Democratic Rep. Karen Bass has been calling for President Donald Trump’s leave of office for more than a year now. She punctuated the urgency of that call Thursday by answering an FBI tweet seeking the individuals who instigated violence in Washington, D.C. with a photo of Trump. “Found one,” Bass captioned. Trump incited an entitled mob that climbed fences, stole property, and shattered glass doors of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday in what was by no exaggeration an attempted coup. It ended with four people dead, 14 police officers injured, and 52 arrests, authorities said. The riot was intended to block lawmakers from certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory, but it achieved no such thing.
“Did they think that their attempted coup was going to stop us from doing the work on behalf of the people who elected us to be here?” Bass asked in a tweet Wednesday. “Did they think we would bend? Did they think we would break? They chose the wrong one.”
In a CNN interview Thursday, Bass also pointed out the brazen double standard in how authorities peacefully responded to Trump protesters versus how they have brutally responded to Black Lives Matter protesters over the last year. She said it’s “demoralizing” for people of color who “know if you could even imagine if tens of thousands of young, old African Americans attacked the Capitol like that what would have happened.”
Bass cited a similar double standard in how Kyle Rittenhouse, a white racist, was treated after allegedly shooting three Black Lives Matter demonstrators and killing two of them in August in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He “shot three people, walked with his gun in front of the police officers,” Bass said. “They gave him something to drink and sent him home.” Jacob Blake, the Black father the demonstrators were in Kenosha to protest for, was shot seven times in the back and paralyzed for the mere suggestion that a knife was on the scene. The city's district attorney announced Wednesday that the cop would not face charges in the shooting. “So we’re just sick and tired of seeing the same type of double standard,” Bass said.
The congresswoman also called out former U.S. Attorney General William Barr's delayed recognition that Trump "betrayed his office and supporters.” “Orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress is inexcusable,” Barr said in a statement to the Associated Press Thursday. He resigned last month amid the president's unsubstantiated election rigging claims, but the AP reported that he's been "one of Trump’s most loyal and ardent defenders in the Cabinet."
Bass said she would love to see the president “be kicked out of the White House today” by invoking the 25th Amendment, which allows the vice president to become president should the commander in chief not be able to do his job. “And that’s exactly what should happen,” Bass said. “However, I don’t believe that’s going to happen at all.” She called Trump a “cult leader” and said members of his cabinet are “participants right along with him.” “So why would we expect them ... to be courageous now when they have stood by, been complacent, and even promoted his behavior for the last four years,” Bass asked. “I thought former Attorney General Barr had a lot of nerve talking about how the president has disrespected his office. What has Barr done over the last couple of years when he’s been the attorney general?”
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