WASHINGTON (Reuters) – US Senator Pat Toomey said on Sunday that President Donald Trump, also a Republican, should step down after his supporters invaded the United States Capitol in a deadly riot last week.
Toomey, who supported Trump until recently, became the second Senate Republican to call for the president’s resignation.
“I think the best way for our country is for the president to resign and leave as soon as possible,” he said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” program.
Toomey said he did not think there would be time for an impeachment with Democrat Joe Biden only 10 days away from taking office as Trump’s successor. He told CNN’s “State of the Union” that he thought the resignation was “the best way to put that person in the rear view mirror”.
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski said on Friday that Trump should step down immediately and suggested that she would consider leaving the party if Republicans could not part ways with him.
The other Republican senator Ben Sasse, a frequent critic of Trump, told CBS News that he “would definitely consider” impeachment because the president “disregarded his term of office”.
Toomey, a conservative who plans to retire at the end of his term in 2022, said he believed Trump had fallen into a level of “madness” after the election that was unthinkable.
“I don’t think there is any doubt … that the president’s behavior after the election was totally different than before. He fell into a level of madness and engaged in activities that are absolutely unthinkable and unforgivable, ”Toomey told CNN.
Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Linda So; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Bill Berkrot