Donald Trump called for Rep. Jamie Raskin to be expelled from Congress on Tuesday, escalating a fight over impeachment and constitutional power after the Maryland Democrat said he had reason to fear a return to the House majority.
In a Truth Social post that also circulated a 195-word tirade, Trump described Raskin as a “bum,” echoed host Mark Levin’s demand that Republicans “move to expel” him, and said the congressman had spent his first term trying to impeach him and “failed miserably.” Trump added that Raskin would “be in jail right now” if Joe Biden had not issued sweeping preemptive pardons before leaving office.
The threat is notable because expelling a member of Congress is rare and carries a high bar: it takes a two-thirds vote in either the House or the Senate. Since the Civil War, that step has been taken only three times, most recently when George Santos was expelled in December 2023 amid fraud and ethics scandals.
Levin said on X that if Raskin continues to “abuse our constitutional system and undermine our electoral process,” Congress should take the “necessary steps” to expel him. Trump shared that post and said he agreed, writing that Congress could never be great with people like Raskin, who he said were driven by “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Raskin answered on All In with Chris Hayes by saying Trump was “having nightmare flashbacks about impeachment” and by turning the accusation back on the president. “There’s a very easy way to not get impeached: Stop committing impeachable offenses,” he said, adding, “Stop committing high crimes and misdemeanors.” He cited war powers, federal spending and tariffs, saying Trump should “not go to war and usurp the powers of Congress to declare war,” should not spend money differently from how Congress appropriates it, and should not impose illegal taxes and tariffs without congressional consent.
The exchange lands at a moment when Raskin has repeatedly suggested Democrats could launch impeachment proceedings if they retake the House in the midterms, while Trump is also pushing a symbolic effort to pressure lawmakers into passing a resolution to “expunge” his two existing impeachments. No formal expulsion effort against Raskin has been announced, and given the vote threshold, any move would face a steep climb even before it reached the floor.
For now, the fight is less about whether Raskin is actually on the verge of being expelled than about how far Trump is willing to go to turn impeachment back into a weapon against one of his most persistent critics.
