During a Friday appearance on “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) would not rule out invoking the 25th Amendment or impeaching President Donald Trump over the riots at the U.S. Capitol this week.
Sasse said Trump “incited” the mob at his rally by telling them to “go wild.” He told host Hugh Hewitt that Trump is “addicted” to division and lies.
“[T]he people’s Capitol, which is obviously the greatest symbol around the world of freedom and liberty and self-government, there’s polling all over the world that the dome of the Capitol is literally the most identifiable symbol of freedom, and it was ransacked by a mob that was incited by the President of the United States,” Sasse stated. “While blood was actually being shed in the Capitol, and I was in the Senate chamber, and the Secret Service was trying to rush the vice president to safety, at those exact moments, the President is rage tweeting against the Vice President. Why? Because Mike, because Vice President Pence had the audacity to fulfill his oath of office to the Constitution. It’s a big deal. Lies have consequences.”
“The president had a rally hours before this happened where he is telling them to go to the Capitol and to go wild,” he added. “This is a part of a pattern. The guy is addicted to division. This is a deep brokenness in his soul. You and I have talked about it multiple times. Donald Trump is a guy who hurts. And I hurt for him at an anthropological and a human level, but at a level of his oath of office to the Constitution, the duty of the president of the United States is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. And the President is addicted to social media and to television, and to division, and he’s been lying to the American people for eight straight weeks and planned it long before. No matter what was happening in any state, he was going to say the election was being stolen, and the people needed to rise up. But Wednesday morning, he said repeatedly to go wild when you get to the Capitol. And they went to the Capitol, and well, let’s be clear, Hugh, there are 30,000 people here. The vast majority of them are honorable, freedom-loving people. The vast majority of them, but not all of them.”
“Should he be impeached and removed?” Hewitt asked.
According to Sasse, “a lot of questions” need to be answered before he is ready to impeach or remove Trump.
“I think that there are a lot of questions that we need to get to the bottom of about why the National Guard was not deployed, why was it delayed,” Sasse replied. “So that’s what I’ve been working on last night and this morning. I want to understand more about why the National Guard wasn’t deployed when there had been clear calls for it, and then why that delay happened. So there are more things that I need to understand before I get to a conclusory judgment about that. But I think that the question of was the President derelict in his duty, that’s not an open question. He was.”
During an interview on CBS’s “This Morning” that same day, Sasse said he would “definitely consider” articles of impeachment.
“If they come together and have a process, I will definitely consider whatever articles they might move, because … I believe the president has disregarded his oath of office,” Sasse told host Gayle King, later wondering if doing so “is the best thing for America in 2022 or 2032.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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