speaks during election night in the East Room of the White House in
Washington, DC, early on November 4, 2020. MANDEL NGAN /
AFP
President Donald Trump was told Friday to step down
or face impeachment, as the top Democrat in Congress announced she
had discussed with the military how to block the “unhinged” leader
from the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
As his presidency imploded, Trump signalled a final, unrepentant
display of division by announcing on Twitter that he will skip the
inauguration of Joe Biden on January 20.
“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going,” he
tweeted.
Biden responded this was “a good thing,” branding Trump an
“embarrassment.”
However, Biden showed how wary he is of the growing rush to
impeach Trump — and deepen the national political war — over his
incitement of crowds who stormed Congress on Wednesday.
“That is a judgment for the Congress to make,” Biden said,
adding that the “quickest” way to get Trump out was for him and
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to take over in 12 days.
“I am focused now on us taking control as president and vice
president on the 20th and to get our agenda moving as quickly as we
can.”
Two days after Trump sent a mob of followers to march on
Congress, his presidency is in freefall, with allies walking away
and opponents sharpening their teeth.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned that Democrats will launch
impeachment proceedings unless Trump resigns or Vice President Mike
Pence invokes the 25th Amendment, where the cabinet removes the
president.
“If the President does not leave office imminently and
willingly, the Congress will proceed with our action,” Pelosi
wrote.
In a jaw dropping moment, Pelosi revealed she had spoken Friday
with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley about
“preventing an unstable president from initiating military
hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear
strike.”
“The situation of this unhinged President could not be more
dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the
American people,” Pelosi wrote.
Democrats in the House of Representatives, who already impeached
Trump in a traumatic, partisan vote in 2019, said the unprecedented
second impeachment of a president could be ready next week.
“We can act very quickly when we want to,” Representative
Katherine Clark told CNN.
Whether Republican leaders of the Senate would then agree to
hold a lightning fast impeachment trial before the transition is
another matter.
In the House, the senior Republican representative Kevin
McCarthy said “impeaching the president with just 12 days left in
his term will only divide our country more.”
Too little, too late
Trump, whose actions on Wednesday capped his relentless efforts
to overturn Biden’s November 3 election win, finally conceded
defeat on Thursday and appealed for calm.
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“A new administration will be inaugurated on January 20. My
focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless
transition of power,” Trump said in a short video.
However, the evidently reluctant concession, in which Trump
failed to congratulate Biden or directly admit defeat, was too
little, too late to calm outrage over his role in the Capitol
invasion.
Five people died in the mayhem, including one woman who was shot
dead and a Capitol Police officer. Flags over the Capitol were
lowered to half-mast on Friday.
Senator Ben Sasse, one Republican who says he will “definitely
consider” impeachment, recommended that Trump at minimum step back
and let his vice president run the show in the dying days.
“I think the less the president does over the next 12 days the
better,” he told NPR radio.
Government exit
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos became the second cabinet member
to quit, after Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, telling Trump
in a letter that such “behavior was unconscionable for our
country.”
A string of lower level officials have also left. According to
reports, the only reason the trickle hasn’t turned into a flood is
the decision by senior figures to try and maintain stability during
the transition to Biden.
Trump, however, appears to have lost the grip he once exercised
on both the Republican party and his own staff as he rampaged
through four years of one of the most turbulent presidencies in US
history.
Speaking to CNN, retired Marine Corps general John Kelly, who
served as Trump’s chief of staff for 18 months, said the cabinet
should consider the 25th Amendment but believed the president had
already been put into a box.
“He can give all the orders he wants but no one is going to
break the law,” Kelly said.
Biden faces grim inauguration
Biden, who won seven million votes more than Trump, as well as a
decisive majority in the vital state-by-state Electoral College,
will be sworn in on the Capitol Steps under huge security.
Between drastic Covid-19 crowd restrictions, the absence of
Trump, and a new “unscalable” fence around the congressional
complex, there will be little of the ordinary inauguration
vibe.
And Biden will immediately face extraordinary challenges,
starting with his core campaign promise that he can “heal” the
nation.
But at the same time, the crisis has sparked such revulsion in
Congress on both sides of the aisle that Biden may come into office
with an unexpectedly bipartisan tailwind.
Biden said Friday that more Republicans now saw Trump for what
he was after he “ripped the Band-Aid all the way off.”
“I think it makes my job easier, quite frankly.”
Read more https://swordpress.com.ng/2021/01/09/unhinged-trump-told-to-step-down-or-be-impeached/