‘Does Hereby Censure and Condemn President Donald Trump for His Inadequate Response to the Violence in Charlottesville’
Three House Democrats will file a bill Friday that would censure President Donald Trump for his “both sides” remarks Wednesday in response to the white supremacist hate violence that took one life on Saturday.Â
The Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday announced “a resolution of censure against President Donald Trump for his August 15, 2017 remarks re-asserting earlier comments that ‘both sides’ were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia and excusing the behavior of participants in the ‘Unite the Right’ rally.”
The bill, technically a resolution, if it were to gain sufficient support from Republicans, would be only the third to successfully censure a U.S. president, Buzzfeed reports.
It would say that the House of Representatives “does hereby censure and condemn President Donald Trump for his inadequate response to the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017, his failure to immediately and specifically name and condemn the white supremacist groups responsible for actions of domestic terrorism, for re-asserting that ‘both sides’ were to blame and excusing the violent behavior of participants in the ‘Unite the Right’ rally,” the document reads.
It would also ensure Trump “for employing people with ties to white supremacist movements in the White House, such as Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka,” and “urge President Donald Trump to fire any and all White House advisors who have urged him to cater to the alt-Right movement in the United States.”
The three Democrats are Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA).
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan would have to allow the measure to go forward.
And opinion pieces at The Washington Post and The Hill on Wednesday both call for Congress to censure Trump.
There’s a good deal of support on social media for censure too, including from Paul Ryan’s Democratic challenger:
Others:
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Image by Michael Sessum via Flickr and a CC license