Trump vents at rivals day after acquittal

US President Donald Trump blistered his political opponents at two venues on Thursday, the day after the Senate acquitted him on two articles of impeachment.

"I've done things wrong in my life, I will admit, ... but this is what the end result is," Trump said in the East Room of the White House, holding up a copy of The Washington Post with the headline "Trump acquitted".

"It's the only good headline I've ever had in The Washington Post," Trump said.

The newspaper, owned by Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos, incidentally, is one to which a White House subscription (along with The New York Times) would not be renewed, the administration said in October.

About an hour before the speech, which was scheduled for 12 pm, media crews who had set up in the East Room were asked to move out for a change in the seating arrangement to accommodate as many guests as possible.

Trump said at the beginning of his speech that he had invited some of his "very good friends", and the room is limited, but "everybody wanted to come. We kept it down to a minimum".

The "minimum" actually was the maximum capacity of the East Room, which is about 24 meters long by 11 meters wide.

Trump's slightly more than hour-long speech was mostly off the cuff, with the president referring only to notes of talking points, without a teleprompter. Trump made clear he was not giving a speech. "It's not anything. It's just we're sort of－it's a celebration."

The president used most of the speech to thank his supporters in the Senate and the House of Representatives and his legal team for the trial. But he didn't limit his vitriol to impeachment.

Trump criticized former FBI director James Comey, whom he fired in May 2017 after a memo of a conversation Trump had with him in February 2017 was leaked.

"Had I not fired James Comey,… I wouldn't even be standing here right now," Trump said. "Dirty cops. Bad people. If this happened to president (Barack) Obama, a lot of people would have been in jail for a long time already."

The Republican-controlled Senate on Wednesday voted to acquit Trump on charges brought by the Democratic-led House.

Discord with Pelosi

Earlier on Thursday, Trump spoke at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, a historically bipartisan event that also was attended by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He criticized those who invoked religion during the impeachment saga.

Pelosi, a Catholic who opened the impeachment inquiry in September, said in December that she prays for Trump.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, a Mormon, cited his faith when he voted to convict Trump on the charge of abuse of power. Romney was the only Republican to vote for conviction. No Democrat voted to acquit. Romney did vote for acquittal on the obstruction of Congress count.

"I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong," Trump said at the breakfast as Pelosi sat nearby on the stage.

The discord between Trump and Pelosi reached a crescendo on Tuesday evening when Trump gave his State of the Union address. Pelosi did not introduce the president with the ceremonial pomp, and Trump subsequently turned his back on the San Francisco Democrat after she extended her hand.

About an hour and a half later, after Trump concluded his address, Pelosi was seen tearing her copy of the speech into pieces.

House Democrats on Thursday rejected a Republican-supported resolution to condemn Pelosi for ripping up the speech, by a 224-193 vote along party lines.

The drama has intensified the gulf between Republicans and Democrats nine months before the US presidential election, in which Trump will attempt to be the first impeached leader to be reelected.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday showed that the US public was evenly split, mostly along party lines, over the acquittal. The national opinion poll found that 43 percent of US adults supported the Senate's decision to keep Trump in office. Forty-one percent opposed the acquittal, and 17 percent reported they were undecided.

Meanwhile, Pete Buttigieg narrowly won Iowa's Democratic presidential caucuses, the state party said on Thursday, after a long delay in releasing the results of the first contest in the race to pick a challenger to Trump.

Buttigieg, a moderate 38-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, edged out progressive US Senator Bernie Sanders by 26.2 percent to 26.1 percent of state-delegate equivalents－the data traditionally used to determine the winner－with 100 percent of precincts counted, the Iowa Democratic Party said.

Reuters contributed to this story.