\u201cI believe that this is just a better fit for me,\u201d said congressman Jeff Van Drew. “This is who I am. It’s who I always was. But there was more tolerance of moderate Democrats, of blue dog Democrats, of conservative Democrats. And I think that’s going away.”<\/p>\n
During brief remarks to reporters, he pledged his “undying support” for Trump, following through on expectations that he would be switching parties after he cast his vote against impeachment as a Democrat.<\/p>\n
Trump also pledged his unending support and endorsement, saying he was “very fortunate” that Van Drew cast his vote in opposition alongside all Republicans in the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n
Van Drew was among a tiny contingent of Democrats who did not support impeaching Trump on obstruction of Congress and abuse of power charges.<\/p>\n
Only two House Democrats crossed party lines in advancing the abuse of power charge through the federal legislature in a 230-197 vote.<\/p>\n
The obstruction vote saw three Democrats stand in opposition in a second 229-198 vote. After voting for the abuse of power article, Congressman Jared Golden joined Van Drew and Collin Peterson in opposition.<\/p>\n
Trump is now just the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.<\/p>\n
The House had previously voted only twice on articles of impeachment against a sitting president. Presidents Andrew Johnson (1868) and Bill Clinton (1998) were acquitted in Senate trials.<\/p>\n
Richard Nixon stepped down from office in 1974 to avoid his removal as part of the Watergate scandal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Democrat who just hours earlier voted against impeaching President Donald Trump formally switched parties Thursday as Trump hailed him during an Oval Office sit-down. \u201cI believe that this is just a better fit for me,\u201d said congressman Jeff Van Drew. “This is who I am. It’s who I always was. But there was more …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":64622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,80,63,118,101],"tags":[68577,77263],"class_list":["post-64619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-hot","category-politics","tag-democratic-country-turkey","tag-donald-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}