President Trump calling on American professional athletes to rise for the national anthem is so egregious, according to three Democratic members of Congress, that he must be impeached.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) said Tuesday he plans to file a "privileged resolution" that calls for the impeachment of Trump.
"Mr. Speaker, I denounce the comments that were made, and I rise to announce that on next week, Mr. Speaker, I will bring a privileged resolution before the Congress of the United States of America," Rep. Green said. "I will stand here in the well of the Congress and I will call for the impeachment of the President of the United States of America.”
"Mr. Speaker, I rise to denounce these comments that have been made because they have brought discourse to a new low," he said. "Mr. Speaker, this is a level of indecency that is unbecoming the presidency. Mr. Speaker, I rise to say to the world that this is not what America is all about. Calling people SOB's, and we know what a 'B' is. It’s a dog. Mr. Speaker, I rise because my heart tells me that I must do something."
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said Trump's NFL comments are thinly veiled racism and amount to an impeachable offense.
"He’s pointing now to the NFL; we know that the majority of these players are African-Americans and we know what he is doing," Waters said during an MSNBC interview Saturday. "We are not tricked or fooled by him in any shape, form or fashion. Someone said, ‘How is it that he can never criticize Putin, the Kremlin or Charlottesville and those KKK, national supremacists, et cetera, and here he is strongly criticizing football players and NFL players?’ And so it’s clear, we know who he is. He’s defined himself."
"What are we going to do about it?" she continued. "I know, we are not talking about Russia and collusion today and we’re not talking about obstruction of justice, but I hope people understand it’s about all of this that he should not be the President of the United States of America, and we have to get ready for impeachment.”
Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) also said Trump's comments about the NFL merit removing him from office -- although he did not go as far as his Democratic colleagues. Instead he pined for a parliamentary system where a recall election could be called.
"If this was [sic] any other country, what we should be calling for is a recall election in which the American people and I think the majority of American people who did not vote for him in the first place," Meeks said Sunday on MSNBC. "If we were in a parliamentary procedure, we would be calling for a call vote right now so we can get rid of the president."