Analysis: The day America realized how dangerous Donald Trump is

Jan 09, 2021

The barbarism of the day was underscored by chilling reports that some of the Trump faithful were on the hunt for Vice President Mike Pence — who had refused to accede to the President's demand that he overthrow the election results and was presiding over the counting of the Electoral College votes.

Lisa Murkowski told the Anchorage Daily News in a report published Friday, making her the first Republican senator to call on Trump to resign because of Wednesday's riot.

Republican Sen.

Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a frequent Trump critic who favored acquitting Trump in the first impeachment trial last year, said Friday during an interview on Hugh Hewitt's radio show that he was seriously considering whether he would vote to remove the President from office once articles of impeachment are introduced.

"There are a lot of questions that we need to get to the bottom of," he said.

Sasse also voiced concerns about Trump's response to the riot, noting that senior White House officials had told him that Trump "wanted chaos on television" and was "confused about why other people on his team weren't as excited as he was" as rioters pummeled Capitol Police trying to get into the building.

Mitt Romney -- the lone GOP senator to vote to convict Trump in 2020 -- called Wednesday's invasion of the Capitol "an insurrection incited by the President," and Sen.

John Thune of South Dakota, a member of the GOP leadership team, said the combination of the losses in the Georgia Senate races and the storming of the Capitol underscored the GOP's need to move beyond Trump.

A day that encapsulated the danger of Trump

For weeks, while advancing the false claims that the presidential election was rigged and mired in fraud, Trump had whipped up excitement about the January 6 certification of results, inviting his supporters to descend on Washington and promising it would be "wild."

He arrived at the Ellipse to address the "Save America March" shortly after his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani warmed up the crowd by falsely suggesting voting machines were "crooked" and insisting that Pence could change the election outcome, which the vice president did not have the power to do.

Backstage, Trump's son and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, recorded themselves dancing to the soundtrack and encouraging Trump supporters to "fight."

Inciting the crowd with an address threaded with lies -- including that "the states got defrauded" in the election and "want to revote" -- Trump stirred anger toward his vice president, telling the crowd once again that he hoped Pence would "do the right thing" -- pressuring him to toss out the election results, which would have been illegal and beyond the bounds of his constitutional authority.

But Trump did not let up at the Wednesday rally as he railed against "weak Republicans" and "pathetic Republicans" who refused to bend to his whims, while calling lawmakers who planned to contest the election results "warriors."

"We're gonna walk down to the Capitol.

"You'll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong."

But as his supporters marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and began their assault on the Capitol, Trump had returned to the White House consumed with his schemes for overriding an election that he lost with 232 electoral votes to Biden's 306.

Asked on Fox whether he expected Trump to address the situation, McCarthy said only: "I don't know."

Trump did not even attempt to secure the safety of the vice president, even though several of his supporters who were part of the violent mob were heard shouting "Where's Mike Pence?" in the midst of their Capitol rampage.

Those threats alarmed Pence and his family, a source close to the vice president told CNN's Jim Acosta, widening the breach between the President and Vice President.

The arrests of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol began to pile up Friday including Derrick Evans, a West Virginia state legislator who is being charged with entering a restricted area and entering the US Capitol, and Richard Barnett of Arkansas who was photographed sitting at a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office during the Capitol siege.

Barnett was charged with knowingly entering and remaining in restricted building grounds without authority, violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds as well as the theft of public property, federal officials said Friday.

Lonnie Leroy Coffman of Alabama, who allegedly parked the pickup truck with the weapons cache near the Capitol Hill Club near the Capitol, told police he also had mason jars filled with "melted Styrofoam and gasoline" -- a combination that could have the same effect as napalm if it exploded, court documents said, because "it causes the flammable liquid to stick to objects that it hits upon detonation."

While the possibility of removal of the President through the 25th Amendment looks increasingly remote, in part because Pence has no interest in participating in that process, more Republicans are turning their attention to helping Biden transition into the job.

McCarthy rejected calls for Trump's impeachment Friday, but referred to Biden as the President-elect for the first time: "I have reached out to President-elect Biden today and plan to speak to him about how we must work together to lower the temperature and unite the country to solve America's challenges," the California Republican said.

Wednesday's events, Biden argued, proved that Trump is "not fit to serve." If the nation were six months from inauguration, Biden said, he would be all for "moving everything" to get Trump out of office, including invoking the 25th Amendment.

They are as embarrassed and mortified by the President's conduct as the Democrats are," Biden said Friday.