Pa. lawmakers share blame for Capitol riot
They were complicit in their continued support of Trump’s baseless lies of a rigged election.
We join the bipartisan calls for the removal of President Donald Trump from office. His incitement of his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday was a seditious act that cannot be tolerated.
His continued insistence that the fair and legitimate election that he lost was rigged — claims he began making even before the election — are the mark of totalitarian inclinations and disregard for the country and its founding principles. For four years, Trump faced few consequences for his outrageous behavior and denial of the truth, galvanizing followers within the GOP. Wednesday’s insurrection was incited by Trump, fueled by his enablers, and facilitated by four years with little accountability. That must stop.
Trump was impeached in 2019 for withholding foreign aid to pressure the prime minister of Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. He was acquitted by the Senate — and learned nothing from the entire experience.
It is tempting to want to just run out the clock before Trump’s tenure as president ends. But the images of the assault on the Capitol are proof that the risk of allowing Trump to stay in power for even a short period is just too high.
Trump needs to face consequences. So do the Republican lawmakers who were complicit in sparking a coup attempt by their continued support of Trump’s baseless lies of a rigged election. When Congress returned on Wednesday night to certify the Electoral College results, 147 Republicans voted to overturn the results. That includes eight of the nine Republicans who represent Pennsylvania in the House. In their actions, they validated the lies that led to the siege and so were complicit in the assault on the Capitol. They were undeterred even after blood was spilled in the halls of Congress. They, too, should be held to account.
Shortly after midnight, Rep. Scott Perry of the HarrisburgYork area objected to the count of the Pennsylvania vote. The election process and ballots that were good enough to give him another term in Congress, he implicitly argued, were at the same time not good enough to give Biden and Kamala Harris Pennsylvania’s 20 Electoral College votes.
In speeches into the night,
Perry and his Republican colleagues from the commonwealth and elsewhere repeated easily disputed lies — including those about the mail-in voting law that originated in the Republican General Assembly — that have been already dismissed by the courts.
State Sen. Doug Mastriano was in D.C. for the rally. He claims that he didn’t break into the Capitol as a newly swornin West Virginia delegate did. Mastriano, who has been peddling lies on the election, was in fact also reelected in 2020. The ballots that got him his seat were legitimate, but the ones for Biden were somehow fraudulent.
Also in attendance was former state representative and Republican congressional nominee Rick Saccone. Captioning a Facebook video from D.C. on Wednesday, Saccone said: “We are storming the Capitol. Our vanguard has broken thru the barricades.” He resigned from his instructor position at St. Vincent College the following day
Meanwhile, riding the wave of lies about the election, last Tuesday, the Republican majority in the Pennsylvania state Senate refused to swear in the duly elected Jim Brewster, depriving a quarter-million people in Pennsylvania from representation.
What do we do with lawmakers who flagrantly disregard reality and are either blind or indifferent to the consequences of their actions?
Any Pennsylvania Republican who continues to charge that there was fraud in the 2020 election should resign immediately and demand a special election for their own seat. If they believe so strongly in election fraud that they’re calling to overturn the presidential race, how can they serve with confidence that their own elections were legitimate? If they don’t resign, they should take responsibility for the damage that they inflicted to American democracy, and at the very least, apologize. But we won’t hold our breath.