Washington, United States:
Protesters supporting Donald Trump swarmed the US Capitol on Wednesday, placing it on lockdown, as Vice President Mike Pence rebuffed the president’s demand to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden and the Senate’s Republican leader denounced a bid in Congress to undo the election outcome.
Trump supporters overturned barricades and clashed with police on the US Capitol grounds and streamed inside the developing. The demonstrations flared as lawmakers met inside to formally certify Biden’s victory more than Trump in the November 3 election. Law enforcement authorities struggled to sustain order.
The Senate and the House of Representatives, which had been weighing objections to Biden’s victory brought by a band of pro-Trump Republican lawmakers, abruptly and unexpectedly recessed.
Pence, a loyal lieutenant through the 4 years of Trump’s tumultuous presidency, presided more than the opening of the joint session of Congress to formally certify Biden’s November 3 victory more than Trump. A band of Republican lawmakers immediately challenged the benefits, 1st from the election battleground state of Arizona won by Biden.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell objected to the work, saying, “If this election were overturned by mere allegations from the losing side, our democracy would enter a death spiral.” McConnell helped give Trump some of the largest accomplishments of his presidency, which includes deep tax cuts and confirmation of conservative judicial nominees.
Biden won the election by 306-232 in the state-by-state Electoral College and by more than 7 million ballots in the national common vote, but Trump continues to falsely claim there was widespread fraud and that he was the victor.
The voters, courts and states “have all spoken,” McConnell mentioned on the Senate floor. “If we overrule them, it would damage our republic forever,” he added.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer referred to as the challenges “an attempted coup” and mentioned, “The Congress does not determine the outcome of an election. The people do.”
Pence turned away Trump’s demand that the vice president unilaterally reject state electoral votes on the exact same day Trump’s fellow Republicans had been poised to drop their majority in the Senate. The joint session of Congress could final previous midnight.
“We will never give up,” Trump earlier told thousands of cheering supporters on a grassy expanse close to the White House referred to as the Ellipse. “We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.”
Trump in his speech applied fresh stress on Pence to attempt to reverse the election benefits. In a statement, Pence mentioned he shares the issues about the “integrity” of the election but that is not appropriate that he need to be capable to accept or reject electoral votes unilaterally.
The US Constitution does not give Pence the energy to unilaterally overturn the benefits of the election, but he is beneath stress to do so from Trump.