Just a day after being acquitted by the Senate on two articles of impeachment, President Donald Trump is expected to declare victory in a Thursday post-acquittal speech. Set to take place at noon ET, the speech will be streamed live on C-SPAN 2 both on television and its webpage with log in credentials from television providers, according to Newsweek. The speech will also be livestreamed via the White House’s YouTube page beginning at noon.
Although details of the speech remain murky, after the final vote on the Senate floor Wednesday, the president had announced that he would be making a “public statement” about the “impeachment Hoax” to “discuss our country’s VICTORY.”
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After the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump in December on Article I, abuse of power, in a vote of f 230 to 197 (and one present vote) and in a vote of 229 to 198 (and one present vote) on Article II, obstruction of Congress, the Senate on Wednesday, Feb. 6, voted to acquit him on both charges in votes of 52-48 and 53-47.
The impeachment process had been a contentious battle that had largely been divided along party lines, Trump frequently accusing the Democrats of “presidential harassment” and calling the proceedings a “witch hunt.”
Those same sentiments were echoed in an official statement from the White House addressing the president’s acquittal.
“In what has now become a consistent tradition for Democrats, this was yet another witch-hunt that deprived the President of his due process rights and was based on a series of lies,” the statement read in part. “Rep. Adam Schiff lied to Congress and the American people with a totally made up statement about the President’s phone call. Will there be no retribution? Speaker Nancy Pelosi also lied to the American people about the need to swiftly pass impeachment articles they dreamt up, only to sit on them for a month before sending over to the Senate. In the Senate, the Democrats continued to make their political motivations clear – Rep. Schiff proclaimed the issues ‘cannot be decided at the ballot box’ – proving once again they think they know better than the voters of this country. This entire effort by the Democrats was aimed at overturning the results of the 2016 election and interfering with the 2020 election.”
Ahead of his speech, Trump was spotted celebrating his victory at the National Prayer Breakfast, the president holding up copies of USA Today and The Washington Post with headlines reading “ACQUITTED” and “Trump Acquitted” on the front pages, according to NBC News.
Trump’s post-acquittal speech will be live streamed from The White House YouTube page, which can be found by clicking here, beginning at noon ET.
