President Donald Trump’s son said he’ll travel to Michigan to campaign against Rep. Justin Amash, the only Republican to support impeachment efforts against the president.
“See you soon Justin… I hear Michigan is beautiful during primary season,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter early June 13.
He was responding to a new poll from Practical Political Consulting showing Jim Lower at 49 percent against Amash’s 33 percent.
2020 #MI03 Republican Primary:
Jim Lower 49% (+16)
Justin Amash 33%Practical Political Consulting 6/5-9https://t.co/WCurOJYdDO
— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) June 12, 2019
See you soon Justin… I hear Michigan is beautiful during primary season. https://t.co/dZzDU9240V
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 13, 2019
Amash has claimed recently that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report showed Trump committed “actions [that] were inherently corrupt.”
“Other actions were corrupt—and therefore impeachable—because the president took them to serve his own interests,” he wrote in a missive on Twitter.
Some Democrats have threatened to try to impeach Trump but the party’s current leader, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), has avoided triggering proceedings because of tepid support from her caucus as a whole.
Amash’s comments in May prompted a series of events: condemnation from Trump, the loss of financial backing from the DeVos family, and the announcement by Lower that he’d challenge the incumbent.
Lower, a state representative, described himself as “pro-Trump” and slammed Amash’s call for impeachment.
“Congressman Justin Amash tweets yesterday calling for President Trump’s impeachment show how out of touch he is with the truth and how out of touch he is with people he represents,” Lower said in the announcement, reported the Detroit Free Press. “He must be replaced and I am going to do it.”
Lower has been in office for two terms. Amash was elected in 2010 and re-elected three times; he did not have a Republican challenger in either of the last two elections. In 2018, he beat the Democratic candidate with 54 percent of the vote.
At his town hall on May 28, several constituents in his district expressed disdain for the congressman’s conduct, including a former supporter of Amash, who engaged in a 5-minute heated exchange during the event.
“You rest safe in the knowledge … that [Trump] won’t be removed from office. So you get to make the political grandstanding that raises your national profile,” she told Amash. “You are now a national household name. That’s called political capital. And you are hoping to launch your star bigger and brighter than District 3.”
“You just talked about how you did better in District 3 than Trump. Do you want to talk about how the last election you got the least amount of support that you’ve ever had because you haven’t supported the MAGA agenda?” she added.
The House Freedom Caucus, which Amash helped start, formally condemned him over the impeachment remarks and Amash announced on June 10 that he was leaving the caucus.
“I have the highest regard for them, and they’re my close friends,” Amash told Haley Byrd, a reporter with the anti-Trump CNN network. “I didn’t want to be a further distraction for the group.”
He said he informed the caucus at a board meeting that he would be leaving.
