WSJ editorial urges Trump to resign
The Wall Street Journal — which has offered many editorials in support of President Donald J. Trump — on Jan. 7, urged that the president resign to avoid impeachment.
Under the headline “Donald Trump’s Final Days,” the Journal excoriated the president for “an assault on the constitutional process for transferring power after an election.”
The Editorial Board of the Journal, the American flagship of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire, denounced President Trump on Thursday for inciting a mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol.
The unsigned article said “this week has probably finished Trump as a serious political figure. It described his behavior as “impeachable.”
The president received kinder treatment on Fox News on Wednesday night, when primetime hosts like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham criticized the day’s violence at the Capitol but refrained from placing blame on Trump.
The Journal wrote that Trump “has refused to accept the basic bargain of democracy, which is to accept the result, win or lose.”
The New York Times reported that the present administration plunged deeper into crisis on Thursday as more officials resigned in protest, prominent Republicans broke with Trump and Democratic congressional leaders threatened to impeach him for encouraging a mob that stormed the Capitol.
What was already shaping up as a volatile final stretch to the Trump presidency took on an air of national emergency as the White House emptied out and some Republicans joined Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a cascade of Democrats calling for Trump to be removed from office without waiting the 13 days until the inauguration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Ending a day of public silence, Trump posted a 2½-minute video on Twitter Thursday evening denouncing the mob attack in a way that he had refused to do a day earlier.
Reading dutifully from a script prepared by staffers, he declared himself “outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem” and told those who broke the law that “you will pay.”
While he did not give up his false claims of election fraud, he finally conceded defeat.
“A new administration will be inaugurated on Jan. 20,” Trump acknowledged. “My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation.”