REPUBLICAN GOV. Charlie Baker on Thursday called for President Trump to be removed from office, joining the entire Massachusetts congressional delegation in saying the president fueled division and spread lies about election rigging that led to the mob takeover of the US Capitol.
“Yesterday’s events were appalling, disgraceful, and depressing,” Baker said at a State House press conference. “But it’s important to remember that they were the culmination of months of President Trump repeating over and over again that the American electoral system is a fraud.”
Baker didn’t say how he thinks Trump should be removed with just two weeks left in his term. “It’s 14 days, OK?” Baker said. “I think people should pursue whatever they believe will make it possible, in the most expeditious way possible, for the president to step down and the vice president to assume the powers of the office for the next 14 days so that an orderly transition can take place.”
In Vermont, Gov. Phil Scott on Wednesday tweeted that Trump “should resign or be removed from office by his cabinet, or by the Congress.” Scott was the nation’s first Republican governor to do so.
The president has not addressed the country live over the Wednesday takeover of the Capitol. He released a video on social media Wednesday (which has since been removed by Twitter and Facebook for violating their terms of usage), in which he told supporters “I love you,” and urged them to go home. He also continued to allege election fraud that has not been supported in the courts.
Baker called the assault on the Capitol “disgraceful,” and decried the law enforcement response to the rioters, which he said was much more lax than the law enforcement response to demonstrations in the spring by Black Lives Matter.
“During the violence that sometimes accompanied peaceful protests concerning police brutality last summer, the president was the first to call out local and state officials for not doing enough to protect their residents and demanded that every agitator be arrested and prosecuted, and yesterday he thanked the mob for their support,” he said. “The whole thing makes me sick.”
The president, he said, left the capitol nearly defenseless on a day long scheduled to be the one where Congress was to certify Biden’s electoral win.