House GOPers Call Out Colleagues Over Electoral Objections After Capitol Riots

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 07: Members of congress sit in the chamber during a joint session of the 117th Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol where all the Electoral College votes from the States will be ... WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 07: Members of congress sit in the chamber during a joint session of the 117th Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol where all the Electoral College votes from the States will be delivered and verified on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) MORE LESS
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Paul Meijer (R-MI) on Sunday expressed their disappointment with their Republican colleagues who voted to challenge the election results hours after the deadly insurrection at the Capitol that left five dead.

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Mace said she found it “enormously disappointing” to witness more than 130 of her House Republican colleagues vote to object to President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory, especially after lawmakers’ lives were threatened during the deadly insurrection at the Capitol earlier this month.

“I literally had to walk through a crime scene where that young woman was shot and killed to get into the chamber to vote that night to certify what was supposed to be a ceremonial vote to certify the Electoral College,” Mace said. “And yet, my colleagues continued to object and they knew this was a failing motion. These objections were not going to work and they were unconstitutional. And so it is enormously disappointing.”

After stressing that her vote to certify Biden’s electoral victory was to “point out the lies that have happened,” Mace said that she supports Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who’s come under fire from fellow House Republicans after she voiced her support for impeaching Trump. Mace voted against impeaching Trump last week.

A day after Cheney announced her support for impeaching Trump, the President’s allies in the House Republican conference circulated a petition urging its third-ranking member to resign from her leadership position over her then-impending impeachment vote.

“There’s so much division, not only within our party, but within our country right now. And we’ve got to do a better job,” Mace said. “And I hope and I support Liz Cheney. And I hope that she stays a part of leadership. We need these voices right now more than ever.”

Meijer, who was among the 10 House Republicans who voted in favor of Trump’s impeachment last week, also recalled the harrowing experiencing of being at the Capitol amid the deadly insurrection as he argued the importance of holding Trump accountable for inciting his supporters, during an interview on ABC News on Sunday.

After describing the aftermath of the Capitol riots as having been “absolutely gut-wrenching” because the impeachment of the President “was nothing that we ever hoped to do,” Meijer said it was necessary in order to “restore trust.”

“I think this is a time for reflection, but it’s also a time for accountability. And that’s something that I am deeply committed to,” Meijer said. “You know, I’m calling on my party to restore trust, to restore the trust of the voting public and to ensure that we never allow the actions that led up to January 6th and what happened on January 6th, we never allow that outburst of political violence to occur in our name again.”

Asked why so few of his Republican colleagues agreed with him on impeachment, Meijer replied that he “can’t speak to what’s in anyone else’s heart” but that he has concerns with those in his party who fed into “politics of deception.” Meijer pointed to Republicans who went along with Trump’s electoral challenge gambit based off of bogus claims of widespread election fraud — rhetoric that ultimately led to the Capitol riots spearheaded by Trump supporters.

“It was individual concerns about electoral integrity building to something that ended up supporting the President’s, you know, false idea that he had won in a landslide. And that was what inspired his followers to come out on January 6th,” Meijer said. “That was the message that he was propagating. But we need to make sure that we move away from a politics of deception. We need to make sure that we have leaders who are telling folks who trust them what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear.”

Editor’s note: This post erroneously indicated that Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) voted in favor of impeachment. TPM regrets the error and has issued a correction.

Latest News

Notable Replies

  1. Mace said she found it “enormously disappointing” to witness more than 130 of her House Republican colleagues vote to object

    Asked why so few of his Republican colleagues agreed with him on impeachment, Meijer replied that he “can’t speak to what’s in anyone else’s heart” but that he has concerns with those in his party who fed into “politics of deception.”

    So … either the question of what happened on January 6 is not dispositive or … one could ask Mace and Meijer why they remain House Republicans when more than 60% of their colleagues behaved and voted the way they did.

    But Mace and Meijer are new.

    To be fair, a better question might be to ask Liz Cheney what caucus she thinks she’s helping to lead.

  2. They’ll never admit the truth because they’d be confessing to lying.

  3. We do need a sane GOP. Now, we can ask and plead for one…or we can just let the felony raps do the talking.

    This is not Bill Barr’s DOJ
    This is not Moscow McConnell’s Senate
    This is not Donald Trump’s WH
    This is not Trump’s FBI

  4. Avatar for krux krux says:

    The party of “personal responsibility” is now the party of “zero accountability”.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

139 more replies

Participants

Avatar for paulw Avatar for ajm Avatar for playitagainrowlf Avatar for meri Avatar for cervantes Avatar for teenlaqueefa Avatar for sniffit Avatar for thebigragu Avatar for chelsea530 Avatar for lastroth Avatar for leftcoaster Avatar for fiftygigs Avatar for triletter Avatar for tena Avatar for southerndem Avatar for caltg Avatar for castor_troy Avatar for redhand Avatar for skeptical Avatar for paul_lukasiak Avatar for Scoutmom Avatar for Ethics_Gradient Avatar for ClutchCargo Avatar for geographyjones

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: