Democratic debate: Candidates call Trump impeachment 'global Watergate' and say he's 'most corrupt president in living history'

The leading Democratic presidential candidates joined each other in California for a debate set nearly 50 days before the first votes are cast — and just after Donald Trump was impeached by Congress.

All seven White House hopefuls who qualified for the most recent debate took the stage at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles the day after the US House of Representatives voted to approve two articles of impeachment against the president, one for abusing the power of his office and another for obstructing Congress during its investigation into his Ukraine dealings.

Elizabeth Warren described the president as the most corrupt “in living history”, while Joe Biden said Mr Trump’s response to the impeachment saga was “dumbing down” the office of the presidency. Bernie Sanders also said Mr Trump was “running the most corrupt administration in the modern history of this country”.

“I will personally be doing this … making the case that we have a president who has sold out the work families of this country”, he added, “and the case to be made is … we cannot have a president with that temperament who is dishonouring the” office of the president.

“This is a global Watergate”, Amy Klobuchar said, describing how Mr Trump requested “dirt” from a foreign government on a political opponent. ​

Before Thursday night's debate, all seven had expressed their support for impeachment to varying degrees, with Ms Klobuchar previously calling it a “global Watergate” along the campaign trail while others expressed concerns for how the proceedings may impact the future of the Democratic Party.

Tom Steyer, a billionaire activist and the last candidate on stage to throw his hat in the ring for the Oval Office, effectively became known as a national figure during Mr Trump’s tenure in the White House through his campaign to impeach the president. He ultimately received eight million signatures on his online impeachment petition form before declaring a run for office in July.

Mr Sanders and Ms Warren, two of the more liberal senators who launched presidential campaigns in 2020, have also expressed strong support for impeachment in the past. Ms Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the president should be impeached early on in April after reading Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Ms Warren said at the time that she had read the report in full, which showed “a hostile foreign government attacked our 2016 election to help Donald Trump and Donald Trump welcomed that help”.

“Mueller put the next step in the hands of Congress: ‘Congress has authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice’,” she wrote. “The correct process for exercising that authority is impeachment.”

Pete Buttigieg, the millennial mayor from South Bend, Indiana who has risen in the polls in recent months, also said in late April that Mr Trump “made it pretty clear that he deserves impeachment”.

Mr Sanders released a video immediately after the House passed both votes on the articles of impeachment against the president, calling the move “the right thing to do” and saying the US must “never forget that no individual in this country, certainly not the president of the United States, is above the law — is above the constitution”.

Others have been somewhat more hesitant in their approach to the issue of impeachment.

Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur whose campaign has been built on a plan for universal income called the “Freedom Dividend”, has said he is “pro-impeachment” but felt the issue would be a “loser” for the party.

“Not a single Republican has given any indication that they’re in fact-finding mode. They’re all in defend-the-president mode”, Mr Yang previously told Rolling Stone in a story published earlier this month.

He added: “You need literally dozens of Republican senators to switch sides when the trial starts, which we’ve gotten zero indication is going to happen.”

Ms Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota, has meanwhile called for a “fair trial” in the US Senate and the ability for lawmakers to see all of the evidence surrounding Mr Trump’s alleged abuse of power.

“I want to look at all the evidence”, she said in a recent interview with ABC’s The View. “I am the one that said this is impeachable conduct. You have to look at each count, but I think this is very serious what happened here, and it will come over to the Senate, and remember, this isn’t a criminal proceeding. It is actually a decision under the constitution about whether or not he should be removed from office.”

She also said she would stay in Washington to serve a juror throughout the impeachment trial if it comes to that, telling The View: “What else am I going to do? I have a constitutional duty and I have to fulfil that duty.”

Mr Biden, the former vice president who has maintained a top-tier candidacy throughout the campaign trail, also expressed his support for impeachment in early October, after initially seeming to skirt the issue at times.

There were only two Democrats who voted against both impeachment articles against Mr Trump, and another who split his vote. Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaii Democrat who is also running for president in 2020 but did not make the debates on Thursday night, voted “present”.