Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Imag
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy was one of 147 Republican congressmen who voted to try to overthrow President-elect Joe Biden’s victory after protesters invaded the Capitol.
WASHINGTON – Republicans in Congress are demanding “unity” after 147 of them voted to try to overturn the election, supporting the very lies that prompted a crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump to violently attack the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.
Requests for unity did not come soon after the Capitol took over, or after the group – a majority of Republicans in the House and eight of their colleagues in the Senate – spent another seven hours forcing votes to try to undo President-elect Joe Biden’s victory citing allegations of electoral fraud that have been repeatedly rejected by the courts and for which there is no evidence. The calls came when Democrats began to consider imposing consequences.
The president’s impeachment with only 12 days remaining will only divide our country further. I spoke with President-elect Biden today and I intend to speak with him about how we should work together to reduce the temperature and bring the country together to solve America’s challenges. My complete statement
“There are more things that unite us than divide us, and that is where we must focus. We will put politics aside, focus on the American people and on a solid policy to fix our nation and preserve its generosity for future generations.” My complete statement this week: https://t.co/IYhUqMjX0T
The 147 Republicans voted separately to undermine voters’ will in Arizona and Pennsylvania; the vast majority of them voted for both. Many of them knew that the allegations of electoral fraud on which these votes were based were not true, that they were invented by and for a president whose ego would not allow him to acknowledge his own loss until a full day after a violent mass violated the Capitol in his name and news that a Capitol Police officer had died.
Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who led the Senate’s attempts to contest Biden’s victory, did not say they believed the election was fraudulent in defending those decisions on Wednesday night. Instead, they argued that many Trump supporters believed that they did and that, for some reason, they had some responsibility to act on their behalf while continuing to amplify conspiracies, “leaving ouroboros undermining our democracy to continue chewing,” like the Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post said. Hawley spoke only of his concerns about the Pennsylvania election, raising questions about the state’s postal voting law passed more than a year ago that had already been rejected by several courts and that Hawley himself said was “totally separate from the allegations. any fraud. “
Cruz has since said that the nation must now “unite and put this anger and division behind.” Hawley – who it was photographed raising his fist in support of the crowd before invading the Capitol – remained silent, but complained about the loss of his book contract while comparing Simon & Schuster for the “mob” that invaded the Capitol.
The attack on the Capitol was a despicable act of terrorism and a shocking attack on our democratic system. We must unite and leave that anger and division behind. We must, and I am confident that we will have, a peaceful and orderly transition of power. My complete statement:
In the aftermath of Wednesday’s violence – in which not only Officer Brian D. Sicknick was killed, but a Trump supporter was shot and killed by police, and three others died from medical emergencies – the 147 Republicans who voted to try keeping Trump in power has widely praised law enforcement, and rightly lamented Sicknick, something Trump himself did not publicly do. And they condemned Democratic plans to initiate a second impeachment of the president as anti-unity; a handful of Republicans who voted to defend Biden’s victory are telling him the same thing.
Susan and I were saddened to learn of the passing of the United States Capitol police officer, Brian Sicknick, who died protecting our Capitol. Our prayers are with your family and our police. We must heal our nation’s division; there is more that unites us than divides us.
President Trump showed extremely poor leadership on Wednesday, but there is no good constitutional argument for impeachment. President Pelosi knows that the Senate will not hear the case until the president leaves office. Impeachment will only worsen divisions, instead of uniting us.
They also focused heavily on “culture cancellation” because the man who will be president of the United States for just another 11 days was kicked out of Twitter and other social media platforms for inciting violence. This, although it is not possible to cancel the Commander-in-Chief, who remains with the country’s largest platform – the Oval Office, the White House instruction room, the MAGA stage and literally dozens of TV cameras following him – at his disposal whenever he wants to speak.
What happened on Wednesday at the United States Capitol is as wrong as it can be. But canceling conservative discourse will not promote “unity and healing”. It will only divide us even more.
For these 147 Republicans, the Democrats who consider Trump’s impeachment are what is causing the split. Not his reality-defying support for a president who would not call for reinforcements while members of Congress, reporters and officials huddled behind chairs and tables fearing for their lives; who was allegedly satisfied with the chaos, while the protesters passed by police and shouted “Hang Mike Pence!”; it took hours and endless pleas from the staff to tell their people to stop – and yet, saying to them, “We love you. You are very special. ”. What we need now, after those Republicans took the trouble to try to give Trump and domestic terrorists what they wanted, is unity.