At least one incoming House Democrat says his party should think twice before launching a third impeachment of President Donald Trump. His worry isn’t that Trump is innocent. It’s that impeaching him again would turn him into a martyr.
Rep.-elect Richard Ojeda, D-N.C., an Army veteran and former host of the left-wing network The Young Turks, made the case in an interview with CNN’s Laura Coates this week.
The exchange came the day after a House vote to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth failed. When Coates asked Ojeda whether he would vote to impeach, the North Carolina Democrat drew a sharp line between the president and the rest of his administration.
“I wouldn’t vote to impeach this entire administration, but when it comes to Donald Trump, no,” Ojeda said. “If we impeach Donald Trump, we martyr him!”
Coates pressed him to explain why he would go after a Cabinet official like Hegseth but give the commander in chief a pass. Ojeda argued that impeaching Trump alone would backfire politically. “If we just impeach Donald Trump and call it a day, they’re gonna martyr him,” he said.
Ojeda’s comments highlight a growing divide among Democrats as they prepare to take power in the new Congress. Trump was impeached twice by the House during his first term and acquitted by the Senate both times, then won back the White House in 2024. Some Democrats now fear a repeat performance would only fire up his base.
Ojeda isn’t the only newcomer making that argument. Axios reported last month that likely incoming progressive members Darializa Avila Chevalier of New York and Melat Kiros of Colorado struck a similar tone on impeachment. Kiros said Democrats should hold accountable not just the administration but also the “cronies” who helped elect Trump.
Other Democrats are eager to move ahead. Some members have openly pushed for impeaching the president as soon as the party takes control. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has acknowledged a “rising clamor” for impeachment in the party.
Trump has long predicted that Democrats would come after him if they took the House. “They’ll find something,” the president told Fox News’ Will Cain earlier this year, adding that he “won the impeachments very easily and quickly.”
Republicans spent much of the midterm cycle warning voters that a Democratic House would mean another impeachment fight. Ojeda’s remarks suggest that at least some incoming Democrats agree the move could hurt them, though not for the reasons Republicans would like.
Whether party leaders listen is another question. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said earlier this fall that Democrats “haven’t ruled anything out” when it comes to holding officials accountable.
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