Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are “complicit in the big lie” and “have a lot of psychological things to do” about their attempts to overthrow the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, a Senate colleague said Sunday amid increasing calls for the two men to resign or be convicted.
Republican objections to the results of the electoral college failed. But Cruz and Hawley were prominent among 147 representatives and senators who supported the late-night effort on Wednesday, even after a mob incited by the president attacked the U.S. capital.
Five people, including a police officer, died amid the chaos, in which lawmakers were apparently the target of planned kidnappings.
The riot fueled calls for Trump to resign as House Democrats prepared articles of accusation. In NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania became the second Republican senator to say that the president had committed impeccable transgressions and that he should “resign and leave as soon as possible.”
Toomey did not ask Cruz and Hawley to quit, although he did say that they were “going to have a lot of psychologists to do and the problem is that they are complicit in the big lie, this lie that Donald Trump is running for office with.” won a rush and it was all stolen.
‘They put it together with the idea that it could be reversed in some way in the last moments of the congressional process. So it is, it’s going to be, it’s going to haunt them for a very long time. ‘
Commenting on CNN’s State of the Union, he added: ‘They are going to pay a heavy price for this. I think their reputation has been tarnished. You have seen the kind of reaction in the media in their home countries, and therefore their voters choose the final way to judge it. ”
Democrats stack up. On Saturday, Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown called for Cruz and Hawley ‘immediate resignations and said they “betrayed their oath of office and brought about a violent uprising over our democracy”.
“If they do not resign,” the Senate must expel them. ‘
Patty Murray of Washington, Chris Coons of Delaware and Tina Smith of Minnesota were among Democrats to let Cruz and Hawley go.
On Sunday, Joe Manchin of West Virginia told CNN, ‘Whether they should resign or not, I do not know [but] how can they live with themselves knowing that people have died as a result of their words and actions? ‘
Hawley, of Missouri, was the first senator to say he would object to election results. he has judge the Capitol violence, but was also lifted in the photo with a clenched fist towards Trump supporters. He defended his actions and cut off the decision of his publisher, Simon and Schuster, to cancel an upcoming book.
Hawley also objected to criticism from Joe Biden that Toomey repeated Sunday. The president-elect appealed to Hitler’s propaganda minister, saying the senators were ‘part of the big lie … Goebbels and the big lie. You keep repeating the lie, and repeating the lie. ‘
Cruz, of Texas, also condemned the violence and objected to Biden’s comparison. He withdrew calls for his resignation, including from the Houston Chronicle, saying he was not sorry.
“What I’m been working on is finding a way to re-establish confidence in the system,” he said in his home page.
Other Republicans backed their planned objections after the violence in the Capitol. Manchin told CNN he admires those who put the “constitution above their own political preferences and their own political ambitions.”
Guardian columnist and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote Sunday that Cruz and Hawley “should be forced to resign.”
“Because he knew Trump’s allegations of vote fraud were false,” he wrote, “the two Republicans” led to the move to exclude Biden voters – even after the Capitol storms – and thus make Trump’s claims credible. make.
“The U.S. Constitution says ‘no person will be a senator or representative in Congress’ who would have ‘rebellion or rebellion against’ the Constitution ‘or help or comfort its enemies’.
“Both Cruz and Hawley are looking at the presidency in 2024. They should be banned from running.”