In an interview with the CBS News show “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that President Trump should be held accountable legally and constitutionally for the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Wednesday.
“Well, sadly, the person who is running the executive branch is a deranged, unhinged, dangerous president of the United States,” she said. “He has done something so serious that there should be prosecution against him.”
Ms. Pelosi recounted being ushered out of the House chamber to an undisclosed location during the riot and showed the damage to her suite of offices in the Capitol to the CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl. She called it “a terrible, terrible violation of the Capitol, of the first branch of government, the legislative branch, by the president of the United States.”
“This door, they broke down,” she said. “They smashed it in.”
She led Ms. Stahl to a conference room, where, Ms. Pelosi said, her frightened staff members hid as the rioters ransacked her office and stole a laptop. “The staff went under the table, barricaded the door, turned out the lights and were silent in the dark under the table for two-and-a-half hours,” Ms. Pelosi said.
The rioters could be heard banging on the door in an audio recording provided to CBS by the office of Ms. Pelosi, who said that the attack was premeditated and well planned.
“They were vocally saying,” Ms. Pelosi said, “‘Where’s the speaker? We know she has staff. They’re here some place. We’re going to find them.’”
Ms. Pelosi said that the Republicans in the House who still mounted opposition to the counting of the presidential electoral votes after Wednesday’s attack should be ashamed of themselves. She then drew a comparison to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal.
“I remember when Republicans in the Senate went to see Richard Nixon and said, ‘It’s over,’” Ms. Pelosi said. “That’s what has to happen now.”
Despite escalating tensions between Mr. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, Ms. Pelosi said that when she and Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate leader, called Mr. Pence to try to urge him to initiate the removal of Mr. Trump from office using the 25th Amendment, she said that they were ignored.
“We were kept on the line for 20 minutes,” she said. “We’re still waiting for him to return the call.”
One of the motivations for initiating impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump for a second time is in case Mr. Trump decides to run for president again, Ms. Pelosi said. “This president is guilty of inciting insurrection,” she said. “He has to pay a price for that. We’re not going to let go an insurrection in our country, an attempt of a coup d’état, so that we cannot validate the election of the next president of the United States.”
— Neil Vigdor The New York Times
Me: If Trump himself cannot validate himself for election, the next time around (if he is still alive then), what about his adult children instead. One of them could be the next president, with him directing them on how to run their presidency, one of them being a puppet, with him behind the scenes pulling their strings – what then?
This whole issue is like a public satire.