Beto O’Rourke appeared on CNN Tuesday night in Des Moines, Iowa at Drake University where he called for President Trump’s impeachment.
“We should begin impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump,” O’Rourke said to loud applause from the audience. It’s “not something that I take lightly…it’s a serious, sober decision.”
The party, he said, should look beyond politics and polling, given the seriousness of the charges brought against the president.
The policy-heavy town hall comes as the campaign is re-tooling, bringing on high-profile political hires and pursuing a national media blitz.
On reproductive health, O’Rourke reiterated his pro-choice bona fides.
“As president, I will make sure every nominee to every federal bench understands and believes” that Roe v Wade is “settled law of the land.”
O’Rourke referenced Austin-based Annie’s List as a model to help change the make-up of state legislatures that pursue extreme abortion measures, as Alabama did last week.
In the Morning Consult poll released Tuesday, the former El Paso congressman registered in the lower single digits, with Joe Biden at the top of the 20-plus candidate primary.
O’Rourke, who called Barack Obama the greatest president of his lifetime, demonstrated literacy on agricultural issues in Iowa, the first-in-the nation state to vote in the primary next year. He mentioned farming when he mentioned climate policy and cited no-till and precision-till farming, which are more environmentally friendly practices that help boost overall soil health.
“Let’s put [farmers] in the driver’s seat for policy going forward,” O’Rourke told one attendee, a corn and soybean farmer. “What are the best practices for growing corn and soybeans here. How can we keep more land under conservation?…I want [farmers] to take the lead in our administration on agricultural policy…”
Voters got a crash course on O’Rourke’s positions on immigration, health care, and foreign policy, as well as on the use of hate as a political tool:
CNN’s Dana Bash, the moderator, pointed out — seemingly needlessly — O’Rourke used to be a live-in nanny years ago. He asked, to audience laughs, if anyone else had a question.
Bash also asked what his dad, who was killed by a car, would say today at his running for president.
“I’d like to think he’d be proud — the way we’re doing this [running the campaign]. I miss him terribly.”
