Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, has called on Vice President Mike Pence and members of President Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office just two weeks head of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Claiming that Trump has become “unmoored, not just from his duty or even his oath but from reality itself,” Kinzinger called on “the vice president and members of the Cabinet to ensure that the next few are safe for the American people and that we have a sane captain of the ship.”
It’s with a heavy heart I am calling for the sake of our Democracy that the 25th Amendment be invoked. My statement: pic.twitter.com/yVyQrYcjuD
— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) January 7, 2021
Kinzinger’s calls echoed requests from Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, and a manufacturers trade group, who decried the actions of “insurrectionists” and brought “our democracy to a halt.”
“Yesterday was a sad day as we all know,” Kinzinger said in a video posted to Twitter. “It was the day where fire stoked by the president and other leaders finally lept out of the pit, and it lit the trees.”
At least four protests were scheduled in Washington, D.C., for Wednesday, the day Congress was expected to count the votes of the Electoral College and certify Biden’s victory. Those protests descended into chaos as demonstrators breached the congressional building — smashing windows, breaking into offices, and looting rooms.
Trump repeatedly stoked the chaos throughout the day, repeating claims of widespread voter fraud and telling his supporters “we will never give up” and “we will never concede.”
After the Capitol was breached, Trump called for peace. But in a series of follow-up tweets sympathized with and appeared to defend his extremist supporters, saying in a deleted tweet, “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots.”
“Thankfully, the strength of our Constitution and democracy held, and we emerge today a little battered but resolved,” Kinzinger said. “What happened today is a wake-up call for many, but it’s a call to accountability for others. … Sadly, yesterday it became evidence that not only has the president abdicated his duty to protect the American people and the people’s house, he invoked and inflamed passions that only gave fuel to the insurrection we saw here. When pressed to move and denounce the violence, he barely did so, while of course victimizing himself and seeming to give a wink and a nod to those doing it.”
Kinzinger said that invoking the 25th Amendment, Section 4, which allows a majority vote from members of the Cabinet to allow the vice president to assume the powers of the office if the president is considered unfit to serve, was the necessary course of action to “end this nightmare.”
