SEEKING CENSURE
U.S. Rep. Watson Coleman leads charge to censure Trump over Charlottesville comments, would be fourth ever
WASHINGTON » U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman is trying to accomplish something that last occurred 169 years ago.
The state’s first African-American woman elected to Congress introduced a resolution Friday that will censure President Donald Trump for his controversial Charlottesville comments.
“We won’t sit idle while (Trump) fans the fires of hate & violence,” Watson Coleman (D-12) tweeted. “As unqualified as he is, sadly, he is the spokesperson for our nation. He must understand that his words & actions have consequences.”
Last Friday, a group of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, and white nationalist groups marched through the streets of Charlottesville, Va. carrying torches and spewing hate. The following day, a group of counter-protesters was mowed down by a car driven by James Alex Fields Jr., killing Heather Heyer and injuring 20 others.
Immediately following the incident, Trump blamed “many sides” for the violence in Charlottesville. The Republican president doubled down on his comments this week, stating there were “fine people on both sides.”
The formal reprimand proposed by Watson Coleman and U.S. Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) will “censure and condemn President Donald Trump for his inadequate response to the violence in Charlottesville” and “his failure to immediately and specifically name and condemn the white supremacist groups responsible for actions of domestic terrorism.” He will also be taken to task for “reasserting that ‘both sides’ were
to blame” and “employing people with ties to white supremacist movements in the White House, such as Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka.”
So far, more than 75 Democrats have co-sponsored the resolution and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has endorsed the censure. No Republicans have signed onto the resolution, though, some have criticized Trump’s comments.
“A tweet of condemnation is not enough,” Watson Coleman, a Ewing resident, said on social media. “Expressing disapproval in 140 characters or fewer is insufficient.”
A presidential censure is rare. It has only occurred three other times in U.S. history.
In 1834, President Andrew Jackson was censured for failing to turn over documents related to the Bank of the United States.
Eight years later, President John Tyler was censured by a Senate committee for an alleged abuse of power.
The last time a presidential censure occurred was in 1848. President James Polk received a formal reprimand by the House for starting the Mexican-American War “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally.”
“Congress has censured Presidents only 3 times before,” Watson Coleman tweeted. “This more than necessitates a 4th.”
The representative urged “Congress must be on the right side of history.”
“If the Exec. Branch refuses to accept facts & truth Congress has a responsibility to take the lead in standing against all terrorism & hate,” she wrote. “As (Trump) continues to rubber stamp our nation’s sordid history of hate, Congress must stand together in opposition.”
The congresswoman could not immediately be reached for comment because she is currently out of the country.