The House of Representatives of the US Congress, by a majority vote, decided to impeach President Donald Trump. Ten of his fellow party members supported this demand. The head of state himself appealed that, without mentioning the impeachment.
For the first time in US history
Two hundred thirty-two congressmen voted for the removal of Trump, against 197. Thus, he became the only President in US history to be impeached twice.
The President is charged with incitement to rebellion. The House of Representatives resolution states that Trump’s actions are consistent with the constitutional wording of “serious crimes and misconduct.”
For Trump’s early removal from power, he must be impeached in the Senate. Still, the speaker of the upper house of the Republican Mitch McConnell said that the senators would not do this until the expiration of the term of the head of state on January 20. Whether Trump can be impeached retroactively after his departure from office is unclear: this practice has never been seen in Congress’s history.
“Danger for the country.”
Hearings in the House of Representatives continued throughout Wednesday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at the hearing that Trump is dangerous and must leave.
“We know that the President of the United States has fomented this rebellion, this armed uprising against our common country. He must leave. He is an obvious and urgent danger to the country we all love,” she said.
The head of the House Rules Committee, George McGovern, said at the hearing that he “saw evil” in the eyes of the Trump-led Capitol attackers.
According to him, the workers who found themselves in Congress wrote messages to family members and said goodbye to them, not thinking that they would get out. “It was not a protest, and it was an uprising. A well-organized attack on our country that was inspired by Donald Trump” said the congressman.
Republicans versus Trump
Ten members of the US House of Representatives from the Republican Party agreed to the impeachment request.
In particular, on the eve of the media, they repeatedly quoted Liz Cheney’s statement, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. The Republican congressman accused Trump of “causing the crowd, gathering the crowd, and igniting the flames of this attack” on the Capitol.
During the voting, few protests from the left took place outside the Congress building. The protesters wanted to hang banners on the fence on the Capitol’s outer perimeter with the names of 121 members of Congress and 12 senators whom they accuse of supporting Trump because they spoke out against the approval of the election results. The police pushed back the protesters.
Trump’s message
After the vote in the House of Representatives, Trump himself made a video message in which he again condemned the violence and called for reconciliation, but did not comment on the impeachment. “Crowd violence contradicts everything I believe in and everything that our movement stands for,” the head of state said.
Trump stressed the need to focus on the entire country’s interests and called on all Americans to unite, “overcoming the passions of the moment.”
In a video message, the US President also announced unprecedented attacks on free speech, referring to the blocking of his social media accounts. “These are tense and difficult times. Attempts to censor, ‘cancel’ and blacklist our fellow citizens are wrong and dangerous,” he said.
The head of the White House called on fellow citizens to “listen to each other” and not try to “silence each other.”
Storming the Capitol
On January 6, Trump, at a rally near the White House, urged supporters to go to the Capitol to “help weak Republicans” challenge the election outcome, which was then approved in Congress.
A crowd of protesters laid siege to the Capitol , broke into the building and interrupted the joint session of Congress, where they claimed the victory of Democrat Joe Biden in the presidential elections. Five people were killed.
Democrats have called on Vice President Mike Pence to remove Trump from office according to the Constitution’s 25th Amendment on the President’s inability to fulfill his duties. However, Pence refused to do so in advance.
