Texans split on Trump’s removal, Antifa
WASHINGTON — Texas Democrats went to workearly Thursday to impeach President Donald Trump for a second time, out ahead of leaders in the House of Representatives who were waiting to see if Trump’s own Cabinet members would help strip him of power using the 25th Amendment, which offers a more direct route.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a top member of the House Judiciary Committee, wasamongahandful of House Democrats who filed impeachment resolutions.
Trump, the Houston Democrat said, “made a clarion call” to his followers to come to Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. He “fired them up” at a rally outside the White House, she said, urging them to move to the Capitol as Congress began to count the Electoral College votes — a procedural step that Trump characterized as a sort of final showdown over the election.
“We will never give up. We will never concede,” Trump said at the rally.
“He had no qualms of sending people down with the idea that they were going into combat,” Jackson Lee said. “They were here for war.”
Jackson Lee was one of several Texas Democrats pushing for Trump’s removal Thursday. Her resolution, which says Trump “has actively and continuously endeavored to undermine the essential institutions and foundations of a democratic system of government in the United States,” has the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Nearly every other Texas Democrat had signed onto impeachment resolutions offered by Democrats in the House on Thursday. Among them were U.S. Reps Al Green and Sylvia Garcia of Houston, Joaquin Castro and Lloyd Doggett of San Antonio, Veronica Escobar of El Paso and Vicente Gonzalez of Mcallen.
Green said impeachment is a necessary response to “the way he incited and attempted to orchestrate what could have been a coup if it had been successful.”
“The House should reconvene immediately to impeach this unfit, unhinged, seditious president,” Doggett said. “For our safety today and as a message to future would-be tyrants, we must demand accountability.”
The effort comes as some Re
publicans, seeking to shift blame from the president, were promoting debunked claims that rioters at the Capitol were not actually Trump’s supporters but leftists in disguise.
“Those who stormed the Capitol yesterday were not Trump supporters,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wrote on Facebook. Paxton had addressed the crowd at a rally outside the White House onwednesday before moving to the Capitol, telling them, “we will not quit fighting.”
Paxton should also be held accountable for Wednesday’s events, said Chris Turner, a state representative who chairs the Texas House Democratic Caucus. He called on the state Legislature to “consider all options at our disposal” to hold Paxton responsible for any role he may have played in inciting violence, pointing to his comments at the rally.
In D.C., there was growing consensus among Democrats that something needed to be done to hold the president accountable.
“What we saw from the president is so incredibly dangerous and so antithetical to what we not just believe should happen, but expect to happen in response to our elections,” said U.S. Rep. Liz
zie Fletcher, a Houstondemocrat. “We absolutely have to have accountability.”
Fletcher — who on Thursday evening backed impeachment, saying Trump “represents a grave threat to our Constitution and to our country” — was initially unsure if it was the correct route.
“We impeached the president a year ago. We warned of this danger,” she said. “Nobody did it without a sincere and deeply held concern about his fitness for office, and I think we are witnessing the extent of those well-founded fears right now.”
Many were pressuring members of the administration to act. Three Texas Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee — Garcia, Jackson Lee and Escobar — signed a letter calling on the administration to invoke the 25th Amendment. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat, made similar calls on Twitter.
“After the carnage in the Capitol incited by Trump and his enablers like (Sen. Ted) Cruz and (Sen. Josh) Hawley, this is the only choice,” Castro said.
While it was mostly Democrats calling for Trump’s removal Thursday, even some Republicans said he bears someblame for
the storming of the Capitol.
“People need to go to jail and the president should never have spun up certain Americans to believe something that simply cannot be,” U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Central Texas Republican, said in a speech on the House floor Wednesday night.
“Rhetoric has consequences,” U.S. Rep. Michael Mccaul, a Republican whose district stretches from Houston to Austin, said on Twitter. “It certainly did in this case.”
Others, meanwhile, sought to keep pressure on Cruz and other Republicans who objected to electoral votes on Wednesday, blaming them for escalating the post-election strife that preceded Wednesday’s eruption.
In Houston, about a dozen people gathered outside the building housing Cruz’s office, shouting andholding signs saying “Remove Traitors,” “25th Amendment” and “Trump lost, fascists get out.”
U.S. Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez, a New York Democrat, called for the Senate to expel Cruz if he doesn’t resign, echoing calls Castro made on Wednesday.
“Sen. Cruz, you must accept responsibility for how your craven, self-serving actions contributed to the deaths of four people yesterday,” she said in a tweet.
Cruz responded: “Leading a debate in the Senate on ensuring election integrity is doing our jobs, and it’s in no way responsible for the despicable terrorists who attacked the Capitol yesterday.
“Sorry, I ain’t going anywhere,” he said.
U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Houston Republican, meanwhile, said someof his Gopcolleagues in the House played a bigger role in planting the seeds for yesterday’s riots on Capitol Hill than many realize.
“These people have been lied to en masse by the millions,” Crenshaw said. “In the sense that they were led to believe Jan. 6 was anything but a political performance for a few opportunistic politicians to give a five-minute speech. That is all that it ever was. People were lied to.”
Crenshaw was among those who supported a Texas lawsuit aimed at overturning results from four battleground states, which the Supreme Court rejected. But he voted to certify Biden’s win on Thursday.
Sixteen Texas Republicans in the House voted to object to certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s win, even after the riot.
Some joined Paxton in falsely accusing antifa and leftists for inciting the violence.
U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Tyler Republican, insinuated one of “those leading the charge” was a leftist, tweeting: “Please people; no violence. That only hurts our cause. Those leading the charge like the guy in yellow with the communist hammer & sickle tattoo: stopping the violence applies to you too.”
The tattoo Gohmert appeared to be referencing was not a hammer and sickle, but a symbol from the video game “Dishonored.”
Similar theories spread online and were quickly debunked. Many of those pictured at the rallies are known right-wing activists.
Even Trump acknowledged the rioters were his supporters, saying in a recorded message urging them to go home on Wednesday: “We love you, you’re very special.”