Campaign

Trump campaign gloats over acquittal with altered meme of Pelosi shredding speech

by Justine Coleman - 02/05/20 5:12 PM ET

President Trump’s reelection campaign gloated over the president’s acquittal with an altered meme of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ripping the State of the Union address.

Trump’s campaign tweeted a GIF of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) face pasted on Pelosi’s body as she tore in half the State of the Union speech Tuesday night.

The post compares Pelosi’s reaction to the speech to McConnell’s inferred reaction to the articles of impeachment following the Senate’s vote to acquit the president.

“Here’s what Cocaine Mitch thinks of the Articles of Impeachment,” the post reads.

Here’s what Cocaine Mitch thinks of the Articles of Impeachment pic.twitter.com/WAgxwLKVjE

— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TeamTrump) February 5, 2020

Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement that Trump was “totally vindicated” with the Senate’s vote, predicting the impeachment will “go down as the worst miscalculation in American political history.”

“The do-nothing Democrats know they can’t beat him, so they had to impeach him,” he said. “This terrible ordeal was always a campaign tactic to invalidate the 2016 votes of 63 million Americans and was a transparent effort to interfere with the 2020 election only nine months away.”

The Senate voted Wednesday to acquit Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, effectively ending the impeachment trial. The House impeached the president on these charges in December over accusations that Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine in the hopes of getting the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to announce investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden, the president’s political opponent.

Democrats pushed for additional documents and witnesses to be included in the trial, but the Senate rejected that plea last week.

The reelection campaign’s tweet of the GIF references a nickname for McConnell that the Senate majority leader embraced after 2018 West Virginia Senate candidate Don Blankenship (R) labeled him “Cocaine Mitch” in a campaign ad.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also released footage of himself ripping the articles of impeachment following the Senate’s official vote.