The swearing in of the new Congress this week was dominated by one word: impeachment.
Nancy Pelosi, returning for a second stint as speaker, said she would not rule out Donald Trump being either indicted or impeached.
Meanwhile one representative announced plans to re-introduce articles of impeachment against the president, while another went even further - bluntly promising to “impeach the motherf***er” at a raucous rally in Washington.
On Friday morning, Mr Trump responded by asking the question: “How do you impeach a president … who has done nothing wrong?”
The president - who has seen five of his aides admit to criminal wrongdoing, and is awaiting the findings of Robert Mueller's sprawling special counsel investigation - said Democrats only want to impeach him because he has had “too much success”.
He tweeted: “How do you impeach a president who has won perhaps the greatest election of all time, done nothing wrong (no Collusion with Russia, it was the Dems that Colluded), had the most successful first two years of any president, and is the most popular Republican in party history 93%?”
In a separate tweet referring to the stock market turmoil, in which he then turned to impeachment, he wrote: “As I have stated many times, if the Democrats take over the House or Senate, there will be disruption to the Financial Markets.
“We won the Senate, they won the House. Things will settle down. They only want to impeach me because they know they can’t win in 2020, too much success!”
The Democrats are now the majority party in the House, which will provide greater opportunity for them to successfully bring impeachment measures to the floor.
However, Ms Pelosi said she does not intend the party to seek grounds for impeachment unless there is clear evidence and a bipartisan agreement on the issue at hand.
Some Democrats have also suggesting waiting for special counsel Robert Mueller to complete his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election before going forward with impeachment proceedings.
