Top House Democrats aren’t ready to impeach President Trump.
“I think impeachment talks right now are a distraction,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) in an interview Sunday with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Hoyer, like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), said Democrats needed to wait until Special Counsel Robert Mueller releases his report about Russian influence in the 2016 election.
“We’ll have to see what the Mueller report says. Nancy and I have both said that,” Hoyer told NBC’s Chuck Todd, adding that he didn’t believe that the impeachment process was “inevitable.”
“And that’s not what we’re focused on. We’re focused on substantive bills,” Hoyer said.
In her sit-down with “CBS Sunday Morning” host Jane Pauley, Pelosi said that Democrats were most focused on what they had campaigned on: cheaper prescription drugs, saving pre-existing condition protections and rebuilding the country’s infrastructure.
“If and when the time comes for impeachment, it will have to be something that is such a crescendo in a bipartisan way,” Pelosi said, noting that she was waiting for Mueller’s report.
Democratic leaders’ comments come in sharp contrast to those made Thursday night by incoming Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) who enthusiastically told a crowd “we’re gonna go in there, and we’re gonna impeach the motherf***er.”
Tlaib is part of a small wing of the party who has voiced support for impeachment now.
Last January Democrats voted en masse with Republicans — 355-66 — to table articles of impeachment.
It was sponsored by six Democrats, including New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who told The Post last month he wants to introduce it again — though he wanted to make sure there was support in the chamber now that Democrats are in the majority.
“I have the appetite to do that, but I have to also feel the temperature of the caucus,’” he said, adding, “I think the temperature’s a lot hotter now.”
But publicly most Democrats are preaching caution.
Fellow New Yorker Jerrold Nadler, the incoming chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said Friday in response to Tlaib’s comments that it’s “too early to talk about that intelligently. We have to follow the facts.”
A spokesman for the liberal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who has spoken eagerly of impeaching the president — said she would wait to see Mueller’s report.
“We want to make sure this is an airtight thing no matter what happens,” he explained to The Post last month.
Symone Sanders, who was the press secretary for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, argued that Republicans were the ones guilty of bringing up impeachment during the 2018 cycle — to warn voters against electing Democrats.
“It was Republicans who made impeachment such a topic of conversation during the 2018 midterms,” Sanders said Sunday on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” “Every time I would go on to do an interview, my Republican colleagues would bring up impeachment even though no Democrats across the country were running on impeachment.”
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