Three former presidents united in condemning the crowd that stormed the Capitol, while Democrats led calls to impeach President Donald Trump for what they called his incitement of the demonstrators.
Several thousand Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, interrupting the joint session of Congress meeting to certify Democrat Joe Biden as the next US president.
The violence was “incited by a sitting president who has continued to baselessly lie about the outcome of a lawful election, as a moment of great dishonor and shame for our nation,” said Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, calling what happened on Capitol Hill the “desecrated chambers of democracy.”
Here’s my statement on today’s violence at the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/jLCKo2D1Ya
Obama denounced Republicans for a “fantasy narrative” that has “spiraled further and further from reality, and it builds upon years of sown resentments” and urged the party to “choose reality” and “choose America” by certifying the election of Democrat Joe Biden as the next president.
Bill Clinton blamed Trump personally and “more than four years of poison politics spreading deliberate misinformation, sowing distrust in our system, and pitting Americans against one another” for the “unprecedented assault” on the Capitol, the US constitution and the country itself.
“The election was free, the count was fair, the result is final,” Clinton said.
Statement from President Clinton pic.twitter.com/xgbE15v6Fx
George W. Bush called the “insurrection” at the Capitol a “sickening and heartbreaking sight.”
“This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic – not our democratic republic,” Bush said, condemning “people whose passions have been inflamed by falsehoods and false hopes.”
Statement by President George W. Bush on Insurrection at the Capitol pic.twitter.com/rF77j0fIBK
Meanwhile, several Democrat lawmakers have called for Congress to impeach Trump again – as the House did in December 2019, though he was acquitted in the Senate.
“I am drawing up Articles of Impeachment” against Trump, announced Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), saying that Congress “can’t allow him to remain in office” as a “matter of preserving our Republic.”
I am drawing up Articles of Impeachment. Donald J. Trump should be impeached by the House of Representatives & removed from office by the United States Senate. We can’t allow him to remain in office, it’s a matter of preserving our Republic and we need to fulfill our oath.
“Impeach,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) tweeted in agreement.
Rep. Richard Neal (D-Massachusetts), who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee, argued that Trump “incited an insurrection” and should be removed for “an assault on the citadel of democracy.”
The President incited an insurrection in the U.S. Capitol today. The 25th amendment should be invoked, and he should be removed from office. What we witnessed in Washington today was an assault on the citadel of democracy.
Meanwhile, every single Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee has signed a letter to Vice President Mike Pence demanding he invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office.
NEW:All the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee just wrote a letter to Vice President Pence, urging him to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump: pic.twitter.com/6VrcHI5hMr
CBS News has reported that more than one member of Trump’s cabinet has discussed the same thing, but haven’t made a formal motion to Pence yet.
JUST IN: “This is not news we deliver lightly,” @margbrennan says as she reports: Trump Cabinet secretaries are discussing invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump. Nothing formal yet presented to VP Pence.“I’m talking about actual members of the Cabinet,” she says
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