President Donald Trump told reporters in the Rose Garden on Friday that "you can't impeach somebody that's doing a great job."
Trump's remark came during a press conference after he met with newly elected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and other congressional leaders about negotiating a deal to resolve the partial government shutdown.
Fox News reporter Kevin Corke asked the president about comments made by freshman lawmaker Rep. Rashida Tlaib's comments on Thursday. Tlaib, speaking of Trump, promised to "impeach the motherfucker."
"What is your personal message to those who are impacted by the shutdown, and if you wouldn't mind, if you could comment on the remarks made by a freshman congressperson about impeachment, involving a bit of profanity last night," Corke asked.
"Well, you can't impeach somebody that's doing a great job," Trump said. "That's the way I view it. I've probably done more in the first two years than any president, any administration in the history of our country ... I think it's very hard to impeach somebody who has done a great job, that's number one."
Trump revealed that he brought up impeachment to Pelosi during the meeting.
"And we even talked about that today. I said 'why don't you use this for impeachment?' And Nancy said, 'we're not looking to impeach you,'" Trump said. "I said 'that's good, Nancy, that's good.' But you don't impeach people when they're doing a good job."
Trump addressed the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, repeating that he didn't collude with the Russians and saying he didn't need the Russians in order to win in 2016.
"And you don't impeach people when there was no collusion, because there was no collusion. You know Russians better than I do, Kevin. There was no collusion. I didn't need Russians to help me win Iowa," Trump said. "I didn't need Russians to help me win the great states of Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania. I won them because I went there and I campaigned hard and my opponent didn't go there enough. And she lost a lot of good states. A lot of states that for many, many years, for decades have gone Democrat, they went Republican. That's why I won, not because of Russia."
Corke followed up to ask what Trump specifically thought about the profanity Tlaib used.
"I think she dishonored herself, and I think she dishonored her family. Using language like that in front of her son and whoever else was there, I thought that was a great dishonor to her and to her family," Trump said. "I thought it was high lively disrespectful to the United States of America."