Washington aftershocks
Biden’s victory affirmed, Trump says transition will be peaceful as disarray ensues from mob wreckage
President Donald Trump seems to have surrendered his ferocious effort to hang onto power Thursday after Congress formally accepted the victory of President-elect Joe Biden, but the nation’s government remained in disarray after a mob attack on the Capitol that struck at the heart of American democracy.
Trump kept out of sight and offline even as Facebook locked his account for the remainder of his presidency and more aides and advisers submitted resignations in protest of his incitement of the rioters who stormed the Capitol to temporarily block the counting of the Electoral College votes.
But in a written statement, he conceded that he would hand over power to Biden on Jan. 20.
“Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th,” Trump said in the statement issued shortly after Congress dismissed his allies’ objections to the electors in the predawn hours.
The statement was released through an aide’s Twitter account since the president’s own had been suspended for encouraging the crowds that ransacked the Capitol. The president has not appeared in person since then to confirm his commitment to its words, leaving some uncertainty about what could still happen in the 13 days left in his presidency.
The angry aftermath of the invasion of the Capitol had Democrats and even some Republicans talking about whether Trump should not be allowed to finish his term but rather removed under the disability clause of the 25th Amendment or through a second impeachment.
“This president should not hold
office one day longer,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who will become the majority leader with the seating of two new Democratic senators elected in Georgia this week. “The quickest and most effective way — it can be done today — to remove this president from office would be for the vice president to immediately invoke the 25th Amendment. If the vice president and the Cabinet refuse to stand up, Congress should reconvene to impeach the president.”
“While it’s only 13 days left, any day can be a horror show for America,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-calif., said, calling Trump’s actions Wednesday a “seditious act.”
In an extraordinary news conference, Pelosi singled out members of the Cabinet by name, asking why they would not intervene.
“Are they ready to say for the next 13 days this dangerous man can assault our democracy?” Pelosi said of the Cabinet.
The likelihood of either Trump being removed or impeached again seemed remote, but some Republicans joined in the call. “All indications are that the president has become unmoored — not just from his duty nor even his oath, but from
reality itself,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-ill., who has been a critic of the president. “It’s time to invoke the 25th Amendment and to end this nightmare.”
Mick Mulvaney, a former White House chief of staff who had been serving as a special envoy for Trump until he
resigned following the mob attack, said the discussion was understandable given the president’s behavior.
“It does not surprise me at all that the 25th Amendment is being discussed,” he told CNBC. Mulvaney said the president had become increasingly erratic.
“Clearly he is not the same as he was eight months ago, and certainly the people advising him are not the same as they were eight months ago, and that leads to a dangerous sort of combination, as you saw yesterday.”
In addition to Mulvaney, more advisers to the president and administration officials quit in protest, bringing the eleventh-hour resignations to more than a half-dozen. Former Attorney General William Barr, once one of the president’s most important defenders until resigning himself last month, said in a statement to The Associated Press that the president’s actions were a “betrayal of his office and supporters” and that “orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable.”
Even as the wreckage of the attack was being swept away in the Capitol, questions were being asked about how security for the building could be overwhelmed by the mob given that it was well known that Trump’s supporters planned to rally in Washington on the day of the Electoral College count. Four people died, including a woman who was shot and three others who suffered medical conditions.
Defying the pressure, Congress proceeded to validate
Biden’s victory in a nearly allnight session, voting down Trump’s allies who objected to electors from two key states. Six Republicans in the Senate and 121 in the House voted to block electors from Arizona, while seven senators and 138 House members voted against electors from Pennsylvania.
It was then left to Vice President Mike Pence, who had rebuffed Trump’s demand that he assert the power to unilaterally block confirmation of the election result as the president of the Senate and presiding officer of the count, to formally announce the results.
“The announcement of the state of the vote by the president of the Senate shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons elected president and vice president of the United States, each for the term beginning on the 20th day of January 2021, and shall be entered together with a list of the votes on the journals of the Senate and the House of Representatives,” Pence said at 3:41 a.m.
With that dry ritualistic language mandated by parliamentarians, Pence officially finalized the defeat of his own ticket and Biden’s coming ascension to the Oval Office.