Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) announced on Thursday that she is selling t-shirts that hearken back to her vulgar calls to impeach President Donald Trump in order to raise money for her congressional re-election campaign.
“Lean in with me to hold this lawless President accountable. Together, we will fight back and protect our democracy,” Tlaib tweeted with a link to the apparel. “Our country depends on it! … and yes you can even wear what you feel.”
The freshman congresswoman also sent out an email blast to her constituents introducing the new line. The $29 shirts come in two designs — each with three different color choices — and sport the now-infamous phrase “Impeach the MF.”
Lean in with me to hold this lawless President accountable. Together, we will fight back and protect our democracy.
Our country depends on it!
…and yes you can even wear what you feel https://t.co/8C3BUfp1kf pic.twitter.com/QwBADidAHo
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) September 26, 2019
Only hours after Tlaib was sworn into Congress in January, she was recorded vowing to go after Trump during an event hosted by the progressive organizations MoveOn.org and New American Leaders. Referring to the president, Tlaib shouted at a crowd of left-wing supporters that she is going to go in and “impeach the motherf****r.”
While the profanity drew immediate criticism from both sides of the political aisle, the Michigan congresswoman has touted her vulgar statement as an anti-Trump rallying cry.
Tlaib’s new t-shirt line comes just days after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that House Democrats would be moving forward with an impeachment inquiry. The move was in response to a whistleblower’s testimony accusing Trump of asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for using his position as vice president to remove a Ukrainian prosecutor who was looking into his son’s business dealings.
Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI), who also serves the people of Michigan, slammed Tlaib for the inappropriate and hypocritical campaign merchandise.
“Can you imagine the outrage if I had put a t-shirt together like that for impeaching Obama?” Huizenga told The Detroit News following its release.
“First of all, my mother would have called me and told me, ‘shame on you.’ Then I would have heard from my Republican colleagues asking me, ‘What in the world are you doing?'” He continued. “Then I would have to face myself in the mirror and my kids and explain what’s going on, at the same time, I’m getting preachy about decorum and how we need civility in politics.”
Tlaib, however, has been one of the loudest voices in Congress to call for the president’s impeachment, doing so even prior to her swearing into office. In March, she introduced a resolution into the House of Representatives to investigate whether Trump had committed any impeachable offenses.
“We have a duty in this chamber to inquire about these acts, to investigate them, find out if there was any wrongdoing and seek accountability if any has been found,” Tlaib said at the time. “If, at the end, it gets the president to comply [with the law], then we did our job. If the president doesn’t, we move forward and at the very least put any future presidents on notice that Congress will hold you accountable and will require you to divest.”
The resolution failed to gain traction and subsequently stalled in the House.