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By AFP 
6h ago
By Sebastian Smith
Washington – President Donald Trump emerged from isolation in the White House on Tuesday to deny responsibility for a crowd of his supporters who stormed Congress and warned that his impending impeachment is causing “tremendous anger.”
Trump, who will become the first president in US history to be accused for the second time on Wednesday, made it clear that he was not to blame in the Jan.6 speech in which he urged his supporters to march on Congress.
“They have analyzed my speech in my words and my final paragraph, my closing sentence, and everyone thought it was totally appropriate,” Trump said before flying to Texas.
Trump called his scheduled impeachment trial in the House of Representatives Wednesday as a “continuation of the greatest witch hunt in the history of politics.”
And he warned that while “violence must always be avoided,” his followers are furious.
“I have never seen so much anger as I have seen now,” he said.
With just eight days left in his single-term administration, Trump finds himself alone, shunned by former supporters, banned from social media, and now faces the unprecedented stain of a second impeachment trial.
No longer able to use Twitter and Facebook, two platforms integral to his surprising rise to power in 2016, Trump is fighting for the first time to shape the news message, a Big Tech censorship he called a “catastrophic mistake.”
His trip to Alamo, Texas, where he will show off his successful construction of a border wall between Mexico and the United States, is his first live public appearance since the chaotic events of last week.
This isn’t the same Alamo as the famous fort in another part of Texas, but the journey still marks something of a last stand.
Since the Nov. 3 election, the Republican real estate mogul has been obsessively lying that he, and not Democrat Joe Biden, was the real winner. Then last week, in a speech on the National Mall, he called on the great crowd to go to Congress and “show strength.”
Amplified by Trump’s rhetoric, the mob stormed Congress, fighting with police, vandalizing offices and forcing frightened lawmakers to briefly suspend a ceremony that legally formalized Biden’s victory.
The crisis prompted many of Trump’s former promoters in business and sports to turn their backs.
In the Republican Party, which has been a slave to the populist leader for four years, even ultra-loyal high-ranking figures like Sen. Lindsey Graham have finally told Trump that he must accept electoral defeat.
Trump, however, clearly continues to deny.
He has yet to congratulate Biden or urge his supporters to back the incoming president after he takes office on January 20, a gesture of political unity considered almost routine after the US elections.
And according to Axios, Trump and the top House Republican Kevin McCarthy had a stormy phone conversation on Tuesday in which Trump continued to push his conspiracy theory that he was the real winner of the election.
McCarthy allegedly interrupted, saying, “Enough. It’s over. The election is over.”
Indictment 2.0
The House of Representatives will vote Tuesday on a risky bet for Vice President Mike Pence and the cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which would declare Trump unfit to serve and install Pence as interim president.
This is unlikely to happen.
Although Pence is furious at Trump’s behavior last week, the two met at the White House on Monday for the first time since the attack on Congress and had “a good conversation,” according to a senior administration official.
That indicated that regardless of how Pence and the dwindling number of White House officials feel, they are committed to keeping the presidency limping until January 20.
Still, with a string of Cabinet officials resigning from the administration, most recently on Monday acting Homeland Security chief Chad Wolf, it is also clear that Trump’s grip on power is tenuous.
In an interview Tuesday on ABC News, Health Secretary Alex Azar did not outright rule out the option of impeaching Trump, saying, “I’m not going to go in or discuss Amendment 25 here.”
Democrats will follow the vote on the 25th Amendment with impeachment proceedings in the House on Wednesday. The sole charge of “incitement to insurrection” will surely win the support of the majority.
The Republican-controlled Senate, however, is in recess until Jan. 19 and its leadership says there is no way to rush an impeachment before Biden takes office the next day.
This means that Trump, who was acquitted in the Senate last year after his first impeachment trial, would not be forced to leave office early.
Not even all Democrats are eager for a trial, worried it would overshadow Biden’s early days in office.
The new president will already face the challenges of a runaway Covid-19 pandemic, a faltering vaccination program, an unstable economy and now the aftermath of violent political opposition from parts of Trump’s huge voter base.
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