Obama: Rangel is at "The End of His Career"
Embattled Rep. Charles Rangel has learned that even President Obama is not optimistic about the congressman's chances of surviving an ethics investigation:
President Barack Obama is sending a strong signal to ethics-embattled Harlem Rep. Charles Rangel, telling CBS news that the time has come for the 80-year-old dean of New York’s congressional delegation to end his career “with dignity.”
But a person close to the Rangel tells POLITICO the embattled Democrat “doesn’t give a damn about what the president thinks about this” and won’t step down.
Yet Obama’s statement clearly changes the dynamic, and makes it much harder for the tenacious Rangel to hold on, according to Congressional sources.
After days of administration officials dodging questions about Rangel, Obama took on the issue with devastating bluntness in a interview with Harry Smith of the CBS “Early Show,” repeatedly referring to Rangel, who backed Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential primary, in the past tense.
“I think Charlie Rangel served a very long time and served— his constituents very well but these— allegations are very troubling,” the president told Smith in an interviewed aired Friday night on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.
“And he'll— he's somebody who's at the end of his career. Eighty years old. I'm sure that— what he wants is to be able to— end his career with dignity. And my hope is that— it happens,” he added.
