WASHINGTON – In response to yesterday’s shocking and deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol by a riotous mob incited by President Trump, Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook today called for Trump’s immediate removal from office through the 25th Amendment, followed by impeachment, conviction and disqualification from ever again holding office.
Here is Cook’s statement:
If a foreign enemy actively sought to overturn a U.S. presidential election and install an unelected leader as our nation’s chief executive; fomented physical assault on the seat of our government, then stood by and allowed its violent and deadly siege to unfold; and declared elected officials and officers of government “enemies of the people” for defending the rule of law and the sanctity of peaceful government succession, the America we know would rise up to expel that enemy from our homeland and in defense of our republic.
It hardly matters if it arises from a self-serving lie or an incapacitating delusion. The fact that President Trump continues falsely to insist to his followers that the 2020 presidential election – not notably close by historical margins – was stolen from him and not simply lost will have a lasting, ruinously corrosive effect on our democracy. The rot and violence his official declarations have fomented cannot be cured by an unelected subaltern’s limp, late-night tweet that vaguely commits to an orderly transition, following a day of criminal rioting the president himself induced and then watched on live television.
President Trump will not subdue the lawless domestic enemies who would test ways to overthrow or neuter our duly elected government. Trump will abet those dark forces for his personal benefit. Every day he is allowed to do so with the full authority of the presidency constitutes a mortal threat to our nation, and an abdication of duty on the part of individuals sworn to protect and defend our Constitution.
By baselessly insisting, as he has in virtually every public utterance for months now, that the office of president of the United States is rightfully and lawfully his, Trump willfully infects our body politic with a seditious poison whose antidemocratic effects will linger for years. Every hour he is allowed to occupy his office legitimizes this harm and endangers our country.
We therefore call on the principal officers of the executive branch to immediately invoke the 25th Amendment to remove a demagogue who is manifestly unfit for office. We also call on Congress to impeach and convict Trump as soon as possible, barring him from ever again holding federal office.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
