The US House of Representatives on Wednesday impeached President Donald Trump for ‘inciting’ last week’s deadly violence at Capitol Hill.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confirmed the impeachment making Trump the first US president to be impeached twice. Congress voted 232 to 197 on the single article of impeachment charging Trump with “incitement of insurrection”.
Trump now faces a trial in the Senate. According to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, the trial is unlikely to be held before January 20.
McConnell in a statement said that even if the Senate convened this week, “no final verdict would be reached until after President Trump had left office.”
A total of 10 Republicans broke ranks with the Grand Old Party (GOP) to join their Democrat colleagues to vote in the impeachment resolution, in contrast to the year 2020, when not a single Republican voted for Trump’s impeachment.
The 10 GOP members include Dan Newhouse of Washington, John Katko of New York, Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Fred Upton of Michigan, Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Peter Meijer of Michigan, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, Tom Rice of South Carolina, David Valadao of California.
After exercising his vote, Kinzinger said, “I think this is one of those votes that transcends any kind of political implication if the moment. This is one of those that you’re going to look back on when you’re 80 and this will be the one you talk about. I don’t know what the future is, you know, I don’t know what that means for me politically but I know I’m at real peace right now.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi terming Trump as a “danger to the nation,” said, “We know that the President of the United States incited this insurrection, this armed rebellion against our common country. He must go, he is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love.”
The outgoing President has since been blocked on all major social networks at least until after he is out of office.
Now, Snapchat has also decided to permanently ban US President Donald Trump’s account over his role in inciting the Capitol violence, a week after Twitter, Facebook and Instagram imposed bans on his personal account on their respective platforms.
A Snapchat spokesperson said, “Last week we announced an indefinite suspension of President Trump’s Snapchat account, and have been assessing what long term action is in the best interest of our Snapchat community.”
The platform said it made the decision after the President’s account repeatedly violated the company’s community guidelines over the past several months. “In the interest of public safety, and based on his attempts to spread misinformation, hate speech, and incite violence, which are clear violations of our guidelines, we have made the decision to permanently terminate his account,” the spokesperson added.
