March and was censured by Congress after he waved his cane and yelled at Trump during the president’s joint address to legislators. The Texas lawmaker’s latest comments to Newsweek defy warnings from Democratic colleagues to step back from provocative actions and inflammatory impeachment talk and instead focus on policy.
“You don’t wait [to start impeachment efforts] until tanks are rolling down the streets of American cities,” Green told the outlet. “It’s too late then. You don’t wait until you have what everybody will recognize as a constitutional crisis, because that can be the forerunner to tanks moving down the streets of American cities.”
“We have this unique opportunity to use impeachment as a deterrent to stop him and prevent what could become more than we have seen in this country in terms of power emanating from a presidency that is out of control,” he added.
Green’s remarks come after Democrats criticized him for his behavior during Trump’s high-profile joint address to Congress this spring.
After he was forcibly removed from the chamber for shouting and waving his cane at the president, ten Democrats joined Republican members in passing a resolution censuring the Texas Democrat, making him only the 28th member of the House to receive the congressional rebuke.
“Despicable,” Democratic strategist David Axelrod said of Green’s outburst.
“A sad cavalcade of self-owns and unhinged petulance,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) added in remarks targeted at the protest.
“It only makes Trump look more presidential and restrained,” Fetterman concluded following the joint address. “We’re becoming the metaphorical car alarms that nobody pays attention to—and it may not be the winning message.”
When pressed on the criticism from Democrats during his latest interview, Green said he would do it all over again if given the opportunity.
“I am Al Green, an unbought, unbossed, unafraid, liberated Democrat. I will speak truth to power, which is pretty easy to do. You simply say, ‘Power, we have a problem. Let’s solve it. I will do that, but I’ll also speak truth about power and say, power, we have a problem, and you’re it,’” he said.
Green added that his protest in March was spontaneous, but that “as I think about it now, I would do it again without the spontaneity.”
“To be quite candid with you, because it was not just the right thing to do,” Green said. “It was the righteous thing to do. I’m talking about protecting and saving lives, and there is no mandate to do the things that they want to do to Medicaid.”
Green has also come under fire from Democratic colleagues for pushing efforts to impeach Trump. The Texas lawmaker introduced articles of impeachment in February, and again on May 15.
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Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), one of the most powerful Democrats in the House, rejected such impeachment pushes in April, calling on his colleagues to focus on policy instead— “items that the American public is paying attention to.”
“Right now, we will deal with the tools in front of us,” Aguilar, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said. “The policies that he and House Republicans have placed forward — which are reckless cuts to the healthcare system, to our supplemental nutrition that is relied on by women and children and families across this country — those are the policies that we’re going to push back against.”
