Unapologetic Trump faces impeachment
Pence refuses to use 25th Amendment
WASHINGTON: A defiant Donald Trump yesterday rejected blame for a deadly assault on Congress by his supporters, but cracks emerged in the president’s Republican support with several now backing his removal on the eve of an all-but-certain historic second impeachment.
Vice President Mike Pence gave the besieged Mr Trump a lifeline by saying he would not invoke the 25th Amendment that allows him and the cabinet to strip a sitting president of his powers.
“I do not believe that such a course of action is in the best interest of our nation,” Mr Pence wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The House of Representatives delivered a stinging rebuke to Mr Trump anyway, voting almost entirely along party lines to call on Mr Pence to take action and remove the president.
But with the 25th Amendment avenue dead in the water, Mr Trump’s impeachment overnight appeared virtually assured.
Ms Pelosi quickly announced her managers for the process and a House impeachment vote was scheduled for 3pm local time.
The single charge of “incitement of insurrection” — over Mr Trump’s Jan 6 speech in which he claimed he was the real winner of the November election, then urged supporters to march on Congress and “fight” — is all but sure to get majority support.
Earlier Mr Trump travelled to Alamo, Texas, and although he urged “peace and calm” during a visit to the USMexico border wall, his overall message was of refusal to take blame for last week’s violence.
On Jan 6 the pro-Trump crowd attacked the Capitol, fighting with police, ransacking offices and briefly forcing terrified lawmakers — and Mr Pence — to abandon a session certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.
An unapologetic Mr Trump insisted that “everybody” thought his speech was “totally appropriate”.
He dubbed his likely impeachment a “continuation of the greatest witch-hunt in the history of politics”.
And he warned that while “you have to always avoid violence”, he said his supporters were furious, adding: “I’ve never seen such anger.”
Democrats are all but sure to approve impeachment in the House.
It seemed unlikely, however, that the Republican-controlled Senate would be called into an emergency session to put Mr Trump on trial before his term runs out on Jan 20.
However, several in the party that Mr Trump has held in thrall for the last four years have broken ranks.
According to The New York Times, the powerful Senate majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, has said privately he believes Mr Trump did commit impeachable offences.
In the House, the number three Republican Liz Cheney said she would be voting to impeach and called Mr Trump’s actions “a betrayal” of his office.
This came after top House Republican Kevin McCarthy said members would not be required to toe the party line on the vote, a significant weakening of support for Mr Trump.
Four other House Republicans also publicly stated they would vote for impeachment.
Barred from Twitter and Facebook — two platforms integral to his shock rise to power in 2016 — Mr Trump is for the first time struggling to shape the news message, a censoring by the big tech companies that he called a “catastrophic mistake”.
His social media woes continued yesterday when video-sharing giant YouTube said it was suspending his official account for at least a week, out of concern his videos could incite violence.
Ever since the Nov 3 election, the Republican real estate tycoon has been obsessively pushing his lie that Mr Biden stole the election.
But his speech to supporters last week and the crowd’s attack on Congress, which included fatally wounding a policeman, proved beyond the pale even for some of his staunchest supporters.
Major representatives of the corporate and sporting world have rejected him, while the Republican Party is splitting between ultra-loyalists and a growing number of lawmakers who see him as a liability.
Mr Trump has yet to congratulate Mr Biden or urge his supporters to stand behind the incoming president after he is inaugurated, a gesture of political unity considered routine after US elections.
With a string of cabinet officials quitting the government — most recently the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf on Monday — it’s also clear that Mr Trump’s grip on power is tenuous.
The Republican-controlled Senate, however, is in recess until Jan 19 and its leadership says there is no way to rush through an impeachment trial before Mr Biden takes over the following day.
This would mean that Mr Trump, who was acquitted in the Senate last year after his first impeachment trial, would not be forced out of office early.
Not even all Democrats are gunning wholeheartedly for a trial, worried that this would overshadow Mr Biden’s first days in office.
The new president will already face the challenges of an out-of-control Covid-19 pandemic, the stumbling vaccination programme, a shaky economy and now the aftermath of violent opposition from parts of Mr Trump’s voter base.
Meanwhile, Washington has begun to take on the appearance of a fortress, with security substantially boosted one week before Mr Biden is sworn in.