Trump: Foes are ‘maniacs,’ impeachment is ‘crap’

President Trump decried his 2020 foes as “maniacs” and the impeachment inquiry as “crap” on Thursday, departing from a speech on health care to rip into his political opponents.

“The last administration, frankly, was moderate compared to the maniacs that you are hearing from today,” Trump told the crowd in The Villages, Fla., mocking candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has been rising in the polls, as “Pocahontas.”

{mosads}“You know when I used to hit her, I thought she was gone. She came up from the ashes. She emerged. Now we’re probably going to have to do it again, because I don’t see Sleepy Joe making it, I’ll tell you,” Trump said, referring to former Vice President Joe Biden, another front-runner for the Democratic nomination.

Trump also referred to Democrats’ impeachment inquiry a handful of times during the speech, accusing Democrats of launching formal impeachment proceedings in order to bruise him ahead of the election. When the crowd of supporters began to chant “four more years!” Trump encouraged them.

“If you want to drive them crazy, just say eight more years, or twelve more years. Or sixteen. Sixteen would do it good. You’d really drive them into the loony bin,” Trump said.

“That’s why they do the impeachment crap — because they know they can’t beat us fairly. That’s the only reason they are doing it. They can’t win,” Trump continued. “If they won, it will be a sad day for our country.”

Democrats have ramped up the impeachment inquiry over the past week, focusing on Trump’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate unsubstantiated allegations against Biden.

Trump’s remarks lasted more than an hour and preceded an executive order signing on Medicare.

Trump often uses official White House events to go off script and attack his Democratic opponents. Thursday afternoon’s remarks were another example of that.

At several points, Trump’s remarks functioned similarly to his speeches at campaign rallies, where he often emphasizes the economic gains under his administration and other accomplishments while criticizing policies put forth by Democrats.

He interspersed endorsements of his administration’s policies on health care with attacks on his Democratic opponents. He emphasized that his administration will protect Medicare, while knocking Democrats’ plans to overhaul it.

On Thursday, Trump accused Democrats of wanting “open borders” and trying to “socialize medicine” and claimed the economy would be devastated if a Democrat wins the 2020 presidential race.  

“One of these people gets in, your 401ks are going to hell. The stock market is going to hell. Frankly, I think — and I hate to say it — the country is going to hell,” Trump told the crowd.

Trump also went after the news media — a popular target of his White House — for what he described as unfair reporting, lashing out at CNN in particular and suggesting his administration was looking at creating its own news network.

“We ought to start our own network and put some real news out there, because they are so bad for our country,” Trump said. “We really are, we are looking at that.”