Rep. Steve Cohen said President Donald Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president was “an affront” to the memory of Martin Luther King Jr.
The Tennessee Democrat leveled the accusation Wednesday evening while the House Judiciary Committee debated two articles of impeachment against Trump that Democrats introduced Tuesday. (RELATED: Steve Cohen Warns Trump Team: You’ll End Up ‘Sullied’ Like Ronny Jackson)
“It’s as if our founders could see into 2019 and when they did that saw Donald Trump corrupting our democracy by saying to President [Volodymyr] Zelensky of Ukraine, ‘I’d like you to do us a favor, though.’ President Trump’s subversive and illegal action in seeking foreign interference are an effrontery to our Constitution and free and fair elections,” Cohen said.
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“They are an affront to the founders. They are an affront to the suffragettes who fought for voting rights. They are an affront to Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi. They’re an affront to Andrew Goodman, James Cheney and Michael Schwerner, civil rights workers murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi, during the freedom summer of ’64 while registering African-Americans to vote,” the congressman continued.
“They’re an affront to Viola Liuzzo, a mother of five who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan while she was in Alabama to participate in the Selma to Montgomery march, and they’re an affront to the memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who championed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And they’re an affront to every service member who has ever fought to defend our nation and our system of self-government, which is based upon free and fair elections,” Cohen said. “President Trump’s attempt to subvert our elections was an attack on America.”
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