WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Pat Toomey said Sunday that President Donald Trump, a fellow Republican, should resign after his supporters stormed the U.S. capital last week with a deadly riot.
Toomey, who until recently was still a supporter of Trump, became the second Republican from the Senate to urge the president to step down.
“I think the best way for our country is for the president to resign and leave as soon as possible,” he said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Toomey said he does not think there is time for an accusation with only ten days left before Democrat Joe Biden is sworn in as Trump’s successor. He told CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ that his resignation ‘is the best way to get this person in the rearview mirror.’
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski said Friday that Trump should resign immediately and suggested she consider leaving the party if Republicans can not divorce him.
Co-Republican Senator Ben Sasse, a regular Trump critic, told CBS News he would definitely consider an accusation because the president ‘disregards his oath of office’.
Toomey, a Conservative who plans to retire at the end of his term in 2022, said he believes Trump has fallen into an unimaginable level of “madness” after the election.
“I think there is no doubt … that the president’s behavior after the election was completely different than before. “He went down to a level of madness and engaged in activities that were just absolutely unthinkable and unforgivable,” Toomey told CNN.
Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Linda So; Edited by Daniel Wallis and Bill Berkrot