Politico | Manufacturers suggest Donald Trump’s removal as business groups condemn violence at US Capitol
- The top lobbying group for US factories suggested that Pence could invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office
- This would allow the vice-president and Cabinet to declare Trump unfit to discharge his duties and assume power
This story is published in a content partnership with POLITICO. It was originally reported by Lorraine Woellert on politico.com on January 6, 2021.
A group representing US manufacturers said Vice-President Mike Pence should consider moving to eject President Donald Trump from office. Another lobbying group representing corporate executives called on Trump himself to end the chaos in the nation’s capital. Leading bank CEOs weighed in with their own pleas.
The storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters on Wednesday, after the president urged a larger group of protesters to march on Congress, spurred a flurry of warnings from the nation’s top business organisations that had long been supportive of the president and his party.
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Trump supporters storm US Capitol, interrupting Congress’ certification of Biden’s victory
National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons, a Republican who once enjoyed a close if uneasy relationship with Trump, raised the spectre of the 25th Amendment, which allows the vice-president and Cabinet to declare the president unfit to discharge his duties and assume power.
“This is sedition and should be treated as such,” Timmons said in a written statement. “The outgoing president incited violence in an attempt to retain power, and any elected leader defending him is violating their oath to the Constitution and rejecting democracy in favour of anarchy.”
The blunt statement stood out even on a day in which Washington was consumed by fear and heartbreak as a violent mob stormed the Capitol. “Vice-President Pence, who was evacuated from the Capitol, should seriously consider working with the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to preserve democracy,” Timmons said.
Other business groups, many of whom had good relationships with the White House and the Trump administration, also weighed in Wednesday afternoon, many abandoning their veneers of diplomacy and typically measured corporate rhetoric to condemn the action of Trump’s supporters, who interrupted the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s Electoral College win, forced lawmakers to evacuate their chambers and threw the Hill into panic.
