
Donald Trump is facing the imminent prospect of becoming the first US president to be impeached twice following an extraordinary breach of the country’s Capitol in Washington, DC, by his supporters.
On Monday, Trump acknowledged that he was at least partly responsible for what happened in the U.S. Last Wednesday at the Capitol.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy spoke on Monday with Trump and later expressed Trump’s feelings to fellow House Republicans.
On the same day, Mr. Trump met face-to-face with Vice President Pence in the Oval Office for the first time since the deadly siege, during which demonstrators were heard shouting, ‘Hang Mike Pence!’
The outreach to senior Republicans comes as the House is expected to vote on a resolution on Tuesday calling on Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment with Cabinet secretaries to force trump out of office. The House is set to vote Wednesday on an impeachment article against Trump if Pence and the Cabinet do not do so, holding him accountable for provoking the mob that attacked the Capitol, leaving five people dead.
“If you read my speech — and many people have done it, and I’ve seen it both in the papers and in the media, on television — it’s been analyzed, and people thought that what I said was totally appropriate,” Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews, en route to Alamo, Texas.
“And if you look at what other people have said — politicians at a high level — about the riots during the summer, the horrible riots in Portland and Seattle and various other places, that was a real problem, what they said,” Trump continued.
“But they’ve analyzed my speech and my words and my final paragraph, my final sentence, and everybody — to the tee — thought it was totally appropriate.”
“You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong,” Trump said at the time.
At last Wednesday’s rally outside the White House, Trump fiercely attacked both political allies and rivals before urging his supporters to march on the Capitol amid Congress’ certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
Speaking outside the White House earlier Tuesday, Trump condemned House Democrats’ efforts to impeach him a second time, saying it was a “continuation of the greatest witch hunt in the history of politics.”
The fallout from the Capitol siege has produced the gravest threat yet to Trump’s presidency, with numerous administration officials and three Cabinet members resigning in recent days.
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