Republicans join push to oust prez
Trump calls impeachment ‘tremendous danger’
The U.S. House continued rushing headlong toward impeaching President Trump for the deadly U.S. Capitol siege, with Republican lawmakers opening the door for their colleagues to break with the president who called the attempts to oust him a “tremendous danger” to America.
House lawmakers voted 223-205 late Tuesday night on a nonbinding resolution urging Vice President Mike Pence and members of the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to strip Trump of his powers.
Pence rejected that call in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying, “I do not believe that such a course of action is in the best interest of our nation or consistent with our Constitution.”
Without Pence’s support, the House is preparing to move ahead with an impeachment vote expected today. Pelosi has already named impeachment managers for what would be Trump’s second U.S. Senate trial.
Four GOP lawmakers have announced they will vote to impeach, including the No. 3 House Republican, U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who said in a statement, “There has never been a greater betrayal by the President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.”
No House Republican voted to impeach Trump in 2019.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has told associates he believes Trump committed impeachable offenses, The New York Times reported.
The entire Massachusetts delegation in the House has signed onto the article of impeachment charging Trump with “incitement of insurrection.”
Trump, speaking at the border wall in Texas in his first public appearance since the Capitol violence, called the impeachment push “a continuation of the greatest and most vicious witch hunt” and said the 25th Amendment “is of zero risk to me, but will come back to haunt Joe Biden.”
Earlier in the day, Trump told reporters the proceedings are “causing tremendous danger to our country.”
But he stressed that he wants “absolutely no violence” as local law enforcement gird for potential armed protests at state capitals ahead of Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
Trump also said the speech he delivered to a throng of loyalists at the Ellipse last Wednesday — that many Democrats have now blamed with inciting the Capitol riot — was “totally appropriate.”
U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., grabbed attention during the House Rules Committee’s discussion on the 25th Amendment legislation when he slammed Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan for “giving oxygen” to Trump’s unfounded claims of election fraud.
“I saw this mob trying to break glass doors to get access to the (House) floor,” McGovern said, adding, “They came here to destroy things, to desecrate things, and they did so because the president of the United States told them to.”