President Trump, as he is impeached, holds Michigan campaign rally
The president was on the campaign trail as the impeachment vote took place.
At the very moment that the House of Representatives was voting to impeach President Donald Trump Wednesday night, the president was lashing out against Democrats in one his longest campaign rally appearances.
Addressing the crowd at Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek, Michigan, Trump delivered a more than two-hour address that railed against impeachment and also included a litany of classic Trump topics including light bulbs, James Comey, former President Barack Obama, and the 2020 Democrats.
Trump took the stage just as Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff introduced the two articles of impeachment facing the president.
"It doesn't feel like we're being impeached," Trump said, to cheers, after stepping to the podium.
He got word of the vote's result a little while later, when campaign press secretary Kayleigh McEnany brought out a sign displaying the vote tabulation and showed it to him from the buffer area in front of the stage.
The president quickly praised Republicans for voting unanimously against the articles, saying, “So we got every single Republican voted for us? Whoa! Wow, we didn’t lose one Republican vote and three Democrats voted for us -- hey! The Republican Party has never been so affronted but they have never been so united as they are right now.”
Trump's words Wednesday night echoed much of the fiery letter he sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday.
“Through their depraved actions today, crazy Nancy Pelosi’s House Democrats have branded themselves with an eternal mark of shame. And it really is, it’s a disgrace,” he said.
At one point Trump angrily railed against Republicans for not impeaching President Obama, suggesting the former president should be impeached for telling Americans they can keep their doctors. “Remember Obama, you can have your doctor, you can have your plan. It did not work out that way, did it? I think we should impeach him for that. Let's impeach him for that.”
Minutes into his speech, Trump called for a protester -- who he said gave a security person the middle finger -- to be kicked out.
"You're about to hear the greatest speech you've ever heard," Trump said, before decrying the media, saying they would cover the protester being ejected and not the speech itself.
Ninety minutes into his speech, he mocked New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Carolyn Maloney and asked for them to give back the money he contributed to their campaigns in the past.
Prior to the president's appearance, Vice President Mike Pence, who introduced Trump, said the commander-in-chief wanted to see the unified Republican vote in the House before taking the stage.
"Now the president is going to be out in just a few minutes," Pence said told the crowd. "But he wanted to wait to see that stronger unified Republican votes on the floor of the Congress tonight."
Trump did not end up waiting for the vote, however, taking the stage minutes before House Intelligence Committee Chair Schiff finished speaking. Both articles of impeachment passed while he continued to speak to his supporters.
The reelection team expected he'd be in rare form on stage in Michigan, a state that was crucial to Trump's 2016 victory and where supporters had been lined up for hours ahead of Wednesday's event.
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In the days leading up to Wednesday's House impeachment vote, the president publicly lashed out in both new and familiar ways.
He sent a vicious letter railing against impeachment as an "illegal, partisan attempted coup" to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the eve of the impeachment vote. "One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again," the letter read.
And while members debate impeachment on the House floor Wednesday, the president has dozens of tweets or retweets on his account, including an all-caps tweet just after White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said the president was "working all day."
“SUCH ATROCIOUS LIES BY THE RADICAL LEFT, DO NOTHING DEMOCRATS. THIS IS AN ASSAULT ON AMERICA, AND AN ASSAULT ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY!!!!” Trump tweeted.
According to those close to him, the president has been described as upset and angry about facing impeachment, despite allies suggesting it could work out for him politically in the end.
Trump's reelection campaign has also ratcheted up the rhetoric ahead of Wednesday's vote, blasting out fundraising emails that take cues directly from the president.
In one fundraising email sent to millions of Trump's supporters, the campaign quotes portions of the president's six-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling impeachment an "open war on American democracy" and insisting more due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch trials.
"Before the upcoming vote, I want to post another HUGE fundraising number to ensure that we have the resources to win this IMPEACHMENT WAR," the fundraising email states.
Since Pelosi launched the impeachment inquiry in September, the president's campaign has progressively ramped up its language pushing back against House Democrats.
Earlier in December, ABC News reported the campaign was running misleading Facebook ads and sending fundraising emails implying that House Democrats were pushing "treason" allegations against Trump in the ongoing impeachment inquiry.
The campaign revealed over the weekend that they had raised $10 million in small-dollar donations last week amid the impeachment push.
ABC News' Jonathan Karl contributed to this report.
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