Joe Biden calls for Trump’s impeachment
ROCHESTER, N.H. — Former Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for President Trump’s impeachment for the first time, blistering Trump as a threat to American democracy and accusing him of “shooting holes in the Constitution.”
Escalating his language in an effort to rebut Trump’s unfounded claims about his actions with Ukraine, Biden set aside months of restraint to demand Congress move against the president.
“To preserve our Constitution, our democracy, our basic integrity, he should be impeached,” the former vice president told supporters in Rochester, accusing Trump of having “betrayed this nation.”
Biden linked Trump’s false claims to the so-called Big Lie idea promulgated by the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
“You say it long enough, often enough, people may believe it,” he said, invoking Goebbels by name.
While Biden stopped short of calling for Trump’s removal from office, his new aggressiveness marked an acknowledgment that he must do more to both confront a president who is attacking him daily and to halt his slide in the polls in the Democratic primary.
Trump is facing an impeachment inquiry in the House because of his request to the Ukrainian government that it look into what Biden did with the country when his son, Hunter Biden, was working for a gas company there. Biden again denied that he did anything improper as vice president. And he accused Trump, who has accused Biden of corruption and whose campaign is airing ads repeating the same claim, of acting entirely out of a desire to damage his candidacy.
“We’re not going to let Donald Trump pick the Democratic nominee for president, period,” said Biden, who has fallen behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in a series of national and early...