BY JORDAN FABIAN AND BRETT SAMUELS - 05/08/19
09:47 PM EDT
PANAMA CITY BEACH, Fla.—President Trump, speaking at
a rally hours after the White House invoked executive privilege to block the
release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s full
report, predicted congressional Democrats’ investigations would propel him to a
reelection victory in 2020.
Trump did not directly address
his administration’s decision to defy a subpoena from House Democrats, a move
that raised the specter of a constitutional crisis, but he said the party’s
desire to probe his administration, campaign and businesses would backfire
politically.
“They want to do
investigations instead of investments,” the president told a crowd of
supporters at an outdoor amphitheater just steps from the Gulf of Mexico. “I
think it drives us on to victory in 2020.”
Trump said Democrats’ focus on
investigations is a “disgrace” and that they should instead work with him on
infrastructure, lowering drug prices and improving veterans’ health care.
As he routinely does at his
campaign rallies, Trump hit a number of familiar targets: Democrats, the news
media, China, illegal immigration, social media companies and even what he said
was the venue’s faulty stage.
But Trump largely tiptoed
around the subject that dominated the day’s discussion in the nation’s capital:
his decision to assert executive privilege over the Mueller report, which
preceded a House Judiciary Committee vote to cite Attorney General William Barr for contempt.
After an hours-long
hearing, the panel voted on party lines to hold Barr in contempt for
refusing to comply with a subpoena to provide an unredacted version of the
report. The citation will now head to the Democratic-held House for a
vote.
Trump declined on multiple
occasions Wednesday to take questions from reporters to explain the decision to
assert privilege over the report, and the White House closed a Cabinet meeting
that was scheduled to be open to the press.
Trump mentioned Barr only in
passing during the Wednesday rally but did not address the proceedings.
“Now the Democrats — we have a
great attorney general — now the Democrats are saying, ‘We want more.’ You
know, it was going to be like, ‘We want the Mueller report.’ Now they say,
‘Mueller report? No, we want to start all over again.’”
Outside of a pair of morning
tweets, Trump also did not comment on a New York Times report that
outlined $1
billion in business losses during a decade in the 1980s and 1990s.
Trump won northwest Florida by
wide margins in 2016, and juicing turnout will be key to winning the state
again in 2020. He spent a good portion of his speech addressing his
administration’s efforts to accelerate the recovery from Hurricane Michael, a
Category 5 storm that devastated the region last October, including a pledge for $448 billion in new disaster recovery
money.
“You're getting your money one
way or another, and we're not going to let anybody hold it up,” he said.
Trump went on to revive his
long-running feud with Puerto Rico's leaders, chiding island officials for
their criticism of his response to Hurricane Maria. Scores of Puerto Rican
refugees relocated to Florida after the island was ravaged by Hurricane Maria
in 2017.
Trump also focused his
attention on his potential 2020 Democratic rivals, mocking them as unfit to
lead the country.
“We've got some real
beauties,” he said. "Let's just pick somebody, please, and let's start
this thing.”
In addition to hitting
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
and former Vice President Joe
Biden, Trump took aim at a new target: South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
He said the 37-year-old
candidate doesn’t have the experience to go up against Chinese President Xi
Jinping.
“Representing us against Xi in
China. That will be great,” Trump said.
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