Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Thursday on CNN’s “Don Lemon Tonight” that congressional Democrats wanted to investigate former President Donald Trump’s connection to the Capitol riot because Trump to be considered “an absolute pariah in America.”
On the Senate voting on the House Capitol riot commission, Raskin said, “Well, they’ve elevated what they think is in their best political interests over what is clearly in the best interest of the country, which is to determine the truth of those events and the cause of those events. But they are too eager to protect Donald Trump and the evidence of his attempted political coup against the government and against the election and too eager to protect the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers in their insurrection against America. Then they’re too eager, I think, to protect the rioters themselves, who were seduced by Donald Trump’s invitation to come to Washington, from the truth because those people will defect very quickly once we simply proclaim the truth, which is that the big lie is a lie, that Donald Trump did not win the election. These are people who were brought to Washington under the premise that the election was being stolen and they were going to go and stop the steal. So it’s hard to blame them in a weird way. We need to get the truth out to those people, and Donald Trump should be an absolute pariah in America, as well as everybody who has been enabling his anti-social and anti-democratic conduct.”
He added, “It certainly will happen again. I mean, January 6 wasn’t the first outbreak of this. Remember, there was a plot to kidnap and assassinate Michigan Governor Whitmer and a siege of the Michigan State Capitol, which Donald Trump had been encouraging, and other high-level Republicans had been encouraging. There were the MAGA marches on Washington, which ended up in violence. So, you know, part of what we showed at the impeachment trial, which ended up with a 57-43 vote to convict, was that January 6 was the culmination of a series of events. If we don’t intervene to stop it now, this will become the norm. Political violence will be validated and normalized. That’s what Donald Trump wants. I mean, he’s someone who always likes to encourage chaos and violence wherever he goes, and then he wraps his political plans inside of it. I mean, remember, there was a coup that was built into all of the riots and the violence in the insurrection.”
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