” A Message from President Donald J. Trump “
TAMER FAKAHANY
DEPUTY DIRECTOR – GLOBAL NEWS COORDINATION, LONDON
The Associated Press
Media www.rajawalisiber.com – “A new administration will be inaugurated on Jan. 20. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.”
With 12 days left in his term, President Donald Trump finally bent to reality, acknowledging his electoral defeat in a video amid growing talk in Washington of trying to force him from office early.
His statement came at the end of a day when the cornered Trump stayed out of sight in the White House, silenced on some of his favorite internet lines of communication, while watching the resignations of several top aides, including two Cabinet secretaries.
As officials sifted through the aftermath of the pro-Trump mob’s siege of the U.S. Capitol, there was growing discussion of impeaching him a second time or invoking the 25th Amendment to oust him from the Oval Office, Jonathan Lemire and Zeke Miller report.
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that “the president of the United States incited an armed insurrection against America.” She called him “a very dangerous person who should not continue in office. This is urgent, an emergency of the highest magnitude.”
Neither option to remove Trump seemed likely, with little time left in his term to draft the Cabinet members needed to invoke the amendment or to organize the hearings and trial mandated for an impeachment.
There is a steady stream of Trump administration officials beating an early path to the exits as a protest against the deadly siege, Aamer Madhani, Zeke Miller and Kevin Freking report.
Some of Trump’s critics don’t give those in the early-exit caucus much credit for walking away from their jobs with less than two weeks left in the administration, seeing it as little more than a face-saving effort.
“Nobody is fooled by these last-second, come-to-Jesus conversions,” said the co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a group of Republicans fiercely critical of Trump.
Biden Condemnation: President-elect Joe Biden denounced the rioters as “domestic terrorists” and he blamed Trump for the violence that has shaken the nation’s capital and beyond. Biden said the riot by Trump supporters who breached the security of Congress on Wednesday was “not dissent, was not disorder, was not protest. It was chaos.” Alexandra Jaffe reports.
Inauguration Security: Biden’s inauguration was already going to be scaled back and slightly surreal, with the pandemic wiping out the typical large crowds and Trump poised to become the first commander-in-chief in 152 years to skip his successor’s swearing-in. But after a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, questions arose about whether having a presidential ceremony on the steps of the same building could also pose a serious security risk. Biden insists that he never felt concerned about his safety or the security of the inauguration, and organizers didn’t consider postponing or moving the event, Will Weissert reports.