Former Sen. Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican, condemned the Capitol Hill siege as “a sad and tragic day.”
During remarks at a virtual forum held on Wednesday, Gardner bemoaned the “damage of what happened to U.S. credibility” one week after rioters breached the U.S. Capitol, arguing that the country’s standing in the world will suffer as a result.
“There is diseased tissue in this country. Hatred, division, and incivility, that poses a significant problem to the United States, our credibility long-term. And if we don’t address that, fix that, stop that continued corruption of that tissue, it’s a good day in Moscow and a good day in Beijing and a bad day for the United States. And we cannot let that continue. So, we have to bring this nation together,” Gardner said during the event held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Without condemning President Trump by name, the former senator appeared to take a swipe at the commander in chief during a discussion about protecting human rights around the globe by denouncing acts of sedition, an act of which Trump has been accused.
“How do we have the credibility as a country to talk about that when we see what happened at the United States Capitol? Look, we pride ourselves on our First Amendment rights and our right to protest, but sedition is something the United States believes we have overcome,” he said. “We aren’t going to tolerate that, and we’re going to prove this through the strength of our Constitution and our institutions to the rest of the world, that our constitutional democracy will hold.”
Gardner, a U.S. senator first elected in 2014 who lost his bid for reelection to former Gov. John Hickenlooper last year, also offered advice to members of Congress going forward, urging them to move beyond “press release diplomacy” in international affairs.
“My advice … is to move beyond press release diplomacy,” he said. “Especially now, the United States can’t just wag its finger and send out a press release condemning some action. We’ve got to build relationships.”
Soon after Gardner spoke, 10 Republicans joined Democrats in voting to impeach Trump a second time on the charge of incitement of insurrection. Convicting Trump in the Senate requires a two-thirds vote, or 67 senators.
Trump was first impeached by the Democratic-controlled House in December 2019 on two Ukraine-related charges but was acquitted by the GOP-led Senate.
