WASHINGTON: Calls for immediately removing Donald Trump from the White House escalated after the defeated and disgraced President rationalized violence he incited in pursuit of a second term and claimed his time in office "represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history."
While he retained some hard-core support despite the violence he was blamed for unleashing, establishment Republican Party veterans abandoned him in droves amid talk of invoking the 25th amendment to force him out of office. Several White House aides in an already depleted executive office, resigned in protest, including a Deputy National Security Advisor.
Nearly 100 Democratic members of Congress have backed calls for Trump's removal from office in the next several days either through the impeachment process (for which there is very little time) or deploying the 25th Amendment, which will require approval of half the Trump cabinet. The problem with the second option is several cabinet members are unconfirmed "acting" secretaries and it is unclear if they count.
"Rather than taking the easy resign route, @VP Pence and the Trump cabinet should invoke the 25th amendment to save our country from this dangerous president," Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirano tweeted.
Some analysts worried about the dangers an unhinged President could pose while in possession of nuclear codes.
"If Trump can't be trusted to Tweet he can't be trusted with the nuclear codes - he's lost his mind and America needs to get this dangerous, deluded, despicable lunatic out of White House now," the commentator Piers Morgan, a former Trump fanboy, wrote.
Vice-president Mike Pence himself was reported to be furious with a man to whom he has shown simpering sycophancy after Trump mobs roamed the halls of Congress looking to harm him. "I've known Mike Pence forever. I've never seen Pence as angry as he was today. He said, 'After all the things I've done for (Trump)...'" Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a 34-year veteran of Congress, told a local newspaper.
Trump and his sons implicitly threatened Pence's political future if he did not support the defeated President's effort to steal a second term with bogus, falsified, and exaggerated claims of election fraud.
Several mainstream Republicans were shocked by Trump's incendiary tactics that ignited the lunatic fringe on the extreme right and brought the dregs of America into the hallowed portals of U.S Congress to desecrate democracy. One vandal came dressed in a Viking outfit and another saw on a lawmaker's chair scratching his genitals in a colorful display of Trump's following.
Trump minions tried to portray them as Antifa infiltrators and BLM activists, but they displayed their symbols of racist hate and bigotry with pride while professing loyalty and love to the agent provocateur president who publicly embraced them and offered them his love even after their attack on the Capitol.
Police seemed very chummy with the protesters who also seemed to know exactly where to go.
"There is no question that the President formed the mob, the President incited the mob, the President addressed the mob. He lit the flame," Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, Chair of the House Republican Conference, said.
Some lawmakers and commentators called Trump's incitement to violence an attempted "coup" and an "act of terrorism."