Most Americans want Trump himself to be reprimanded for his role in instigating thousands of his supporters to breach the United States Capitol building Wednesday, according to a new poll.
According to a YouGov Direct poll conducted earlier this week, 50 percent of respondents said it would be appropriate for Trump to be removed from office immediately for his role in the breach of the Capitol building, while forty-two percent said it would be inappropriate.
Most of that opposition comes from Republican respondents. While 83 percent of Democratic-leaning participants and 47 percent of independents said that they viewed Trump’s removal as appropriate, only 10 percent of Republicans agreed with them. 85 percent of GOP respondents did not think it would be appropriate to remove Trump from office.
Asked whether they supported or opposed the Capitol breach, just 21 percent of respondents said they were somewhat or strongly in support of it, with 71 percent saying they strongly or somewhat opposed what happened. Republican-leaning respondents in the poll, however, were more split, with 45 percent voicing support for the events this week and 43 percent saying they opposed.
Nearly six in ten Americans also described the events as “violent,” according to the poll. Meanwhile, close to six in ten Republicans called the Capitol breach — which saw at least five individuals die in the melee — as “peaceful.”
The poll found similar partisan divides when it came to assigning blame for the storming of the Capitol this week. While 66 percent of Americans overall put a great deal or some blame on Trump for encouraging his mob of loyalists to break into the Capitol in a violent manner, only 28 percent of Republicans said he was at fault. A majority of Republicans questioned in the poll — 52 percent of GOP-leaning respondents — said President-elect Joe Biden was to blame.
On Wednesday Trump hosted a rally near the White House just hours before Congress planned to certify electors’ votes from the 2020 presidential election. He repeated lies about the election being rife with fraud and encouraged his mob of loyalists to “walk down to the Capitol” while Congress was certifying the Electoral College votes. Trump also told them that they would “never take back our country with weakness.”
More than 130 lawmakers in Washington have called for Trump’s removal for his role in Wednesday’s events, through either the impeachment process or by Vice President Mike Pence invoking section 4 of the 25th Amendment.
On Thursday, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) issued a resolution calling for Trump’s removal, citing his abuse of “the powers of the Presidency to incite violence and orchestrate an attempted coup against our country.”
Several other Democratic lawmakers, including other members of the group of legislators collectively known as “the Squad,” signed on as cosponsors of the bill.
Both Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) have called on Vice President Mike Pence to begin the process of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would empower him and a majority of the president’s cabinet to remove Trump from power. If Pence doesn’t pursue this route, both Democratic leaders have signaled they could try to immediately remove the president from office themselves.
“If the vice president and cabinet do not act, the Congress may be prepared to move forward with impeachment,” Pelosi said in a statement on Thursday.
Impeachment, rather than the 25th Amendment, could prevent Trump from holding federal office again. According to Article I Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, the Senate can, in addition to removing a person from office, also disqualify an individual from being able to “hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States.”
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