After House Condemns Trump Tweets, President's Ratings Rise Among GOP

With the debate in Washington heating up over calls by Democrats to impeach President Trump, his approval rating among Republicans is up. 

After the Democrat-controlled House on Tuesday passed a resolution condemning Trump's tweet against four liberal congresswomen, the president's poll numbers with his GOP base went higher.

Trump's criticized them for criticizing America, telling them to go back to the countries they came from.

One Republican strategist said he thinks there was a method to the president's very controversial tweets to make "the squad" as they are known, the face of the Democratic party before the 2020 election. 

And while the president is getting pummeled in the mainstream media, he still has the support of many Americans.

Drive down red house road in Appomattox, Va., and the sign in front of Friendship Baptist Church reads, "America: Love It or Leave It."

The man behind it is Pastor E. W. Lucas. He usually puts sermon titles on the sign.

"I thought I was going to make some remarks regarding the situation in Washington," Lucas explained. "It just came to me. 'America, I love it. If you don't love it, leave it.'  Since we've had favorable comments on it, I thought I'd just leave it a while." 

Lucas says people should be grateful for living in America. 

"People that feel hard about our president and want to down the president and down the country and everything, they ought to go over there and live in these other countries for a little while," he added. 

Lucas says his duty as a pastor, to speak what he believes is the truth, comes first. 

"Preachers, by and large, today, are afraid they're gonna hurt somebody's feelings, and when I get in the pulpit, iI'm afraid I won't hurt somebody's feelings," he explained.  

Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving forward in her defense of four progressive congresswomen, a day after the House vote condemning the president's attacks on the self-styled "squad."

"We did what our members wanted to do," Pelosi said. 

Pelosi is presenting a united front and unequivocal in her defense of the four most progressive members of her party.

"We weren't saying that he was racist," the speaker said. "We were saying that the words that he used were racist."

The House resolution passed Tuesday and carries little firepower beyond an official condemnation

But on the House floor, the vote exposed a deep partisan rift with every Democrat and four Republicans voting to condemn the president. 

 "I know racism when I see it," said Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). 

"I see nothing that references anybody's race," countered Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WIS)

"They're choosing him over country," Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MICH) said. 

The standard-bearers of the group President Trump told to "go back" in Sunday's tweet spoke out after the floor vote. 

"They could not bring themselves to have the basic human decency to vote against the statement that the president made," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

The House vote, a far cry from the normally staid Senate, where the issue is unlikely to come up in a chamber under Republican control. 

"If the issue came up in the Senate, I wouldn't vote for it," said Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA).

"Do I think the president's a racist? No, and let me tell you why. If you're a Somali refugee and you're wearing a MAGA hat and you're a big Trump fan, you'd probably be having dinner at the White House," noted Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-SC)

After an impeachment resolution was introduced again in the House, Sen. Graham was asked if it's all part of the president's strategy. 

"Once you vote to say the guy's a racist, then it makes it harder for you not to impeach if you think there're grounds," he said. 

The impeachment resolution brought forward by Rep. Al Green (D-TX) was blocked in the House Wednesday night by about a 3-2 margin as the chamber killed the measure 332-95.

The vote showed that so far, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been successful in her effort to prevent a Democratic stampede toward impeachment before additional evidence is developed that could win over a public that has so far been skeptical about ousting Trump.